Shame and Grace VI

... everyone who loves the parent loves the child.

 - From 1 John 5

If you love the parent, you love the child. 

This doesn't leave much wiggle room. In fact, from the beginning of Genesis, to the end of Revelation, God has pretty much provided ample different ways of looking at the definition of love, of commanding us to do it, and intending us to share it with everybody, unconditionally.

When I analyzed this assertion - If you love the parent, you love the child, and extrapolated it out to its full meaning, I ended up with the sense that we are all related, we're all family, and we are to love each other as we love our family members. Let me explain . . . 

Your family is your family. No matter what you do to a person's appearance, no matter what legal paperwork you draw up, no matter how you rename yourself, or redefine yourself, you still have just one biological father, and one biological mother, and you can't change that. Families are the ultimate means to practice unconditional love. In your home, when you're growing up, you are required at least to act like you love the others. (In fact, that's what real love is: expressing it when you don't want to).

The children of abusive parents still love them. They try to piece together a relationship that appears functional to the outside world. They overcompensate. This too, is real love. Doing it . . . not feeling it. 

Which human being do you want to proclaim is not a child of God? Is not the divine spark within the heart of every human that ever lived? Christ came to call home, God's lost sheep. That means all of them . . . and some very bad people got redeemed in Scripture, and still do, to this day.

David, who would become King of Israel, beseeched others not to dishonor King Saul, a decidedely disreputable man. 

We are all the children of God . . . we all descend from the first people God created, and named His children. He is Father to all of us. And if you love Him, you will love His children. Adam's son, Cain, was wrong. He is his brother's keeper; and we too, are the keepers of our brothers. 

So, you cannot participate in shaming, both on-line and in person. You would not hang out your family's dirty laundry in public. So don't do it, at all. 

This message goes out especially to anti-Trump evangelicals. You may not like him . . . but you place yourself in the position of judge, over your own Christian brethren, when you pronounce him unfit to be your President. Your position is a hateful one . . . and your hate spreads out over multitudes of people. You divide the Body of Christ, and hold it up as a byword and laughingstock, to its adversaries. 

There comes a point where we act on the truth that our response to evil, and sin, is not supposed to be more evil, more sin, and the casting of shame upon others. 

The response is grace. Just grace. 

And I'll bet a little more grace shown toward any President, and her followers, will be good for the country. And food for the Church.