God Is Love - We're Not

In the perpetual missing of the mark that defines humanity, we're currently slanted over to the side instead of admitting who and what we are.  There was a time when people admitted how cruel people can be.  Now I think we try to pretend like evil is way over to the side somewhere; but not right in the middle of each of us.  But the new problem isn't new at all.  We want to be the center, and better than we are.  We want to do what we want.  And right now, that means we want to be like God.

Wanting to be like God sounds great, doesn't it?  But God is love, and we're not.

In his commentary on 2 John 1, J. Vernon McGee at TTB.org puts it this way:

This idea, of love, love, love today, that you're to love everybody that comes along: I don't find that in the Word of God.  Now God so loved the world.  But He never asked me to love the world. In fact, I'm told "love not the world;" the things in the world, and I understand that to be the culture, civilization; this man-made thing that man has set up in the world today and has come down through the centuries.  But I also understand that God is not saying to me, "I want you to build up some sort of sentimental feeling toward the lost, and love them, and then bring the Gospel to them.  God says to me, as we saw in the book of Jonah, God says "I love them.  I want you to give the Gospel to them and when you give the Gospel to them, then you will learn to love them."  

 The problem isn't that we don't love everybody.  It would be great if Christians loved everybody.  But Christians were never asked to love everybody.  We're asked to love each other.  The problem is that we don't love each other and therefore no one can tell we're Christian.

We're also told to love others as ourselves, but sometimes that's a problem too; if we don't love ourselves.

People are waiting around for feelings to come instead of doing what we're asked to do.