It strikes me that so many people in our culture today love conditionally based on someone else's physical state or condition.
I admit that do this much more often than I'd like to admit. I engage people if they are like me, or clean enough, or pretty enough, or often of the same skin color.
I get impatient and judgemental if a person is fat or doesn't speak English fluently or smells awful.
It reveals the poor, but true, condition of my own heart.
How refreshing it is to look at Christ and His example! How he loved people with great compassion! Unconditional to their physical state or appearance.
In Matthew 8, Jesus heals a man of leprosy. Nobody approached lepers in Jesus' day. Not many do in today's day and age. Leprosy is an intense disease with outward disfigurement of the skin, possibly leaky skin ulcers, the strong smell deterring most people away...
A bleeding woman (who had been bleeding for 12 years) in Matthew 9 comes and touches Christ's cloak. She is immediately engaged by Christ. "Take heart daughter...your faith has healed you."
Most people who are randomly bleeding, and if I had known they had been like that for the previous twelve years, I would do my best to avoid them. Certainly not want to engage them. And yet Christ puts forth immediate compassion.
In John 11, we see Christ's power to defeat the worst physical condition of all: death. Yet, we know this physical condition does
"But Lord" said Martha, the sister of the dead man, "by this time there is a bad odor, for he has been there four days." (11:39b). We know that Jesus is quite moved in this scene as He just wept. Not cried. Wept. (John 11:35)
In spite of the place stinking badly, in spite of a dead body, Jesus great compassion has the power to raise Lazarus from the dead. Jesus thanks His father for the power to do so, giving all honor and glory to the Creator of the universe, and then Lazarus walks out alive (John 11:44).
Christ loved unconditionally in spite of other's physical condition.
Someone's physical condition or state should not be a reason to withhold love. Whether someone stinks, is sweaty, is fat, is a different color, has corn rows, has creepy looking eyes...I don't think that is for me to judge and with hold a desire to serve and love that other person as Christ would have.
Yet it happens a lot in our modern day culture. When it does happen, those who may not have the most optimal or best physical state or appearance develop greater fears that they won't be loved for their physical condition. They may not want to love. They may fear being loved on condition.
The point is, it is a downward spiral. Instead of it getting started, it would be wise if I looked to Christ's example and sought to love others as He did, regardless of their physical state or condition.
No comments:
Post a Comment