Look to love for change in the spirit

Christians often make headlines in the media or our notice in our personal lives through rebuke. Either with the physical or metaphorical wagging of a scolding finger, they berate the lack of righteousness in peoples’ lives with a veiled threat that the individuals concerned are going to hell if they do not change.

It’s a counter intuitive approach to bringing about real change in the spirit. If one scolds another, threatens them and wears them down enough, the result is like any other victim of torture. Bringing change is normally a superficial coping mechanism designed to bring an end to the punishment through the path of least resistance. In addition, one normally finds that once the threats are taken away, the facade relaxes and the old habits come back.

What about love? Love sets an example and works hard to be the change that others want to manifest in themselves. That is how Jesus was able to draw people to him more than needing to solicit the attention of people on the street in any way. The way he carried himself in his spirit was a beacon of change that drew the average person to him of their own accord. While they never reached Jesus’ example, there was at least a permanent change of desire in spirit that was so because it came from within, not from without.

No doubt, bringing change through love is the harder prospect because one has to exemplify virtue so much as to make it attractive. The humility in the process makes the individual more accountable to the change they do or do not see around them. Lets face it, if one walks like Jesus, speaks in wise parable, lives in harmony with the average person and loves enough to heal the sick at will, people are are going to be drawn to that. Especially if that person is also strong enough to stand up to the religious establishment when they go wrong. But examples of this are few and far between so change is similarly rare.

Why? Probably because the process is continually short cut through rebuke. Change has to take place in a person’s heart to stick. What sense is there to go to the source of a person’s love with a stick?