Yesterday I talked about love being the thing that separates christians from the world. Some will say at this point that letting someone know they are “in sin” would be an act of love toward that person. I think that idea is incredibly hypocritical. We are all complete and utter failures. That is sort of a central theme to Christianity. Our inability to obey God is at the core of our need for Christ. We are all wretched sinners, the idea that we should constantly be policing one another is more than absurd. It would be impossible. Because of that, we don’t police every sin. What actually happens is that we have a list of particular “sins” that we don’t like, that oppose our traditional values, and those are the ones that we call people out on. Those are the ones we get all righteous about. That’s when we start throwing stones. The thing is that Jesus made the point several times that we’re all failures. That even if we don’t express our sinfulness outwardly, we still deal with it in our hearts. Unless you plan on going around telling everyone that everything they are doing is wrong, and are willing to hear the same all the time, then this whole standing against sin thing is just hypocrisy.

One of the biggest ways that we show love toward other people is taking time to be with them and taking a real interest in their lives and who they are. Until we truly know and have built up trust with another person we have not established proper groundwork to lovingly tell them that their choices could be hurting them. My parents spent most of my teen years trying to help me see that I was making bad choices. I have siblings and aunts and uncles and in-laws who all know me well enough that I (usually) trust their opinion to be based on a desire to see what is best for me, and not based in a self-righteous desire to see me conform to a certain way of living. Spouses are always good for telling you when you are screwing up. The thing about spouses and parents and all these people that I mentioned, is that they are part of your life. They have demonstrated that you are very important and that your well-being matters to them. Often with spouses and parents you see that your own well-being is more important to them than their own.

This is a far cry from putting out pamphlets that denounce homosexuality or wearing t-shirts that tell women who have abortions that they are murderers. That is not love. You may be right, but who cares? The person you are condemning doesn’t care. God doesn’t care because He knows that your heart is full of sin too. It serves no purpose, but to further alienate people who need God’s love demonstrated to them, and to promote your traditional ideals. It is time to stop hiding behind this idea that you are spreading self-righteous judgment as an act of love. It isn’t love of anything but your own traditions and it doesn’t show anyone that you are different and it certainly contradicts what Jesus demonstrated as love.

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