A Book of Love...

Last Saturday night I had tea at Paul and Lynn’s.  They are a couple in the church with two of the most adorable little girls ever.  It was a great night.  The conversation during the night varied from their trips to America, dreams, aspirations, faith, and everything in between.

At some point in the conversation we, Paul, Lynn, Jonty, and I, got to talking about C.S. Lewis and The Chronicles of Narnia.  Now I know that Harry Potter is different and it is not meant to have parallels with Christianity, but I am always amazed that people will support one and absolutely hate the other.  I could go into a big long discussion about this, but I won’t do that to you.  The point is that I brought this up, the comparison of Harry Potter and Narnia.  This led to the four of us looking at a lot of issues and viewpoints held by many Christians.  I mentioned that there are some churches, where I’m from, where women aren’t allowed to teach a Sunday school class if men attend it.  These same churches obviously wouldn’t agree with women becoming ordained either.  Now none of these topics, or the details of these are really important, it was what Paul said when we were trying to figure out how some people can believe certain things and where they could find their backing in scripture.  Paul said, “It’s really just a book of love.”  He was referring to the Bible.  We can sit for hours and nit-pick loads of things out of it, but it really is just a book of love.

I am constantly surprised when comments like this hit me.  Here we are, having just finished our tea, enjoying a few beers, talking, disagreeing, agreeing, and having this great conversation when Paul says this.  I almost immediately wanted to write it on my hand so that I wouldn’t forget it.  As soon as I got home that night, I wrote it down in my journal, and I have now had a week to reflect on it.   Still, a week later, I’m blown away by this.  Now I’m not sure Paul realizes this, but it just makes me smile when I think about it.  I think it is the simplicity of it.

I have thought about going to seminary and it is something that is constantly on my mind.  How do you think my professors would like it if they were asking me this deep question about analyzing a piece scripture and my response was, “Is that really important?  It’s a book of love and that’s all that matters.”  I don’t think they would be so thrilled.  It’s when things are put so simply that they hit you in a way you wouldn’t expect.

I think when we are looking at the details of faith and struggling with what God is telling us through scripture, how we should treat people, whether certain people should become ordained, who is going to heaven, who is going to hell, and various other struggles that people have, we get too bogged down.  But does it really matter?  It’s just a book of love.  Shouldn’t we just...I don’t know...love?  Shouldn’t that be our focus?  No matter their race, sexual orientation, faith, socio-economic status, nationality, or anything else, we should just do what Jesus says, and love.