God Loves, Man Kills

A couple is having their first child.  Preeclampsia is diagnosed.  The mom's health is not the strongest and the doctors recommend, to save her life, she should have an abortion.  The couple consults with their religious leader who invokes "Thou shalt not kill."  In the case of an unborn child, their religious leader asks "What if the child were one year old?  One month old?  Would you give your life for the child then?"  The couple decides against an abortion and instead, 'to trust in God'.  The wife dies of complications and the baby dies, its lung undeveloped.  The husband will NEVER trust God again.

The member of one church discovers that their co-worker attends a different church.  In what I guess is a test of orthodoxy, the first church member asks what their co-worker believes about homosexuality.  This question about belief comes with the assurance from the church member that the Bible-and God-do, in fact, condemn homosexuality without exception.  The co-worker chooses to remain silent about their beliefs rather than face condemnation from someone they consider could be a friend.

Church colleagues discuss whether or not the United States should militarily intervene in Syria in the wake of chemical warfare.  People of faith hedge their bets, give generic answers, go into political arguments.  Biblical or ethical arguments are avoided, as is the unspoken subtext questioning how a loving God could permit humans to use Sarin gas on one another.

Anybody who claims to speak for God is putting themselves into such a presumptuous, vulnerable position. 

There is a bumper stick that reads "The Bible says it, I believe it, that settles it."  It SHOULD read "God said it, I believe it, that settles it."

How many words do we put into the mouth of our God in heaven?  How many times do we, the humans, cause pain and injury and suffering because we are arrogant enough to be God's prophet?  It is bad enough when a human is self-serving when they seek to invoke God's authority.  It is more painful, for me at least, when the human invoking God's name really thinks that hurting someone else is God's will.

Wonder why people either find the church, as God's thing, at best irrelevant, and, at worst, culpable, for the evils that happen around us?

Where do we start?  My suggestion is to measure anything that anyone ever claims with Godly or Biblical or Churchly (Ecclesial) authority against the one Biblical measure that is the foundation for all the rest.  "God is Love."

If love isn't there, I believe there is a problem.