What Does it Really Mean to Love Your Neighbor? Pastors Weigh In
Churches across America have been strategizing on how to address the radical anti-biblical agendas being pushed across the political and educational landscape. Undoubtedly, many churches will not address those crucial cultural issues at all.
Debate has arisen on what it actually looks like to “love your neighbor,” while still speaking truth on biblical matters.
Some Christians believe that silence is the best way to show that love, and keep the matters of Scripture and their personal walk with God confined to their own heart. Others believe that it is love to speak truth in grace to the world around them. It has become a divide among the church on how to address the ever-growing LGBTQ agenda and the controversial issue of abortion.
Since the overturning of Roe v. Wade, many Christian leaders across the country are speaking up about the latter, urging their congregations to get involved. Many are now coming to the conclusion that it is the responsibility of Christians to stand up for truth.
In light of events like California Gov. Gavin Newsom’s decision to sign a bill into law that reduces penalties for adults who commit sodomy with minors, Christians are starting to become more outspoken.
On a recent broadcast posted on Twitter, Pastor Billy Crone says a false sense of showing love to the world has infiltrated the church—and many don’t even realize what is going on.
“They say, hey, you’ve got to accept anyone, anything, no matter what you do, what kind of sin, no matter what kind of lifestyle. They say that’s being a loving Christian,” Crone says.
But this isn’t a new concept that has slowly tried to creep its way into the body of Christ.
Like Crone, many pastors believe that we live in a time where people are “calling good evil, and evil good,” and Crone believes “it’s the same rotten pattern” once lived out by the nation of Israel in the wilderness.
When you read the Old Testament, you discover that one of the reasons why Israel was all over the place, why its society was being destroyed. was because, “everyone was doing what was right in their own eyes.”
“What does that sound like?” Crone asks.
People have begun to ask and wonder how this passivity has invaded the modern church. In 1994, journalist Michael Novak said in a speech, “Relativism is an invisible gas, odorless, deadly, that is now polluting every free society on earth.”
He spoke those words 28 years ago, and tensions have only increased.
As leaders in the church continue to step forward and speak boldly, the question is, how will their congregations respond?
Charisma News interviewed Pastor Mike Fehlauer at New Life Church in Corpus Christi, Texas, and Felhlauer “people can’t respond until they hear, and they can only respond to what they hear, and they can’t hear it if we don’t say it.”
Since revival broke out at his church in 2018, it has only continued to spread into a nearby college campus and to kindergartens and middle and high schools in Corpus Christi. Fehlauer says he didn’t realize how hungry people were for truth.
“We’ve got to be willing to stand up, we can do it in love, and we don’t have to be knuckleheads about it,” he says.
As Baby Boomers are heading into retirement and the next generations are entering the political atmosphere ready to make changes, the secularizing of America has to be recognized by the church. Crone and Fehlauer are encouraging pastors nationwide to speak up to the youth in their church and tell them what the Bible says on the issues facing them every day. {eoa}
Shelby Lindsay is an assistant editor at Charisma Media.
