POSITIVE CHANGE 22 JAN 2013

POSITIVE CHANGE. Do you want to be involved in positive change, a REAL revolution…try loving your fellowman!! This teaching of Christ is truly revolutionary, even today. I wrote a similar editorial over 40 yrs. ago, and find myself compelled to write it now, obviously our need to love each other hasn’t faded with time. Nor will it.

At times I’ve thought, “If I were in his shoes, I’d do so much better.” Only to realize when I was, I didn’t do any better. Plenty of people are so busy trying to find the splinter in the eyes of others, they don’t see the log in their own. We each have shortcomings, defects, and imperfections, and we want (even expect) others to have patience with ours; so it makes sense to do unto others as we want done to ourselves. Yet for years I have watched “wolves” group-attack anyone who tries to do anything. Such willingness to attack makes us easy for the powers to control, they just deflect our attacks to their advantage.

Christ was criticized for who he associated with. Dictatorships love to use this kind of criticism, making various associations socially tainted or forbidden. One man recently lost his job because he went to a picnic I was at. This is how Nazi Germany and other similar govt.s have controlled their populations. I see some “truthers” criticizing others for appearing on shows they don’t approve or associating with unapproved people. Do you notice that Christ ate meals with anyone: be they Pharisees, Sadducees, Samaritans, government agents or the red necks of his day? God is no respecter of persons, and we should follow His example.

A final thought on love. Love calls us to honesty; John the Baptist and Christ both called the religious rulers a “brood of vipers” to their faces, but a close reading shows both had love behind their words.

The Love of Christ—a real revolution.