Faith Matters: What happened to grace and mutual understanding in Christian faith?
It makes a pastor like me sad to think that increasingly in this country, Christian faith is too often associated with condemnation and separation, rather than grace and mutual understanding.
This is wrong, because we read in our sacred scriptures that God intends us to care for one another, being quick to compassion and slow to judge. In the New Testament, Christ issues the great commandment to love God and to love our neighbor as we love ourselves.
In fact, Jesus proclaims that we should not just love our neighbor, but we should also love our enemies and do good to those who hate us. He reminds us: Do to others as you would have them do to you.
This is easy if we are talking about letting someone ahead of us in the grocery line or being kind to the aggressive driver, but much harder if we are talking about the global poverty, immigration law, warfare, health care or that family member who drives you crazy.
But it is not just the Christian scriptures that encourage such generous and sacrificial love. The prophet Jeremiah in the Hebrew Scriptures, in chapter 29, tells displaced and mistreated exiles that they should seek the welfare/shalom/peace of the people around them and in doing so, they will find their own welfare/shalom/peace.
Many people appreciate the words that come later in verse 11 of that chapter: “I know the plan I have for you,” says the Lord, “plans for your welfare/shalom/peace and not for harm to give you a future with hope.”
All of us want the peaceful future with hope, yet when we read this passage in context, we see that we cannot have peace without first seeking the peace of those around us. Only then will we find our future filled with hope, especially as we pursue God’s way of compassion in the world.
In the Book of Leviticus, we read the imperative to “love the alien as yourself, for you were aliens in the lands of Egypt.” There are many people in this community who need us to exercise compassion, to seek their peace.
Many of those with greatest need in our community are served by Turning Points, a one-stop center in Bradenton for those at threat of homelessness, and Beth-El Farmworker Ministries, a center in Wimauma in Hillsborough County providing hunger relief, education, health care and spiritual growth.
Mother Teresa once said, “If we have no peace, it is because we have forgotten that we belong to each other.”
The Rev. Elizabeth Deibert is the pastor at Peace Presbyterian Church, 12705 State Road 64, Lakewood Ranch. Faith Matters is a regular feature of Saturday’s Bradenton Herald, written by local clergy members.