Paternity Testing

I am still amazed at how some Christians want to qualify the fact that God is love. That old "Yes, but..." thing keeps coming up in just about every conversation I have these days.

I am so disturbed by the attitude of many Christians toward those who are not Christians. A few have been adamant in their view that Christians are "children of God" and anyone who is not a Christian is "a child of the devil."

Personally, I think God is appalled by that attitude. What I find with many "believers" is that by labeling non-Christians (people whom God created in His own image, by the way) as "children of the devil" it seemingly justifies in their mind treating said labelees as something on the bottom of one's shoe.

The label gives some folks an excuse not to love "them" or have anything to do with "them." One women recently said to me, "There's no point in loving them until and unless they believe like we do."

Seriously, the attitude seems to be that it's okay to mistreat people and be rude since the one's being looked down upon are "children of the devil". The arrogance and smug superiority is sickening. They act like God doesn't start loving people until they convert. That is so far from His heart.

The belief that God only loves Christians, or only hears the prayers of Christians, is absolutely un-biblical and anti-Christ. God is love. God loves everyone. Jesus died to remove everyone's sin, guilt and shame.

He is not loving and patient only to those who believe, but especially to those who don't... in hopes that they one day will.

Jesus' warning to the religionists of his day seems fitting in our generation: "Woe to you... hypocrites! You shut the kingdom of heaven in men's faces. You yourselves do not enter, nor will you let those enter who are trying to... you travel half way around the world to win a single convert, and when he becomes one, you make him twice as much a son of hell as you are." (Matthew 23:13-15)

God help us when our lives and attitudes become roadblocks to the very people God is seeking to draw to Himself.

By the way, the only people Jesus referred to as children of the devil were those same religionists referred to earlier who labeled Jesus a "friend of sinners" and refused to love the people that God loves and sent Jesus to rescue.