Rainbow Joward

The Supreme Court's decision to extend equal marriage rights to the homosexual community this week broke the internet.

It became the fad to add a rainbow filter over your Facebook profile photo, whether or not you'd ever openly advocated for gay rights before. Companies and news organizations trumpeted the ruling and jumped on a massive multicolored, politically-correct landslide.

I'm not here to debate politics. What I am here to do is leave a message for the Christianfolk with whom I (at times begrudgingly) identify.

To those of you who posted updates about how gays and lesbians will burn in hell, to those of you who wildly flailed your crucifixes in desperate hope that you wouldn't be mistaken for having agreed with the movement, for those of you who posted bible verse after bible verse condemning homosexuality -- this is for you.

Just because you don't agree with the movement doesn't mean you should be spreading a movement of hatred and fear.

We are called to love the Lord with all our heart, soul, mind and strength, as I've written about before. But we are also called to love the people around us -- and that's regardless of their age, race, eye color, hairstyle, religion, height, smell, favorite hockey team... and sexual orientation.

Putting a rainbow on my Facebook doesn't mean I'm a-jumpin' on the gay train, it carries a far more valuable meaning. I'm taking a stand to be loving and accepting, regardless of how others who share my faith have been reacting all week long.

Some of my thoughts were sparked by something a friend posted, a message by Ian Pratt on Instagram which captured my feelings in a really good way. Pratt talks about how Jesus met with and loved people from all walks of life, from the pharisees to the tax collectors and prostitutes. Pratt was moved to action, not by his convictions on the issue of gay marriage, but on the reaction from fellow believers.

"My message to the gay community is this," he writes. "You are loved. You have infinite dignity and worth."

And that should be the message. My personal beliefs aside, I love you guys. This isn't one of the, 'Hey, you can do what you want as long as it doesn't affect me,' things. I hope to treat you as I should the rest of my friends, with love and respect for who you are.

Jesus loves you, and that doesn't change.

To those who are 'enraged,' as one commented mentioned, I'd challenge you to discover why. Gay people are nothing to be afraid of. In fact, they are to be loved as neighbors -- much like the Samaritan, who would have been the sworn enemy of the Jews along the road. God doesn't set parameters of who he loves and when he loves, so why should we?

Love, you're doing it wrong

Music has always had a particular way of allowing God to speak to me, and a few weeks ago, David Crowder's Oh, How He Loves Us popped into my head -- no doubt a quiet prompting.

I settled on the phrase in the chorus in which the song focuses on the awe of God loving us. In conjunction with God being God, and everything I know about God, that didn't make any sense. If God is just and perfect, there's no reason for God to love us as he does.

John 3:16 says that God loved the world so much that He sacrificed his son so we could be with him. In that frame of mind, the love of God is great -- it's huge and immeasurable, by our human standards -- but God's love is still quantifiable.

In other words, it can be earned and it can be lost.

That's a scary thought. If God's love can be measured, it can be used up. And with all the sin in the world, it would make sense that God's love would eventually run dry.

There's a flaw in that thinking, though. John 3:16 doesn't talk about WHY God loves us, it simply states that He does. God's love is unconditional, and I've grown up thinking that God's love is unconditional because there's a whole bunch of it.

That's now how unconditional works, though. Unconditional means that love is literally outside of conditions.

God doesn't love us because of what we do, how we act or who we are. God loves us BECAUSE we are. 

Consider the relationship between a parent and a child. No matter what happens between them, the son will always be the child of the father. If the father's love is based on the fact that the son is HIS son, then it will never change. It will never dissipate, and it will never grow or diminish based on how the son acts.

That light makes God's love far more comforting, I think. There's nothing that I could do to change the fact that God loves me, because he doesn't love me for the things I bring or don't bring to the relationship. He doesn't love me because of my talents or my looks, and certainly not because of my faithfulness.

God loves me because he created me and because God is love, and I will always be his creation -- regardless of the things I do in this life. God's love is unrelenting, it's a wall or a wave. It's unbroken and unfailing and constant.

What an example, and what a fresh way of thinking! If we are made in his image and we are called to reflect him, then we are called to the same love -- love that it outside condition. That's why it doesn't matter how we're treated, and it doesn't matter whether or not we get anything back from the relationship.

I need to learn to love like that.