Scripture:

You were called to freedom, brothers and sisters; only don’t let this freedom be an opportunity to indulge your selfish impulses, but serve each other through love. All the Law has been fulfilled in a single statement: Love your neighbor as yourself. But if you bite and devour each other, be careful that you don’t get eaten up by each other!

Consider:

As the parent of a pre-teen girl, this verse speaks to me in a deep and fundamental way. Why is it middle school girls feel the need to rip each other apart?

Of course, I look around our world and notice it is not only preteen girls who want to rip each other apart. It seems many people in our world enjoy nothing more than tearing each other apart. Whether it’s judgement of the crual but silent variety - at least I don’t do that! we think - or the more insidious anonymous comments and insults from behind our screens we seem to revel in separating ourselves from the “other”. Often times we are most cruel to the people nearest by.

I’ve grown dispondent over the ways we use descriptors and adjectives to demean and belittle each other. There’s nothing worse than being a Duke Blue Devil (or conversely a Tar Heel). Our family (semi-jokingly) boos Michigan whenever we hear the word. That’s somewhat innocuous and fun as long as it doesn’t go too far.

But of course, it goes too far all the time. There’s nothing worse in some people’s eyes than being a liberal. In others, all Republicans are fascists. That doesn’t even go into the casual throwing around of racial and ethnic stereotypes my Middle School Teacher husband has had to stop in his classroom. But - they say - that’s how we talk at home.

And where has this gotten us to? We are more dividied than ever and more isolated than ever. Loneliness is an epidemic, and love is a dirty word.

What would it look like if we really sought to live as Paul commands us to in this passage. What if we followed the advice “not to indulge your selfish impulses, but serve each other through love”? We’d find ourselves in a much different world.

As followers of Christ, we can be the ones to boldly proclaim that we love our neighbors, no matter what. We can lead the conversation around acceptance and mutual forebearance and we can choose not to use our identity markers as weapons, but joyful expressions of God’s diverse world.

What might our world, our church, our lives look like then?

Respond:

It can be tempting to separate ourselves into camps or silos, looking out for our own interests first. Where do you see God calling you to bridge a divide instead of building one?

Consider one step you can take today to put down your sticks and pick up an invitation instead.

Pray:

God of light, help me to see myself as you see me, a child of the light. Lift the veil from my view which limits how well I can see myself or others, so that I may more fully bask in your glory. Amen.

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