“The Least of These”
Matthew 25:31-46
“I just can’t believe in the God of the Bible; He is awful!” my dear friend looked at me intently from across the table as Starbucks as if he were about to explode with angst.
I adjusted in my chair as to get ready for an intense conversation and said “That is a pretty bold statement. It sounds like you have been thinking about this for a while…. Tell me about who the Biblical God is to you?
He put his cappuccino on the wooden table as he took a second to figure out how he could try and summarize the God of the Old Testament in his own words.
“So God created everything in the first chapters of Genesis, He got mad and killed everything in the flood a few chapters later and a few chapters after that He sabotaged the humans because he was afraid about what they were becoming. A few hundred years later God is still angry about our sin so He initiated a pagan sacrificial system. As God’s favorite children grew and slaughtered other nations. God blessed, cursed them and killed them based on their performance. But eventually God became tired of animal sacrifices so he sent his son to be killed instead, not to mention forsaking Him when His Son needs him most….
He took a deep breath as if he had just wacked the dam wall with a sledge hammer and it was all about to come rushing out. “Honestly, I love Jesus” he said “but I just don’t like God.”
The words made a deep pounding in my ears that echoed into my heart. The honesty and anguish in his voice will stick with me forever. I wasn’t ready for such a vulgar opposition to what I believed. But in the midst of my panic to try to answer all of the anxious accusations of the “Unbeliever” I came to a realization…
I am an unbeliever as well…. I don’t believe in that god either…
Instead of me arguing with my friend about who the real God is I can simply agree with him in the moment. I looked him in the eyes found a voice to reinforce him as a person in the midst of his skewed perspective.
“I wouldn’t be able to freely love that kind of God either.”
I have conversations with people have gotten the impression that God is this angry and egotistical being who doesn’t love them as much as he wants to pick favorites and send the rest of the scrubs to hell.
Instead of looking at these people as threats to our beliefs we can see them as wounded brothers whom God has already been working on through the Holy Spirit.
God is already here…
The wrestling is already there…
They are not looking for a fight from you as well.
The Spirit has already created a void in their heart of who God is not… it is up to you to work together with the Spirit to fill in some of the pieces to find the real Jesus.
When you find Jesus he will always point you to His loving Abba Father.
Will you be able to answer all the questions about Biblical criticism or who God is? The church fathers have fought circles around each other for the last 2000 years to figure it out and yet in Matthew 25 Jesus talks about the final judgment and mentions nothing about having a crisp doctrinal statement prepared… he only asks if you fed and clothed the poor or visited those who are sick or in prison…
How many people have I fed and clothed?… how many prisons have I visited?
This friend was hungry… thirsty…. without closure… and imprisoned all in the same person and yet the initial response is to see this man as the enemy…
Jesus said when you treat the “least of these” with love and compassion then you act as if you are loving God Himself.
The thing that shakes me to the core is that this man is the walking definition of “the least of these” and when we shun these people we shun God while thinking we are being righteous.
If God is infinite then I believe there is still a lot of Him we should be anxious to meet. Unfortunately we fear the unknown and we are threatened by raw questioning.
Next time you run into someone who has questions about God. Don’t look at them as if they are the enemy.
Spending time with the “least of these” is the most you can do.
Questions are really invitations to more.
Accusations are a revelation of pain that can be healed.
Uncertainty is the emptiness that allows us to be filled.
