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Be Liberal with your Love
by David Sellnow
I want to be liberal, and hope you will be too. I'm not talking
about political liberalism, but the kind of liberality that every Christian
will want to espouse. Our hearts go out
to all those in need of spiritual guidance or physical assistance. Our gifts will flow freely, liberally, in
order to bring needed benefits to them.
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| Image by Petty Officer 1st Class Molly Burgess [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons |
I fear that some
within the Christian community have so adopted the doctrines of political
conservatism that they become unwilling to practice liberal Christian kindness,
which is eager to assist those in need. A
church member—a dear, dedicated lady—argued against giving aid to struggling
families. Our congregation was providing
them with vouchers to the community food bank.
Bear in mind, we paid pennies per pound for the food, and our annual
expense for this charitable effort was less than one percent of our
congregational budget. It wasn’t the
amount of our donations that sparked this woman’s objection. It was the principle of the matter. She was firmly convinced that helping the
poor encouraged helplessness and dependency.
This can sometimes be the case, but is not always so. The Bible writer James
described a scenario in which an individual is truly in need of help. You can’t tell him he should budget his
income better; he has no income. You
can’t say he should work harder; he has no job and no prospects. The person James pictured is literally naked
and absolutely lacking. He’s got
nothing. He’s totally helpless. Will you help him … or will you pass by on
the other side of the street? James’
brother, Jesus our Savior, told a parable that warned against behavior like
that. Jesus’ parable pictured a priest
and a Levite passing by on the other side of the road when they encountered one
of their countrymen who had been robbed and beaten and left for dead (cf. Luke
10:30-37). Being a true neighbor means
helping anyone that you see in a position of need—as the good Samaritan in
Jesus’ parable exemplified.
Along with our
inaction toward neighbors in need in the communities where we live, we have
allowed ourselves to fall into similar attitudes globally. We see Third World inhabitants as the concern
of international policymakers, not of personal concern to us. We fear foreigners as threats to our jobs
through outsourcing, or we want them as markets for our products through
exporting. We fail to remember that they
are, first of all, people. They deserve our
evangelistic concern and Christian compassion.
If love for others—including strangers and foreigners—is not in our
hearts, can we say the love of God is in us?
“He who doesn’t love doesn’t know God, for God is love. … If a
man says, ‘I love God,’ and hates his brother, he is a liar; for he who doesn’t
love his brother whom he has seen, how can he love God whom he has not seen” (1
John 4:8,20)?
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