What does the love of Christ look like?

Over the past two weeks I have been learning a lot from all of your comments, emails, links, suggested readings, and private conversations. Many people are firmly set in their beliefs on this issue. Others, like me, are unsure and seeking. Many of us would not agree with each other for long if we gathered this entire online community into the same room for a face-to-face debate. Yet there is one thing that everyone I know agrees on: we should love our homosexual brothers and sisters, regardless of anything else. Some people call this tolerance, others call it love, and many of us choose to model this love after the example of Christ.

But Christ treated the people he met in a lot of different ways. If we assume that he lived in a constant state of love as divine Messiah, then all of these treatments grew out of this love. Jesus loved the woman caught in adultery by challenging anyone without sin to throw the first stone (John 8:7). He loved the money-changers by chasing them out of the temple with a whip of cords (John 2:15, Mark 11:15). He loved the Syro-Phoenician woman by calling her a dog (Matthew 15:26 & Mark 7:27). He loved the tax-collectors and “sinners” (and perhaps the Pharisees too?) by sharing a table with them (Matthew 9:11, Mark 2:16, Luke 5:30). He loved the woman at the well by exposing her life of sin and telling her everything she had ever done (John 4:16-19, 29). He loved his disciples by washing their feet (John 13:3-5). He loved Peter by calling him Satan (Matthew 16:23). He loved Judas by encouraging (or discouraging??) him to carry out his plan of betrayal (John 13:27). He loved the little children by taking them up in his arms and blessing them (Mark 10:16, Matthew 19:13-15). He loved Lazarus, Mary, and Martha by waiting until it seemed too late (John 11:4-6). He loved the rich man by telling it like it is (Mark 10:21-22, Luke 18:22-23, Matthew 19:20-22). He loved potential followers by demanding total commitment and turning them away (Luke 9:57-62). Again he loved Peter by asking three heart-breaking questions (John 21:15-19). He loved the crowd on the mount by making certain Old Testament laws even harder to obey (Matthew 5:21-22, 27-28). He loved another crowd and his disciples (and the Pharisees??) by denouncing them publicly with six woes (Matthew 23). And he loved us all by dying on a cross in pain and shame.

Which of these examples should we follow as we seek to love our homosexual brothers and sisters? What does the love of Christ look like in our context?

Let me give two examples from my own life of what the love of Christ doesn’t look like.

I used to think that it was loving to assume that people were heterosexual until proven otherwise. When others would make fun of a friend’s manhood who was not present, I would either choose not to participate in the jibes or else I would take an active role in defending his heterosexuality. Since the note, some of the friends whose heterosexuality I have fought so hard to defend are coming out to me, and I’m realizing that my previous actions, while well-intentioned, were not loving towards homosexuals at all. First of all, these actions put me in denial about what my gay friends were really going through. Second, by bringing forth evidence of their manhood and trying to “defend their honor”, I was reinforcing the ideas that masculinity is inherently honorable (and femininity, therefore, inherently dishonorable), that homosexuality is okay to make fun of when a person truly is homosexual, and that a false accusation of homosexuality is the worst possible insult in the world. None of these three ideas are true, and I did not believe them to be true when I was misguidedly defending my friends. Yet despite what I believed, my actions supported these three hurtful lies, while I was unawares.

Until recently I hadn’t though much about homosexuality, but I was convinced, like many Christians, that it was “a sin like any other sin, so I can’t judge.” Because I thought this, I assumed that I portrayed myself in a non-judgmental way. I assumed, because I thought I would love and accept any friend who confessed to me, that they would all somehow know this and feel comfortable coming out to me so that we could continue the journey toward healing together. Yet it was not until recently that people started trusting me enough to invite me along on their journeys, wherever they might lead. I thought that I was trustworthy and I thought that my love was obvious, but it took a visible expression of this love for it to really matter at all to anyone but myself. Love has to look like something. For me, it looked like a facebook note, strange as that sounds. What does love look like for you?

I always appreciate encouragement and support, but as you’re leaving a comment, consider answering one of the following questions:

What specific action of Jesus models the way that you try to treat homosexuals?
Have you ever seen someone with good intentions whose actions did not look like love at all?
Give an example of the most beautiful expression of love you have ever witnessed.

Joshua