“Loving Our Neighbors”

"Loving Our Neighbors"

Mark 12:28-34

November 5, 2000

The Christian church has brought so much healing and hope into the world through the centuries it’s impossible to quantify.

Last week I spoke about healing, and I mentioned the name of the man even Baptists call St. Francis. (elaborate)

Beginning with Jesus, the church has brought hope, love and healing to more of the human family that we could count. Isn’t this true?

But within the Christian church we can virtually always find individuals and groups that want to make it something it was never intended to be.

And throughout Christian history sooner or later individuals or groups surface who want to make our faith an exclusive kind of thing and say that certain people don’t belong.

There were those in the earliest church who felt that the message of Jesus was only for the Jews, so when Paul and Peter started preaching to the gentiles, they were appalled.

There were those in the early Roman church who started teaching that one would go to hell if he or she wasn’t a Roman Catholic.

The protestant puritans in New England in the 17th century, who fled England because they were persecuted there for their religion, ultimately began to persecute and even torture individuals who disagreed with them about doctrine and Christian behavior.