Skip to main content

Don’t Hate Me

  OK, here I go….
 
  I think essential oils sound like a lot of hokum.  I enjoy it when the St. Louis Cardinals get beat.  I stand by my statement that Led Zeppelin is overrated.  I never understood why people waste so much money on their pets.  I think professional wrestling is a lame male equivalent of a soap opera.  I wish we had a better national anthem.  In my opinion, Pepsi Cola is taste abomination.  I’m not for gun control but I am really glad some people can’t have them.  I’m convinced paying anything more than a quarter for a cup of coffee is ludicrous.  I don’t believe Macs are better, in fact I think they are inferior computers.  

  Do you hate me yet?

  All these things are just MY opinion.  I could be wrong.  I may be right.  Or maybe there isn’t a right or wrong in them.  They might just be opinions.

  I know however there are some reading this right now that are thinking very dismissive thoughts on me.  My reputation, trustworthiness, and even my faithfulness to the Lord are being called into question.  My goal isn’t to get into a discussion about any of these issues but rather to make us think about how quick we are to divide about things that really should not separate us.

  The world is very quick to make you think that if someone has an different opinion on something you hold dear, then that person is your enemy.  And an enemy must be hated and ridiculed.  That’s not the case.

  God made us different in our likes and dislike.  You can enjoy something I don’t, work in a different way, have another take on what is the best way to handle a situation and it doesn’t have to be a dividing line between people.

  There are however some things that aren’t opinions that are matter of God’s truth.  In these matters, we must stand. But even in these matters we can’t go so far as to hate those that do(1st John 4:20)

  Christians, we need to be very careful that in a hateful divisive world we don’t join in the fray.  I may not agree with you on every matter but I can still love you, I can still respect you as God’s creation.  We can disagree with detestation.


  You may not agree with me with but don’t hate me.
Labels:

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

I Know All Those Words, But That Sentence Makes No Sense To Me

  Let’s say you travel back in time six hundred years or so.  Luckily, you happen across a fellow that speaks English.  Upon hearing your tale, he describes you as nice, smart, and handsome.  Wouldn’t you feel good?   You shouldn’t.  As Sol Steinmetz in his book, Semantics Antics , explains; Nice originally meant someone who was foolish, ignorant, senseless, or absurd (middle English 1300). Smart for the first 300 years of its use meant causing pain, sharp, cutting, or severe, a sense that survives in the idiom "smart as a whip.” Handsome wasn’t complimentary. When coined around 1425, it just meant easily handled; it didn’t have its current positive connotation until 1590.   You might think he said you were a kind, intelligent, good looking bloke, when in reality he said you were a foolish pain easily dealt with.   Words have an annoying habit of changing meaning over time in the same language and it becomes even more compli...
Post a Comment
Read more

Master Your Self

  In a contest for the toughest president of the United States, it would be hard to go against Theodore Roosevelt.  He was known for his “manly” pursuits hunting big game, climbing the Matterhorn, participating in boxing match while president. (These weren’t play fights, he lost the vision on one eye because of them!)  Once before he was about to give a speech an assassin shot him in the chest.  Roosevelt refused to go to a hospital and insisted on giving his speech, still wearing his blood-soaked shirt!   Teddy might have become tough but he wasn’t born that way.  He was a sickly child that suffered from severe asthma that almost proved fatal.  As was a young boy, doctors discovered that he had a weak heart, and advised him to get a desk job and not strain himself.  He was homeschooled because of his many illnesses and spent most of his time indoors.   But then as a teen his father, whom Teddy Roosevelt revered, told his son, “ ...
Post a Comment
Read more

Until Midnight

    In Acts 20, there is the tragicomic event surrounding a young man by the name of Eutychus. He did what a lot of folks before and after him did, he fell asleep during a sermon. Unfortunately, he was setting in in the third story window at the time. So instead of nodding off and hitting the pew in front of him, he fell to his death. The good news was the apostle Paul was delivering the sermon and had the ability to bring him back.       I don’t know, however, if we can judge Eutychus too harshly. The sermon had gone on till midnight. Paul wouldn’t finish it up till daybreak. That’s a long lesson. I know some folks that might want to jump out of a window if I had a lesson that long, yet these Christians wanted to be there to hear Paul.   Don’t get me wrong, I’m not pushing for all night sermons but I think we might need to adopt these folks' dedication. They knew that Paul was only in town for a limited time only and they were determined to ...
Post a Comment
Read more