How Could this be Loving?

Our love is too mushy, too accommodating. Look how Jesus responds when confronted to explain a brutal military crackdown on a recent uprising. Government operatives had quelled the insurgents by actually killing some of them in as they were worshiping at the temple, their blood actually mingling with the blood of their sacrificial animals. 

And he answered them, “Do you think that these Galileans were worse sinners than all the other Galileans, because they suffered in this way? No, I tell you; but unless you repent, you will all likewise perish.

As if that answer wasn't harsh enough, Jesus gives his own example, not of political terror, but natural disaster.


Or those eighteen on whom the tower in Siloam fell and killed them: do you think that they were worse offenders than all the others who lived in Jerusalem? No, I tell you; but unless you repent, you will all likewise perish.” 

Does this strike you as loving? We tend to think of catastrophe as something unfair that happens to innocent people.  Jesus reminds us here that because of our spiritual condition we all deserve immediate devastation. His double warning to "repent," that is, to change my mind, heart, vantage point, attitude, and direction, requires a reinterpretation of the events.  I must first confess to him that I am as deserving to be in the path of Japan's disasters or Kadafi's rockets as anybody else. But because these horrors didn't happen to me startles me back into a fresh appreciation of his patience, his willingness to forgive, restore and redeploy, AND THEN TO GO TO HIM.

As a natural born people pleaser, this account forces me to rethink what love must be willing to do. I must be willing to appear uncaring and even brutal if it means helping people realize their real peril and what to do about it.

What exonerates Jesus from the charge of being uncaring is his own willingness to suffer so for our sakes. His suffering shallows out ours and eventually brings it to an end. What exonerates us is our willingness to suffer in his name for those we love.  Give generously to disaster relief.