After service today I was talking with a couple of friends (the very brief moments I get after church). I was talking with them about having them over for dinner one night and just hanging out. These folks are so much fun to be around, the mom is one of the wittiest people I have ever met, she keeps you laughing. Her daughter is a sweet person, she has such a great temperament with kids (she’ll tell you that she doesn’t). At any rate, I told the daughter that she needs to invite her boyfriend over too. She told me that she would, but what struck me as kinda odd was the comment after. She was telling me that he liked me and that he felt comfortable around me. I don’t know a whole lot about him, haven’t interacted with him much, I know that he has been in some trouble in the past, but hey, we have all done things wrong, some of us didn’t get caught. I was asking her why he felt comfortable around me, and her response was “you don’t talk down to him, and tell him how he shouldn’t do this or that.”

My whole point to this is when has it ever been o.k. to talk down or belittle someone for their past, or present sin? When Christ was talking to the Pharisees about the adulteress woman he told them, “let he that is without sin throw the first stone”. This guy has probably been talked down to a belittled his whole life, it is not for me to judge him. I think that we as a church (and I’m talking about the body of Christ, not any one church in particular) that we have forgotten the greatest of all God’s commandments and that is love. I was talking to Kevin about this tonight and he brought up a great point, Christians can be legalistic about some of the most trivial things. But the one thing that we are not legalistic about is love. We don’t love people like we should. It is unfortunate that I barely know this young man, and the only reason he feels comfortable around me is because I treat him with respect and love, not because we have a close relationship, all he knows about me is I am nice to him. Where are you church? Do you just love the people that look like they belong, or are you reaching out to those that don’t. Are we making a point to treat each other with love and respect or are we looking down our noses at those “sinners”? Where are you?