So we can tell whether someone has set himself or herself up as superior to Christ in judgment, by seeing how they teach and call you to treat those you (or they) revile and loathe most – whoever those may be. Ask yourself: do they teach and call us as Christ teaches and calls us, or is their call rather in the other direction?
Christ calls and teaches us very particularly how to treat our enemies, how to treat those who believe other than we do, how to treat those whose actions or afflictions have made them loathsome in our eyes, have placed them beyond our pale, beyond what we feel it should be reasonable for us to respect, in a human life. Christ taught us to love and forgive these wretches. Even, to love and forgive our own self - the main wretch in the passion play. The false shepherd, however, casts all these loathsome and reviled enemies into hell, inviting you to enjoy the same rousing task. If you should fail to join in, in the general damnation, you'll be bullied from the pulpit for a start – possibly damned for your hesitation, but definitely damned if you refuse!
Don't worry: these are false damns, and can reflect only upon the damners. When you know who the judge is, take all such faint damns as praise, for your faithful refusal to kow tow to all false judges. These pretenders will call you, with lip-smacking relish, to respectably shun and haughtily damn others, the better to savor your own privileged place. The better to fill yourself up with pride, as one who wields and revels in the fruit of the knowledge of good and evil, making all the loud pronouncements and hollow judgments that follow on from vain glorying in such knowledge.
It's easy to know Christ when you hear Christ's call. Are you called to condemnation, to hatred? Does Christ push Christ's judgment off onto others - onto you? Can anyone but Christ be competent to utterly condemn another? Can you be? Do you, would you want to be?
It falls to Christians to heed Christ's call, and to go against bad news perversions of the gospel. Let us go meekly - questioningly, with calm insistence. Let us substitute a quiet strength of moral confidence for the loud bluster of moral certainty. Who does Christ save? Do I know? Is this for me to know? Or is it for God to know. Is this for Christ to judge, or is it for me to dictate who shall be saved, and who shall be found wanting?
Certainly Christ came to save us all. Yet God wants no one against their own will. When Jesus said "no one can come to the Father except through me," this is only to say: In me, God and human are one.
To accept Christ is to accept that essential mystery. That through him, with him, in him, in the unity of the holy spirit, all humans – are one. One with God, one in Christ, through the power of the holy spirit can I get an amen? In fact, can I get an hallelujah! We are one in God - yet each of us unique, in as many separate beings as we down here on earth bubble over with, in procreation, in creation - in the natural way of all living things. Only if you love and accept what is human, is it possible to love and accept Christ. But to accept and love humanity is also to love God, for in Christ, God's unity with humanity is consummated and made perfect. Loving Christ, one loves God in the person of each human being, even to the point of loving God in the person of those who exemplify whatever is to us, least loved and most loathed.
Find Christ in that least and most-loathed person. Love that person, and you have loved Christ. Hate and murder and betray that person, and you have hated, have murdered, have betrayed Christ. Which, according to many of our proud old hymns, we all have done.
But let's let go of judgment, if we can – even of our own. Let's accept Christ's competence to judge us. Let's let justice be God's, and judgment be God's, as we are commanded to do. Let us forgive and have mercy upon ourselves and each other, as we are called to do. For what is necessary for us to do for God?
God lacks for nothing, yet God loves and wants you. God wished only to gather you in, to a plenitude! Yet God respects what only you can give:
Your self.
God wants you to make something of yourself, or put better: God wants you to make some one of your self. Not some thing to be proud of, just - someone, to love. Someone you love. Someone you could wish to consider a gift, a gift to give back – and only if you wish. Could God create all aspects of you without your will and participation, and love you in that creation, in that automaton? No, this would be pure God-on-God love. Transcendent perhaps - but nothing human. Only in your own voice, in your own will, in your own choosing could God find in you - you, to love. Which is all God wants. Which is why God creates the world.
Only if you would want to be with God, forever, would God want to gather you in. Only if you'd want to be with your self, forever, would God want to save you: permanent, to eternity, in that selfsame self you have made, that you in whom both you and God found love.
But make no mistake! You are not saved by your choice. Before you could choose, you have already been saved by God's choice: to love you, God's choice: to want you, God's choice: to declare you worthy of being loved and being kept forever. God's choice was to save you, in one act of salvation two thousand years ago and for all time. God's choice for you is embodied in Jesus Christ. Now you rest safe, gathered in the hollow of God's palm, by God's choice.
Of course you are allowed to jump out. This is not said lightly, but God would have to be a great big jerk, if God would "save" you to a permanent sentence of eternity, to be spent with a God you hate. Or to be spent as a self who you truly loathe. Read that again, and think about what it would be, first, to hate your self, truly hate your self: your self who you have chosen and made, your self who you are, at your core. And second, to be stuck with it. Forever. Stuck in the presence of a God you can't stand, stuck in the person of a self you can't stand. In eternal company with those we loathe, can any pleasure reconcile us to paradise?
God could only want the self you freely create and freely give to God. Every day you create a self who could never otherwise have come into being. The being you are is a unique person, your own personal act of self-creation, and precious in God's eyes. Your self is all God wants of you - but only if you want it, too. The creation only you can make is the gift only you can give.
Only you can decide, ultimately, if you love you - and if you are worth love, forever. Only you can decide if you love God, if you can forgive God for creating you, if God is worth spending eternity with. Or if you will make a radical choice against God, or self, or in the final analysis: against love. God would honor your radical choice against God, if you made it full knowing. If that were what you chose.
Remember, though, where you already stand. God already does love you. So much, so much God does love you! God gave everything there is for your wonder and contemplation; God made the world real for you - not some padded playpen, not some sandbox, God gave you the universe to grow up in. To create yourself in, with tools and with something at stake! And because God gave us life with so much at stake, God gives us the possibility of taking a meaningful role. It matters what we choose. It matters to what we put our hands. Though we are not saved by our works, yet there is important work to do - if we should look around at ourselves and others. If we should see and say to ourselves that good work is worth doing.
And if you do, remember also this: it may be harder for you not to love Jesus than you think. Because "Whatsoever you do, to the least of homo sapiens..."
An act of love is always to love God.
