The Jesus Movement is based on the Way of Love
God is love. Everyone who loves knows God. The greatest spiritual gift is love. The most important thing is to love God and your neighbor, as yourself. Love your enemies. Love sinners. Love yourself. Love one another as I have loved you. Love is to be compassionate as you father in heaven is compassionate. Love is more important than being right. Love is harder than keeping the rules. Love can cost you your life, but love never ends. Love is what flows between the Lover and the Beloved (between the Father and the Son) – the essence of God is mutual outpouring of love. Love is the shape of God.
So we are learning what love is, what it’s not, how to do it, how to be it, how to enjoy it, and rest in it, how to create and live from it. We are practicing the Way of Love.
Love the
Poor
Poverty hurts and the Way of Love calls us to go to where the pain is, do what we can, and not harden our hearts. The backbone of our community efforts to serve the poor is the Social Safety Net and is supplemented by charity, private non-profit programs and volunteering. We are learning how the Safety Net works and how it needs to be improved.
Love the
Planet
The Way of love calls us to urgently respond to the situation from all angles. We will act to save:
a. the people whose livelihoods will be impacted by changing to renewable energy.
b. the people directly impacted by climate change as the planet warms.
c. the plants and animals that depend on threatened ecosystems
Love
Non-violence
Life is filled with violence and its victims are everywhere. The Way of Love calls for learning and practicing an alternative life style that does not create more victims. In our private personal lives and all the way through to our public actions and systemic policies we will aim to be people of peace.
Love the
Other & Stranger
Ordinarily humans are cliché-ish, tribal, and we tend to care for those who are ‘like us’. By accessing the power of the Love of God, Jesus loved people who were excluded from the group, the stranger and the other.
Living near the border of the gateway to Central America we are called to love immigrants who would like to come to our country. The way of love calls us to create a system that is compassionate for the potential immigrant and the where burden of welcoming them is shared equitably among our citizens.