Agenda vs. Compassion

I can get kind of passionate sometimes when I hear something that seems to paint God in an unloving light.  Having endured years under the illusion of a cold, distant, disapproving God who is more taskmaster than father, it breaks my heart when others try to put that same yoke on people.

But I also understand that I may be slightly oversensitive in that area.  I don't want to jump on people who are simply expressing their own journey.

So lately I've been trying to find the balance between sharing Father's love and not violating the sacredness of another's personal experience.  I want to be driven by compassion, not an agenda to get everyone to agree with me.

It's hard sometimes to be sensitive to other perspectives.  While I may think I'm offering freedom from shame and condemnation, another may see it as a license for selfish living.  I'm learning that love and grace and religion can be rather loaded words.  As I'm getting deeper into conversations with people, I'm finding we're having a hard time communicating clearly because we have different definitions for the same words and phrases.

I say religion and I mean something negative: a self-effort based system of trying to earn God's approval, a system of behavior modification through fear, guilt, and shame.  I say church and I mean the body of Christ, not a service time or building.  I say "institutional church", and people don't know what the hell I'm talking about.

I say grace, and I mean the incredible life force that fills us and reveals Father to us more fully so that we continually become more like him.  I say love and I mean something transformative, something that changes us from the inside out so we live more in line with our new inward reality.  Others hear grace, and to them it means permissiveness, or simply the forgiveness that covers our sins when we screw up.  They hear love, and it means a single aspect of God's personality (maybe a small aspect), not that which underlies everything he does and says.

Some people even feel that we're reducing God to something less than he is by defining his nature by his love.  They feel like we're not giving him his due if we're not emphasizing that he also can be angry, or that he is a judge, or that he is holy.  Whereas I simply don't see any of that being separated from the fact that he is love.

So I pray to be more sensitive to the backgrounds and experiences of others.  I want to be a better listener than speaker.  I want to engage others simply because I love them, and let Father's love spill out naturally.  I want to be agenda-free, enjoying every person wherever they're at, just like Father enjoys me.