Tag: loving our neighbour

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All the lonely people

Many people are lonely, especially in the developed world. People are living longer than ever before and see their close friends and family die. Broken relationships, between husbands and wives and parents and children, mean that many people live on their own. At our work place or college we may be surrounded by people but at the end of the day we return to our homes and are alone. Almost 50% of people in America say they feel alone or left out always or sometimes. It is not only the elderly who feel lonely, many young people are lonely. Even those who have many “friends” on social media miss meaningful human friendship and companionship.

A new pet robot called Lovot, has been designed in Japan to be a comforting presence for lonely elderly people. It uses Artificial Intelligence and facial recognition and will be on sale in the USA next year for more than $5000. It has cartoon eyes and furry arms and doesn’t speak or respond to commands. It has been designed to respond to those who talk to it and hug it and it gravitates to those who show it most love. Its designer says, “We try to train people with the power of love to be ready for loving something else.” He claims Lovot will make people “truly happy.” However, after 50 minutes activity Lovot needs to be recharged!

Human relationships are important because God is a personal God. The Bible teaches us there is only one God and that within the godhead there are three “persons”, the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit, who are bound together in a relationship of eternal love. God has created us as relational beings with an innate capacity to love God and one another. The greatest commands God has given us are profoundly relational. We are to love God with all our heart, with all our soul, and with all our strength and also to love our neighbour as we love ourselves. When we love God and each other we experience the joy and fulfilment God created us to know.

When we pray we are talking to the living God who hears us, loves us and knows all our needs. He is always with us. Jesus taught his disciples to pray, “Our Father in heaven, hallowed be your name. Give us today our daily bread and forgive us our trespasses as we also forgive those who trespass against us. And lead us not into temptation but deliver us from the evil one.”

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Love your neighbour as you love yourself

The picture of Turkish police officer Mehmet Ciplak carrying the lifeless body of little Aylan Kurdi from the beach at Bodrum has touched the hearts of millions of people around the world. When Mehmet saw the little body floating at the water’s edge he said, “Dear God, I hope he’s alive.” When he found that Aylan had died he said he felt crushed deep down inside. Aylan’s mother, Rehan, and brother, Gylip, had also died. Only his father, Abdullah, survived and he has now returned to his home town of Kobane in Syria to bury his loved ones in the “Martyrs’ Cemetery.”

The tragic pictures of one little boy who died have made real to many people the desperate plight of thousands of families who have left their homes to set off on a long and dangerous journey to find a place of safety. The town of Kobane has been reduced to rubble and the people have witnessed the barbarism of IS who have killed hundreds of men, women and children in their homes and in the streets. Abdullah, like many others, wanted to protect his wife and two little boys and to take them to a place where they could live in peace. Tragically, in the attempt to do this, he has lost them all.

How do we respond to this situation? Our news reports tell us about anonymous and faceless “migrants”. Some simply see them as just a big problem. In reality most of them are people like Abdullah and his family. They are our fellow human beings; people like us who, through no fault of their own, have been caught up in a terrible war that has destroyed their homes and communities and put their very lives at risk? When one young man was asked why he wanted to come to Britain he said, “Because the people there are kind and good.”

God has given us two great commandments. The first is, “Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind.” The second is, “Love your neighbour as you love yourself.” Jesus taught that all our fellow human beings are our neighbours. So when we ask how we should respond to the many families desperately fleeing for safety, God’s answer is straightforward. He tells us to put ourselves in their situation and ask, “If I and my family were in that situation, how would I want people to help me?” Then it is very clear what we must do.

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Am I my brother’s keeper?

As long as I can remember I have watched the excellent programmes about the natural world made by David Attenborough. Modern photographic equipment and colour television have enabled David to show us the wonders of God’s world in an amazing way. The pictures are often stunning and David’s commentary has popularised the Darwinian theory of evolution. Believers in Darwin’s theory find no place in their thinking for the living God. Everything has come about by natural causes. Impersonal “nature” rules supreme, we are on our own. When we experience problems, whether personal or global, there is no one to help us.

Sir David is now 87 years old. In a recent interview he starkly expressed the logical outcome of evolutionary thinking. He is deeply concerned about increasing world population and the problems associated with it, especially famine. He said, “If we do not control population, the natural world will.” He believes that sending flour bags to starving people is “barmy”. Famine, in places like the Horn of Africa, is the result of there being too many people and not enough land. He believes that the increase in world population means that human beings are “a plague on the earth.”

When we believe in the living God, who created and sustains the heavens and the earth, our perspective is very different. When God first created men and women he blessed them and said, “Be fruitful and increase in number; fill the earth and subdue it.” As human beings we are responsible for the way we use the abundant resources God’s has provided on this unique and wonderful little planet. We are also responsible for one another. God’s two great commands are that we should love him with all our heart and also that we should “love our neighbour as we love ourselves.”

The increase in world population is a great challenge to us all. We are responsible both for God’s world and for one another. God’s amazing love for the people of his world has been revealed in Jesus Christ. The apostle John wrote, “This is how we know what love is: Jesus Christ laid down his life for us, and we ought to lay down our lives for our brothers. If anyone has material possessions and sees his brother in need but has no pity on him, how can the love of God be in him? Dear children, let is not love with word and tongue but with actions and in truth.”