Love and Truth

Many years ago, an atheist friend of mine, Adam, called me.  He had seen me come to Christ 20 years earlier and asked me to come and talk with his son who was in danger of being influenced by the Mormons.  I asked another good friend, Ruthie, to join us.  Ruthie had been a temple Mormon and was now a Christian.

Shortly after Ruthie and I arrived, it became quickly apparent we were not there for Adam’s son but for Adam himself.  The conversation opened with my telling Adam I wasn’t a Christian because it made me feel good or for the rewards to come.  I was a Christian because it’s true.  Ruthie joined in to tell him of God’s love and how it was a free gift.  Adam seemed to fight against what we said, and as we left, we weren’t sure where he stood but knew it had been a divine appointment.  Two weeks later, Adam went forward at a Calvary Chapel to accept Christ.  Two weeks after that, Adam died.  At Adam’s memorial service, his oldest son stood and told us the last two weeks of Adam’s life had been the most peaceful two weeks of Adam’s life.

Sure, people need to hear that Christianity is true.  But they also need to know God loves them.  Many have been burned by situations in their lives.  Hurts done to them by churches, Christians, cults, and other sources turn them off from listening to the truth.  What they do hear is the love God has for them.

There are, of course, many non-believers who have serious road blocks on their paths between them and God.  Sometimes it’s anger.  Sometimes it pain.  Sometimes it’s just an unwillingness to allow Somebody take control of their lives.  So, they need the Truth explained to them.  But for many more, they need to see God’s love from His people first before they can believe the message is genuine.

Jesus said we should love God with all our heart, soul, mind and strength.  The heart speaks to the heart of others.  Our mind speaks to the minds of others.  Most lost people need both the love and reason to come to Christ.  We should be ready to supply both.

I was talking with a friend just yesterday and I said the only reason the atheists haven’t been completely eliminated intellectually is because most Christians don’t know enough about the truth of our faith to answer them well.  Ours is not a blind faith.  It is a faith founded on fact, on reason, on truth claims which can be checked.  We have nothing to fear from the non-believer.  Some of the greatest minds over the centuries have been Christians: Augustine, Anselm, Aquinas, Newton, C.S. Lewis, Gutenberg, Leonardo da Vinci, Copernicus, Adam Smith, George Washington, Thomas Edison, Alexander Graham Bell, Enrico Fermi, and the list goes on endlessly.

But, with truth must come love.  Paul says, if we can do all sorts of miraculous things but don’t have love, we’re just background noise.

 1 Corinthians 13:1 (ESV)
¹  If I speak in the tongues of men and of angels, but have not love, I am a noisy gong or a clanging cymbal.

We need both love and truth to further the kingdom of our Lord.  We should study to show ourselves approved of God, have an answer for anyone who asks of us, but if we can’t love them, if we can’t see them through the loving eyes of God who loves both us and them unconditionally, if we love them but don’t share the Truth with them or tell them the Truth but don’t show love, we’ve not done what God had commanded.  We’re poor examples, poor ambassadors for our Lord.