Loving my neighbour. The Christian Underpinning.
Loving my neighbour. The Christian Underpinning.
Is it important? How did Jesus rate it?
“Teacher, which is the greatest commandment in the Law?”
Jesus replied: “‘Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind.’ This is the first and greatest commandment. And the second is like it: ‘Love your neighbour as yourself.’ All the Law and the Prophets hang on these two commandments.” Matt 22:36-40
What does it mean?
- It means helping, reaching out, being concerned (“loving” after all) as was and did the “good Samaritan” for my neighbour’s welfare both now and for the future.
- It means helping my neighbour – both here and overseas – when he needs food or protection or medical help or to set up a facility/enterprise so that he can be self-sufficient.
- It means protection when possible against unforeseen dangers and to “build their house upon a rock” or on high ground to protect against foreseen danger.
- It may also mean engineering works to protect against that flood when it comes.
- It might mean not only protecting against accidental “natural” calamity but also against deliberate evil intent. It might mean equipping the house with a lockable front door or a wall.
- It might mean working against legislation designed to thwart God’s design for healthy families and communities. It might mean working against the effect of such legislation if passed on the welfare of our children.
- It might even mean standing as a candidate for election.
- It certainly means having – or sharing in – a public voice.
- And it certainly means knowing how to vote in our democratic society when candidates for election deliberately espouse policies hazarding the future of our children.
All of the above – and there’s more – is encompassed within a framework of loving our neighbour and loving our neighbour’s children (the future aspect of that loving) and also establishing “A Safe Place for our Children” within the family, the community and the nation. But it also means how do we prepare, how do we behave, how do we react and adjust when there is no longer a safe place.
As a Christian parent, what are your greatest fears for your children? What are your greatest wishes for them? And how can we protect them including around the kitchen table?
What did Jesus say that is applicable to the battles we face?
- Firstly, Jesus affirmed the creation story. Matt 19:4-6 “Haven’t you read,” he replied, “that at the beginning the Creator ‘made them male and female,and said, ‘For this reason a man will leave his father and mother and be united to his wife, and the two will become one flesh’? So they are no longer two, but one flesh.”
The warfare against heteronormativity – male and female – is an unprecedented rebellion against God and His Creation.
We must preach and teach the fundamentals of creation and their application – male and female (no spectrum), its complementarity as the ordinance of marriage and the Imago Dei – to be created in the image of God.
- Secondly, Jesus explained and affirmed the command (Luke 10:27) to love our neighbour. Loving our neighbour and our neighbour’s children means not only caring for them in present calamity but also warning against approaching calamity or helping to protect their future from encroaching evil – in this instance state mandated sexual indoctrination.
Loving our neighbour is not optional. “Hate evil and love good, then work it out in the public square” (Amos 5:15 Msg)
- Thirdly, Jesus said “whoever causes one of these little ones who believe in me to sin, it would be better for him to have a great millstone fastened around his neck and to be drowned in the depth of the sea” (Matt 18:6).
Jesus’ condemnation re leading children into sin is quite specific as is its judgment. Other evils that concern us do not merit the same specific judgment. May this truth be reflected in our thinking and our living.
If we, as informed Christians, support politicians and educators whose firm commitment is sexual confusion and indoctrination of our children, then we too are guilty of allowing our little ones to be led into sin.
FAQs possible responses
As you say in the first point, we are all made in the Image of God. That includes the LGBTQi person too.
Yes, I agree, and all have sinned and come short of the glory of God. And that includes the fornicator and the adulterer and others leading an immoral lifestyle and our attitude must be one of repentance and turning away from that sin and “there but for the grace of God go I”. And even if there are factors “beyond” our control and that a person has a homosexual orientation as a result, we are still exhorted not to sin. The unrepentant adulterer and the unrepentant active homosexual are both lumped together.
As is clear from biology – the elephant in the room – and Jesus’ affirmation of the creation of male and female and the purpose of this, sexual relationships outside of this design are not of God.
In the second point you talk about loving our neighbour. Surely the distress felt by LGBTQI people presently caused by this plebiscite is a reason to say “yes”, thus affirming their homosexual orientation, loving them as Jesus taught.
Yes, and we need to demonstrate this in our relationships with them. But loving our neighbour does not mean we automatically agree with everything our neighbour demands. Judgments must still be made on rights and wrongs and on the merits of what is proposed. In this instance the merits/demerits of another “stolen generation” of children, state support of homosexuality with all its known risks, transgender fluidity, and giving legal force to state approval of shocking school education of sexual lifestyles and gender transitions. Loving our neighbour and our neighbour’s children and future generations goes far beyond simple acquiescence of demands to approve present homosexual lifestyle by calling it “marriage”.
How dare you apply that condemnation of Jesus to those of us showing love and compassion to our neighbour!
We also can show compassion but compassion does not necessitate approval. Even if there were no consequences to legalising SSM we still could not approve of the homosexual lifestyle.
But there are consequences to our children in terms of school approval of exploring sexual orientations, two or more virginities including anal intercourse, and discovering “your own gender”. At the present time we can object and have some influence in how these education policies are applied but once homosexual behaviour is legally approved and transgenders are included in the definition of marriage as between “two people” then objections become “against the state” and charges of discrimination and “hate speech” are given increased force – as has been confirmed by overseas experience.
If we, by our silence, support or condone these policies in our education system, then we too are guilty of our “little ones being led into sin”. I fail to see any other conclusion.
The push for homosexual coupling and call it “marriage” represents direct rebellion against God in an intensity as we have not seen in our lifetime – and against His people, the Church – to silence it, to divide it, and to destroy our freedom to teach our children about our Christian faith. Yes, we’ve been here before with Communism and German fascism but not in our time and not in the “free” West.
For the sake of future generations, it is time to speak God’s truth to our world. It is time to teach God’s people the essentials of God’s Created Order and of the spiritual warfare around this fundamental truth.