Love is hate, hate is love.

Posted by admin on Jul 30th, 2007
2007
Jul 30


What sorrow for those who say
that evil is good and good is evil,
that dark is light and light is dark,
that bitter is sweet and sweet is bitter.

Isaiah 5.20

7 Responses

  1. David C Says:
    July 31st, 2007 at 12:53 am

    Ingrid is right. If someone is going off a cliff, the most loving thing in the world is to warn them, as she says.

    When someone is going off a cliff, you do not unleash vicious vitriol and invective on the person going off the cliff.

    You warn them.

    So she is right. But what people get from Ken and Ingrid aren’t warnings, but names and self-righteous rants.

  2. Will Says:
    July 31st, 2007 at 3:06 am

    My ex-wife (yes, I am a divorced pastor) and I were foster parents all during our marriage, and one of the most painful things we witnessed as such was the draw that abusive parents still had on the children they had abused - mentally, physically, and even sexually. In talking about this one day, one of us came up with the image of trying to keep a child from re-entering a burning house. No matter how hard you try to prevent this from happening, if the child can, he or she will escape from your grasp and run right back into the hell from which they had temporarily escaped.

    We can warn all we want, but warnings so often fall on deaf ears. We can admonish and chastise, but this is no better, and at times can make the chastised and admonished even more likely to do exactly what we would hope they would refrain from doing.

    Don’t get me wrong, I believe that there are times for warning, chastising and admonishment (though we must be careful in how we use them). The time is always right, however, to simply love. It is love that will ultimately save an abused child, it is love that will keep the one we love from self-destruction, and it is ultimately love - pure, unconditional love - that will save us from ourselves and sins.

    All the warnings and fear-mongering in the world will never save anyone. It is only when one experiences the love of God through Christ and through our lives that they have any chance for salvation.

    One of the comments on the blog linked to above actually points people to this truth, though I don’t know if they do so in a sarcastic way or not. The truth is that “Love Wins.” Love alone wins.

  3. Chris L Says:
    July 31st, 2007 at 8:16 am

    I think that this emphasis on ‘warning’ goes back to the Greatest Commandments for Watchbloggers I referenced the other day:

    Love your God: Determine what it means for you to obey God, based heavily on tradition or your own social mores and - possibly - the Bible (insofar as the Ten Commandments are concerned), and then expect everyone else to “obey God” based on your definition. If they don’t, they are somewhere between mistaken and apostate. Additionally, to love God means to know exactly how He works and does not work and to know all the ‘Christianese’ terms which define these workings, along with all the right soteriology, and to then expect everyone else to understand God exactly the way you do. If they don’t, they are somewhere between mistaken and apostate.

    Love your Neighbor: Step 1: If your ‘neighbor’ is somewhere between mistaken and apostate (see “Love your God”), your first and foremost duty is to make them see the error of their ways, and if they do not, to warn everybody else that they are somewhere between mistaken and apostate, and by all means mock them and distort anything/everything that makes them mistaken or apostate in your eyes. Step 2: If they are still around after Step 1, and if they are in need, it might be a nice thing to do to help them out.

    True love may warn, but if you’re obsessed with warning so much that most of your ‘warnings’ are crying wolf, then what are the chances that people will listen when there actually is a cliff or a wolf?

  4. Chris L Says:
    July 31st, 2007 at 8:33 am

    Will,

    “Love Wins” was the theme of a Mars Hill (Grand Rapids) sermon series, taught by Rob Bell, with an accompanying bumper sticker 3 or 4 years ago. The bumper sticker also makes an appearance in the Nooma video ‘Bullhorn’, which drives the particularly hateful demographic attracted by SoL/AM/C?N go bonkers. It is interesting (or perhaps, ironic), therefore, that to say to one of these folks ‘Love wins’ is, for them, the equivalent of having a thumb shoved in your eye.

  5. phil Says:
    July 31st, 2007 at 9:21 am

    The problem with the whole cliff analogy coming from someone like Ingrid is that most of the people she is “warning” already assume that she has gone over the edge of that cliff. Some may also feel that she makes them want to jump off the cliff because they don’t want to be on any cliff that she is standing on.

  6. Chris P. Says:
    July 31st, 2007 at 9:36 am

    Proverbs 27:
    5 Better is open rebuke
    than hidden love.
    6Faithful are the wounds of a friend;
    profuse are the kisses of an enemy

    Who is calling evil good and good evil? Isaiah 5 does not apply.

    I am not defending anyone. However I find the approach here to be as equally off, as what you allege that Ingrid is guilty of.
    What you are saying is that you are the good, right, and loving, and the the “watchdoggies” are not.

    Sounds subjective to me.

  7. Henry (Rick) Frueh Says:
    July 31st, 2007 at 10:07 am

    If a man is walking toward a cliff he may be hungry, so in order to warn him you might want to feed him to gain his hearing.(etc., etc.,) What you do not want to do is to call him an “i-pod listening, beer belly, middle aged man” and then to soothe your own self righteous conscious you warn him. You might want to avoid criticizing the music he is listening to and the clothes (s)he is wearing.

    You may want to be very guarded in you vitriol toward other believers so that the man won’t be turned off and not heed your warning, and your negative interaction between believers may take up much of your “warning time”. You might want to pray and beseech the One who delivered you that He would empower you by His Spirit to reach this man with His saving love.

    You may ask your Master to crucify you and allow Him to shine to this man. You may also realize that just a perfunctory warning does not release you from a sacrificial passion to continue to reach out to him. Sometimes tears should come.

    And after all is done and you have warned and loved this man, you still are a humble and unprofitable servant with no basis for pride about what you have done.

    PS - If you are uncertain about whether Christ died for this man you will never have the divine pathos that Christ has shown on the cross and that will affect how you speak and behave.