Unfaithful

A friend quoted the following from P. Andrew Sandlin:

One of the great spiritual errors of our time is to conflate love with approval. We can (and must) deeply love deeply sinful friends and relatives without approving of their sinful life. For one to demand approval of all who love him shows how little one knows of true love.

In my experience, I think many if not most people today are afraid of being seen as unloving or something along those lines. "Tolerance" is the banner streaming across the spirit of the age.

Of course, truth is, it's often tolerance for our group, not for your group. Liberals and progressives have especially become tribal.

What this means is there's nothing brave about "loving" people and trying not to "offend" others. By "others" I have in mind LGBTQs, Muslims, feminists, and most other minorities except perhaps Asian-Americans (e.g. the Harvard admissions scandals). That's simply going along with what most already think and feel in our society and culture. Nothing special about that.

However, in the context of our society and culture, it does take bravery to say (generally speaking) we "love" individuals who are LGBTQ, Muslim, immigrants, and so on, but what they're doing is immoral. That they need to turn away from their unethical thoughts and behaviors. That they need to stop committing their many infidelities and betrayals against others as well as themselves in their own lives, and ultimately against God himself. And that they need to embrace forgiveness for their wrongs by embracing the only one who can forgive them, the only one whom God sent for this express purpose, God in the flesh, the Messiah, Jesus Christ himself.

(I sometimes use the language of faithfulness and unfaithfulness, betrayal or adultery, because that's the language that often seems to resonate with secular people.)