Simple Love – by Daniel Silva

This is a cross-post from a close friend of ours out here in California.  His name is Daniel Silva–and he is a world-changer.

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“Believe it or not, the Christian duty is not to go tell sinners how horrible and wrong they are, hope they believe us, stop what they are doing, and turn to God, who is more often presented to them as a theory, rather than a reality. Christianity is aboutdemonstrating to people how good God is.

If you’re holding a lump of coal and I bring you a diamond, I don’t have to tell you how beautiful the diamond is in comparison to the coal, or how dirty the coal is in comparison to the diamond.  If you have eyes, you can see for yourself.

And if I put the diamond in your hands and tell you it’s a free gift, you’d be a fool to reject it.

The problem is that so many Christians present God’s gift as a bribe: “Here, You can have the diamond if you put down the coal.” But that’s not what Jesus did.

All of the people who met Jesus, received the diamond but still had the coal.

It was after they received the diamond that they realized how worthless the coal was and how pointless it was to keep.

Common sense would tell them, “Why would I hang on to that which is worthless when I now possess that which is priceless?” But still, others dropped the diamond and kept the coal, preferring to hold on to something they were familiar with.

Jesus didn’t scold them for it, call them backsliders, or guilt trip them into picking up the diamond.

He let them have their choice. And truth be told, if they came back they wouldn’t find that He gave their gift to someone else, they would find Him saving it for them.

We have plenty of little schemes, ideas, and infomercials to try and get people to take or keep the diamond.

But our only job is to put it in their hands with no conditions or fine print and let them decide if they want to keep it.  Our “duty” is to provide people with a real choice, and until they have their hands on God, rather than just a long list of ideas about Him, there is no choice for them.

Every religion has ideas, why should we expect them to wrap their lives around ours instead of others?  Because the Bible says so?  Sorry, but that doesn’t work for people who don’t believe in the Bible.

Christianity isn’t a dictatorship, it’s freedom from it.

Or at least it’s supposed to be.  But we are subtly fed dictatorship ideas and strategies that we end up preaching to others and don’t realize it.  Many people don’t go to church on Sunday because they want to, they go because they have been made to feel like they have to or they are not fulfilling their Christian obligation.

Many would rather stay home and sleep in, or watch football, but of course, “that’s wrong”, and “how dare you value your pigskin idols above God!”  Things like that are a subtle manipulation to get people to obey the man-made rulebook.

The church building wasn’t even God’s idea.  To be fair, I don’t think people realize that they are acting like dictators, I sure didn’t when I was.

I’m realizing more and more that God is not concerned about “right and wrong,” nearly as much as He’s concerned with the simplicity of loving people unconditionally: no fine print, no catches, no questions, just simple love.”

- Daniel Silva

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