Contemplative Bible Reading

1 John 4:19-21

¹⁹ We love because he first loved us. ²⁰ Whoever claims to love God yet hates a brother or sister is a liar. For whoever does not love their brother and sister, whom they have seen, cannot love God, whom they have not seen. ²¹ And he has given us this command: Anyone who loves God must also love their brother and sister.

A recently popular thing to say in one form or another is,

I love Jesus, but not church

I understand this recent sentiment and I suppose it isn’t that recent. Then I read the above verses. Who is the church but a group of brothers and sisters? Not loving the church means not loving those brothers and sisters or does it mean that? Now things become complicated or maybe they become clear.

• I can love brothers and sisters, but not like how they are organized.
• I can love individual brothers and sisters, but not like how they act as a group.

These two points point at some sort of group dynamic that the brothers and sisters experience and manifest. That reads like gobble-dee-gook. Perhaps I can explain it better.

I worked for the U.S. government for 28 years. I met plenty of smart people working there – really smart individuals. I experienced plenty of stupid decisions coming from groups of people – really stupid decisions from groups of really smart individuals. The poster from Despair, Inc. about meetings summarizes this thought:

Meetings: none of us are as dumb as all of us

Cynical? Yes.

True? I have seen it to be true many times.

Conclusion? I believe that one of the reasons that God puts us here is to love one another and not just as a nice cliche, but to deeply and sincerely love one another. I also believe that God wants us to even love how we behave when we are acting as groups, not just as lovable individuals. That means sometimes we love churches, which are merely groups of brothers and sisters, even when the church is acting pretty stupid.

And for me, that means love the church enough to step into the middle of it and try to point to some of the stupid and convince people that God made us all much better and for a much higher purpose than to sit around and act like a government committee that does inexplicably stupid things. God, please give me the strength and the love you desire of me.