what's our job?

So now I am giving you a new commandment:

     Love one another.

Just as I have loved you, you should love each other.

Your love for one another will prove to the world that you are my disciples.

John 13:34-35



This is Jesus speaking here, during the Passover meal the night before He was killed.

I would think anything Jesus said that close to his death was pretty uber-important.

But every time I read these two verses I am so embarrassed.


Because when the world thinks of Christians, they don't think of us as people who love.


There's a lot of things they think about us, but loving is not one of them.

And they are right in their assessment of us.


Loving is usually the last thing we think of to be.


Why is that?

Maybe it's because we love the power as a group that we think we have?

Maybe it's because we've gone whoring for political influence?

Or that we've imbued our middle class values on a reality that is antithetical to such thinking?


It would be hard to say - it's probably all three, plus a whole lot of other things.


Maybe this is an oversimplification, but I read something lately that made me stop & think...

     "It is the Holy Spirit's job to convict & empower.

     "It is Jesus' job to redeem.

     "It is the Father's job to judge.

     "And it is our job to love."


I wonder where each of us would be if the people who influenced us & took the time to show us the way to the Father had treated us the way that seems to be endemic today of Christianity?