I recently finished a free online course from Dallas Theological Seminary taught by Dr. Stanley Toussaint. His application from the Parable of the Good Samaritan was simple and positively convicting. ”You can tell how a person loves God by how they love people.” Ouch. My defensive response included an excuse about how difficult it is to love some people. Come on Lord. You know them better than I do! Later that day I cued a Spotify country song list and up popped a tune by bluegrass singer Rhonda Vincent. God has a sense of humor. The song is called “You Don’t Love God If You Don’t Love Your Neighbor” and the lyrics begin like this. There are many peoplewho will say they’re Christiansand they live like Christians on the Sabbath day But come Monday morning, til the coming SundayThey will fight their neighbor all along the way. {chorus}Oh you don’t love God, if you don’t love your neighborif you gossip about
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I used to joke that it is hard to find a good Evangelical math teacher because the only thing they completely understand is division. I am not sure I think that is humorous anymore as I watch the heartbreaking division in the body of believers that I love and call family. My head explodes when I allow myself to wade into the discourse between followers of Jesus Christ on Twitter and other social media. There are important cultural issues that Christians need to prayerfully and gracefully seek God’s wisdom to address. What I see is rarely graceful and that makes me wonder how prayerful the messengers have been before hitting the send button. Because of the nature of social media a topic that should be thoughtfully debated instead becomes an us versus them war. The discourse easily drifts toward broad brushing of large segments of the body of Christ with unfair assignation of motives. These judgements of motives and personal
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