From Whosoever online magazine.
As the old hymn says, "They will know we are Christians by our love." Jesus made clear that the way the world will know we follow Him is by the consideration we show each other. This is why constructive dialogue between Christians is so important. We've had precious little of it lately, but perhaps, as the Religious Right continues to decline in power, we may see more. The powerful never seem to be able to empathize with the powerless.
Sometimes people have to hear their own rhetoric echoed back to them before they can truly understand the effect it has, or what they're really saying. This should never be done in any childish, "I'm rubber and you're glue" sense. But the Gospels present a very reciprocal point of view on how people ought to deal with each other: "Do unto others as you would have them do unto you." While Christians are encouraged to move past "an eye for an eye" thinking, there is indeed a biblical basis for considering how what we do affects others by imagining how we'd feel if it were done to us.
Most anti-gay Christians treat LGBT people in a way they would never want to be treated themselves. Common sense shows this quite clearly. The majority say they don't hate us, and even claim that they love us ("hate the sin, but love the sinner"). But their actions and words toward us seldom show anything any reasonable person could interpret as love.
Christian doctrine is like the tip of a mountainous iceberg. Most of the truth is submerged, and we can scarcely fathom its mass and depth. All we have, to tell us it's there, is that very tiny tip sticking out of the water. I have come to conclude that the mistake conservative Christians make is that they think that little tip is all there is, wrongly believing that they see it all - or even that it is all knowable.
Click here to read the rest of this essay at Whosoever.org
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