Christmas is the celebration of love. This past Sunday was the fourth Sunday of Advent, and the
theme for that last Sunday before Christmas was love.
There are various Advent traditions and practices, but according to the Christianity.com website, the selected Bible passage for Dec. 18 was the third chapter of John, with those best-known words of the Bible,
Christians were long known for their love. “They’ll know we are Christians by our love,” is one title
given for a gospel song written in the 1960s by Peter Schottes, a Catholic
priest.
In the 1970s and ’80s, I enjoyed singing that song with
Christian friends and fellow church members in Japan. Here is its second verse
and the chorus:
We
will walk with each other, will walk hand in hand,
We will walk with each other, will walk hand in hand,
And together we’ll spread the news, that God is in our land
And
they’ll know we are Christians,
By our love, by our love.
Yes, they’ll know we are Christians by our love.*
The lyrics of that gospel song are loosely based on words of
Jesus as recorded in the Gospel of John: “By this everyone will know that you are my
disciples, if you love one another” (13:35, NIV)
In addition, though, until perverted by its alliance with political power, Christianity from its beginning was a religion of love for all people—and it still is when it is faithful to Jesus Christ.
Some Christians are now known for their hate. In my Dec. 10 blog post, I
introduced Octavia Butler and her two dystopian novels. I have just finished
reading the second of those, Parable of the Talents (1998).
In that prescient book, the U.S. elects a new President in
2032, a man who is an ardent advocate of Christian nationalism. In fact, he
formed a new denomination, the Church of Christian America (CA).
The most alarming characteristic of that new church is its
horrendous persecution of those considered to be “infidels.” Lauren, the
protagonist of both novels, experiences unthinkable suffering at the hands of
fanatical CA believers. They, indeed, were “Christians” known for their hate.
Perhaps you have seen the recent news stories about a
restaurant that refused to serve a Christian group because of what they deemed was
the “hatred” of that anti-gay group toward their employees.
Metzger Bar and Butchery
in Richmond, Va., posted on Instagram (here) that they “denied service to the group to protect its staff, many of
whom are women or members of the LGBTQ+ community.”
After reading about that happening, I came across a YouTube
video titled “Hate Preachers: Bigotry and Fearmongering by Extremist Christian
‘Leaders’.” That video includes several clips of preachers saying almost
unbelievable things, especially about LGBTQ people.**
Posted on YouTube eight months ago, that video has had
117,000 views, and when I accessed it last week, the first of the more than
1,600 comments said, “I simply don’t have enough hatred in me to be a
Christian.”
How exceedingly sad that this is how some people view
Christians now!
During this Christmas week, my plea for all of us is that we will fully accept the love of
God manifested on that first Christmas and broadly implement that love. And,
indeed, may all of us Christians be increasingly known by our love for all people.
____
* Here
is the link to a YouTube video with those words
being nicely sung.
** Some of these are affiliated with New Independent Fundamentalist Baptist churches,
a relatively new organization you can read about here.
