What Love Is Not...and Is

In the beginning, the elohim created skies and earth.

Welcome back.  I keep writing about love without explaining what I mean.  Let me try to fix that.

If we are to take seriously a sermon entitled "Sinners in the Hands of Our God of Love," then we must know what "love" is.

First, what love is not...

Praying in front of everyone at Crackerbarrel is not showing our love, but we do display our holiness for all to see and politely ignore. 

Going to church is not showing our love, but we do discuss, practice, and celebrate it. 

Picketing funerals with signs proclaiming hate is not showing our love, but we do proclaim a hating god. 

Losing our tempers is not showing our love, but we do feel better while everyone around us feels nervous.

Cussing, drinking, dancing, and playing are not showing our love, but we do create laughter and the soul’s love song is laughter.

If we are a Christian Nation, we are not showing our love when we devise, implement, and propagandize for an economic system that makes richer those who are rich already, but we do make fatter that camel trying to fit through the eye of a needle.

If we are a Christian Nation we are not showing our love when our economic system is predisposed to expanding poverty rather than ending it, but we do create a culture that has deceived itself into believing the lie that prosperity is a sign of a god’s favor.

If we are a Christian Nation we are not showing our love if we must rely on guns to make us feel the illusion of being safe, but we do reside within the belly of a false hope.

If we are a Christian Nation we are never never NEVER showing our love when we murder grandmommies, granddaddies, mommies, daddies, aunts, uncles, cousins, sons, and daughters in another country because we want their oil or their government to be ours.

But we do create survivors who despise us so much that they plan and pray for our demise in the decades to come.

If we are a Christian Nation we are never showing our love when we make war in order to create a situation in the Middle East that lays the groundwork for our woefully informed belief in Biblical fortune telling and thereby hastens the physical return of a god.

But we do create survivors who despise us so much that they cannot see our God of love dwelling within the borders of our Christian Nation.

Indeed, it’s the good news when we show our love by seeking and serving and giving and working for the rule of kindness and justice and civility and hope in this mortal life…you know…heaven on earth…such as Jesus preached.

Blessings…