Where Is The Love?

I just began reading unChristian by David Kinnaman and Gabe Lyons. I first became interested in reading this book when I heard a sermon about it at my home church in NJ last summer. I have been looking for the book ever since then but was unable to find it in local libraries. I finally came across it at a book fair.

This book is quite, I don’t know how to say it, hard to read at times… hard to digest in some ways?!?

The book discusses how the Christian faith and Christians in general are viewed by people who are not Christian.

One of the interviewees said, “Christians have become political, judgmental, intolerant, weak, religious, angry and without balance. Christianity has become a nice Sunday drive. Where is the loving God, the Holy Spirit, an amazing Jesus, the love, the compassion, the holiness?”

While I can’t say that I am a perfect Christian by any means, I hope that my actions and words can represent God somehow.

When I was going through a lot of struggles a few years ago, I kept asking one of my best friends why she cared about me so much, why she spent so much time listening, why she didn’t judge me. Her answer was that she wanted to show unconditional love towards me. She saw that the horrible things I had gone through as a child made it hard for me to know what unconditional love is.

I can tell you that my friendship with her really did help me to understand what it means not to be judged or seen as less than. Unconditional love goes much deeper than that.

A question from the book that really got me thinking was “What is missing in our portrayal of the Christian faith to new generations?”

I’m not going to answer that question because I think it’s personal for each of us, but I will say that I wish and hope that the unconditional love that God shows towards us is portrayed to those around us. I wish that love, not hate, was spread. I wish that we would learn to not judge but rather love those around us- no matter who they are, where they come from, what they’ve done, what they’re doing. I wish that we could spread the love to the people who need it most.

We need more unconditional love in this world.