This is LOVE!

Last week, our church sponsored an event in Charlotte along with 26 other Charlotte area churches called LOVE Week (watch the video), designed to show LOVE to the city of Charlotte (Charlotte Observer).  The goal was 25,000 hours of service to the city between February 26 and March 6.  Sean and I served 20, and wish that we were here for the second weekend because we had an awesome time.  In this one week, 60,000 meals were made for families.  30,000 sandwiches were made for the homeless.  28 tons of trash were collected.  17,000 pairs of shoes were donated.  And of course, 34, 257 hours of service were given to the city.  Providence campus alone made over 20,000 meals for people in Haiti via Stop Hunger Now in just a couple of hours.  I think that that's incredible.  Pastor Steven Furtick said in his blog that this is what the church exists for, to show the city that they are LOVED, by their church and their God.

Photo online of Providence Campus's meal prepartion

LOVE Week Photo Video by Sean Lyon Photography

Our God is LOVE

⁷ Dear friends, let us love one another, for love comes from God. Everyone who loves has been born of God and knows God. ⁸ Whoever does not love does not know God, because God is love. ⁹ This is how God showed his love among us: He sent his one and only Son into the world that we might live through him. ¹⁰ This is love: not that we loved God, but that he loved us and sent his Son as an atoning sacrifice for our sins. ¹¹ Dear friends, since God so loved us, we also ought to love one another. ¹² No one has ever seen God; but if we love one another, God lives in us and his love is made complete in us.

1 John 4: 7-12

On being FOR:

The idea behind LOVE Week was to show the city of Charlotte what Christians are FOR and to be known for that, since so often, we are known for what we are against.  I agree that it's obnoxious to watch people who claim to love picket outside of institutions and put people down.  That's NOT what Christianity is about.  And I don't think that that behavior is driven by and rooted in love.  But nontheless, Christianity IS a religion that's against a number of things, so I feel like I should address that before I press submit on this blog.  Christians are against certain things because we're FOR certain things (honor, marriage, life, honesty, and love), and you can't truly be FOR anything unless you're against something else.  Jesus said in Luke 11:23 that 'whoever is not with me, is against me..', so while that's out of context, I agree.  Other notable souls in agreement are Helen Keller who said that apathy is the greatest human evil of all, and a nursing textbook that I read that said that what you permit, you promote.

For example, you can't truly be for marriage, unless you're against divorce.  You can't be for life, unless you're against murder.  Thus why the notion of "being open-minded" kind of confuses me.  If you're for both marriage and divorce (and therefore open-minded), than you're not for either of them.  What you are, is ambivalent and apathetic.  True ambivalence and ampathy is a personality trait with which I have never come in contact with, probably because most people who are truly ambivalent/apathetic, are people who believe that there is no such thing as right or wrong.  Ted Bundy (a known serial killer) used this platform in one of his final interviews, so there ya go.  I wouldn't marry someone who was ambivalent about it, and I would worry about the children of parents who were openly AMBIVALENT about their child's health and wellbeing.  I think that most people, Christian and non-Christian alike, probably agree.  Mark Mittleburg said that without God, and thus without a true guiding post for what is right and what is wrong, what you're left with is preferences (I would call that ambivalent).  Murder might not be my thing, but that's great if it's your's.  I don't think that anyone wants a world like that.

So all of this to say that yes, Christians are against murder, dishonesty, dishonor, gossip, divorce, and that hasn't changed.  But that's because we are FOR LOVE.  Not the other way around.  We are not FOR love because we're against other things.  We're against things because we're FOR love, loving our God and our neighbor, SO WHOLEHEARTEDLY, that it makes it impossible NOT to be SO WHOLEHEARTEDLY against anything that gets in the way of LOVE.  And that is what we should be known for.