THIS COMMANDMENT WE HAVE FROM HIM:
WHOEVER LOVES GOD MUST ALSO LOVE HIS BROTHER
“There's no such thing as life without bloodshed. I think the notion that the species can be improved in some way, that everyone could live in harmony, is a really dangerous idea. Those who are afflicted with this notion are the first ones to give up their souls, their freedom. Your desire that it be that way will enslave you and make your life vacuous. “ Joseph McCarthy
Forget the world. How do you want to live? Do you want to live motivated by fear of other people's misbehavior, or do you want to live motivated by genuine love for other humans. Hiding behind the species' broken condition is an obvious strategy to justify one's own fear-driven selfishness.
The phrase "Extremism in the defense of liberty is no vice" is a quote from Barry Goldwater's 1964 Republican National Convention speech.
Extremism in defense of liberty, like the extremism in defense of one’s children, is exactly the kind of extremism that is always used to justify every atrocity ever perpetrated by our species. OOPS!
Humans are not only prone to do selfish evil things out of fear, but they almost universally feel the need to rationalize and justify that evil afterward. Remembering this helps one see through the verbal fog our species is really great at generating.
We humans can say things that initially sound really good to us. We hear the word, freedom, or family, etc., and our heart is immediately triggered. And for good reason. Those things are naturally important to us. Yet if those things are triggered in connection with fear of something bad happening to them, our thoughts moving forward will be entirely destructive. Fear Is disorienting, and in that state of disorientation we don’t function well at all. We lose all sense of who we are, and so can be easily induced into doing things we would typically find hateful.
Pay attention to the things you are hearing on YouTube and other media outlets. Pay attention to the things your preachers and politicians are saying. Ask yourselves how much of what they are saying involve the connecting of natural human desires, for things such as freedom, safety, family, etc., with fear? Then, reject decisively what they are saying. Only destruction can come from their fears or your own.
If you truly do need to do something about something precious to you, God, who is love can more than adequately motivate you to do that. And when He is doing the motivating, when His love at work in your heart is doing the motivating,, it always is accompanied by insight and creative thoughts, and ingenious solutions, as well as the industrious drive to achieve those things.
1John 4:10 In this is love, not that we have loved God but that he loved us and sent his Son to be the propitiation for our sins.
:11 Beloved, if God so loved us, we also ought to love one another.
:12 No one has ever seen God; if we love one another, God abides in us and his love is perfected in us.
:13 By this we know that we abide in him and he in us, because he has given us of his Spirit.
:14 And we have seen and testify that the Father has sent his Son to be the Savior of the world.
:15 Whoever confesses that Jesus is the Son of God, God abides in him, and he in God.
:16 So we have come to know and to believe the love that God has for us. God is love, and whoever abides in love abides in God, and God abides in him.
:17 By this is love perfected with us, so that we may have confidence for the day of judgment, because as he is so also are we in this world.
:18 There is no fear in love, but perfect love casts out fear. For fear has to do with punishment, and whoever fears has not been perfected in love.
:19 We love because he first loved us.
:20 If anyone says, “I love God,” and hates his brother, he is a liar; for he who does not love his brother whom he has seen cannot love God whom he has not seen.
:21 And this commandment we have from him: whoever loves God must also love his brother.
The first verse you quoted really bottom lines how invalid any of our excuses are. In this is love, that God loved us while we were still a hot mess. Any issues a person has that bring pain or conflict will never be a valid excuse to not love that person. Love covers a multitude of sin, thank God!
The problem is that we can only know what love looks like if we are in a trusting relationship with God, willing to face our own incapacity for love apart from Him.
It is helpful to know that we don't have to feel shame or condemnation when we are unable to love and in fact should reject them. We get to confess to our Father our lack of love and ask Him to show us our heart and free us to love.
Our only other option is to hide our lack of love behind some principle or value to save our pride and justify our fear driven selfishness.
Trusting God with someone you see as harmful will cost you big time but the payoff is so huge. The other option will leave you unsatisfied and paying for your pride's upkeep for eternity.
The first verse you quoted really bottom lines how invalid any of our excuses are. In this is love, that God loved us while we were still a hot mess. Any issues a person has that bring pain or conflict will never be a valid excuse to not love that person. Love covers a multitude of sin, thank God!
The problem is that we can only know what love looks like if we are in a trusting relationship with God, willing to face our own incapacity for love apart from Him.
It is helpful to know that we don't have to feel shame or condemnation when we are unable to love and in fact should reject them. We get to confess to our Father our lack of love and ask Him to show us our heart and free us to love.
Our only other option is to hide our lack of love behind some principle or value to save our pride and justify our fear driven selfishness.
Trusting God with someone you see as harmful will cost you big time but the payoff is so huge. The other option will leave you unsatisfied and paying for your pride's upkeep for eternity.