How are we loving others?

OK, so I just wrote a huge blog that for some reason has disappeared.. so I will try to explain myself again, and hope I don't miss anything out.

I have to admit that these are all a mass of jumbled emotions so please bear with me as I try to make myself clear.

Ever since we moved here I have had a burden in my heart. On a whole Canada is a fairly laid back place. People are friendly, and there is a diverse cultural background, which also means a whle new range of menu's for me to explore... yummy!

But, one thing that surprised me was how the First Nations people were viewed. In every culture there is percentage of people who make bad life style choices, and for some reason this taints everyone else. I struggle with this, and feel it is unfair. Every society has beggers, every society has spongers/thieves/drunks... do I need to go on? I know there are some other issues involved, but ultimately God calls us to love others. How are we ever going to have a united community if we harbour these feelings or express those views, how are we loving the individual if we just generalise. How are we seeing God's beauty if we don't even take the time to look.

My good friend Kim lent me a book which I have found helpful in this area, it's called One Church Many Tribes and was written by Richard Twiss, I wholeheartedly recommend this book. Richard Twiss has written this book trying not to condemn but inform and also bring encouragement and promise for us as a whole Church.

As many of you know I am so proud to be English, I love my heritage, the long line of history that my nation has. But I have to admit to feeling grief over how we did things sometimes. We seemed to have turned up and just taken over a LOT. Colonising 2/3 of the world seems a bit steep to me when we're such a small island, I have no clue how we did it. And a lot of our issues seem to come from us thinking we knew better (not that I ever think like that... not much anyways... sorry!). The English Puritans thought converting the Natives meant westernising them, making them do things our way instead of loving them.

Why do we find it so hard to love them? Why does someone have to dress the same way as us, eat the same foods as us, deal with issues how we want them to be dealt with? Why does our love come with conditions? How do we know that God doesn't delight in their culture, in their form of worship.

Leading a life and following the guidlines set out in the Bible does not mean we will all be the same. God is an artist, His tapestry has many different threads. How can we tell Him that this thread is wrong because we don't think it's the right colour.... do you want to tell God He's wrong? I don't!

This is kinda similar to how I have been feeling about our youth. We have so many hurting youth crying out for attention in the wrong way. And instead of trying to get to know them, to find out why they chose that path, we condemn them.... no good louts, druggies, lazy. I do know that some people know what they are doing and delight in it, this is a scarey thing. But I truly believe that a majority of people who have gone down the wrong path have done so because they didn't know any better, what else to do, or circumstances have carried them along. I truly believe that 98% of humanity are good people (not that we should only love good people, God calls us to love ALL people). We all have insecurities, we all feel love and pain. I wish that we could truly learn to love how God wants us to love, but maybe that is something that is constantly evolving, that God likes to continually be teach us about.