Tuesday, December 12, 2006

What does it mean to love your neighbor

The question asked of Jesus was "who is my neighbor" but I think the harder question is what does it mean to "love them." The example Jesus gave is an easy one to see. The Good Samaritan sees a person in a need and reaches out with medical attention and personal care. While I think there are times each of us is like the priest and the Levite who cross over to avoid the injured man, I think they, and us, know what it would take to care for the person. One of the books I am reading at present talks about the need to love your congregation. It may seem obvious but I know there are times we all struggle to love people we are working with. When I worked at a youth center there were several kids who got under my skin on such a regular basis I probably would have been hard pressed to say I loved them. The illustration that was made in the book was about the prennially negative person in a congregation who can become destructive to the efforts of the overall congregation. Here is the tension I found in what the author was saying: on the one hand they emphasized that churches should not be driven by results to the expense of loving their members. At the same time the author seemed to say if someone was too negative and threatened to make the congregation dysfunctional it was better to have them leave than to let their negativity spread. While I know that one person's views can have as much of a negative effect as a positive one, is that really the loving thing to do. It seems like there are two ways of viewing this person. Either they are so negative that no one can help them, o they have individual problems and need to be helped with. A person could be quite positive but no longer comfortable with the style of worship, or size of a congregation, in which case it would be a loving action to help them find a church that can really fit their needs and desires. O the other hand, if a person is perennially negative, it is really loving simply to shove them off on someone else so that your church can grow. Can a Christian really believe that anyone is uncurable, since that would seem to make them beyond the reach even of God. But there is still a question of should the needs of one person hijack the mission of any church. Is there a way to care for a love this person that does not impede the actions of the church. Is the author right that at some point you cannot let one person bring everyone down. I would hate to make that choice but perhaps that is the challenge that I must face as a pastor. I guess it is probably my job to make the call on when someone is causing too much harm for the congregation. I still feel that what is lacking, and surprisingly given the tone of his book, was th sense of letting God play a role in the healing of, or the decision to help a person leave. I guess it just feels that the love the author advocates is not a selfless love, but a selfish love. The author seems to say love the person as long as it does not hurt your cause, but in fact love them to help your cause. Is it not a better testament to love to stay with them through it all? These are hard questions, and I do not know that there are easy answers. I just feel that when it comes to church we are better to keep asking, to keep challenging ourselves, and trusting in God.

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