The Authority of Love

There’s a concept among the Christians that I associate with that for any religious practice that we engage in we must have biblical authority and I whole heartedly agree with that even though I have reservations sometimes on how authority is established.

Regarding the use of church monies for instance. We through biblical authority conclude that church monies are only to be used for accomplishing the work of the church which we determine is… edification, benevolence and evangelism. In other words, the church is not a world wide relief fund for the needs of those outside of the church. Church monies are to only be used for the edification of christians, the benevolence of christians and to evangelize the world.

Sometimes our biblical conclusions are proved or disproved through examples. Here’s one.

The congregation where we attend has an elementary school next door and in light of all the recent school shootings the school was wisely making provisions in case something similar might happen to them (God forbid). They contacted the Elders of our congregation and asked that if a school shooting occurred could they use our parking lot for a staging point. We said… yes and that if such a thing happened not only our parking lot but also our air conditioned building, restrooms, furniture, etc.

So did we violate biblical authority by using our facilities for those who were not christians? Were there Muslim, Hindu or atheist families in that school? Did we risk sinning against God and possibly having our candlestick removed from Heaven for potentially letting these folks use our building and facilities?

No we didn’t. We had authority… the authority of love… to love our neighbors as ourselves which by the way is not just an obligation for individual christians but also for the collectivity of christians… the church. Certainly judgment has to be used and biblical principals respected but for me in light of this example our process for establishing authority was deeply flawed.

Can you imagine the impact if we had told that school that according to the Bible our church couldn’t help kids and teachers who were shot up by a gunman?