The kingdom of God is about showing kindness.
If we are told to love those who abuse us (Mat 5:44), what do you think we are expected to do if they only disagree with us? For some reason, the church thinks it’s ok to wage a holy war against any ideology that it disagrees with. Yes, abortion is bad. Yes, gay marriage goes against God’s word, but so is lack of self-control. I won’t even stir up that mess.
Don’t you know that you catch more flies with honey instead of vinegar? The crusades were a great example of how not to win people to Christ. The Spirit of God is not behind name calling and anger.
We need the compassion of God. We need to feel His heartbeat. If we can love those who are lost with the same passion that He does, there’s no way we wouldn’t sacrifice to help them. People who don’t know God will make terrible decisions. Even people who do know Him make terrible decisions. We can’t judge them because of that. We need to love them and show them a different way to live.
Ask God to show you if you’ve been judgmental. Just repent and tell Him you’re sorry. Ask Him to give you His kind of love so you can show the kindness of God. That will change far more than angry words.
We do need compassion. Compassion means “suffering with.” Jesus Christ is God’s compassion, in that God became one of us, just as we are — not a God in human disguise, but a God who became human — and “suffered with” us as human beings, and suffered for us as the perfect human being. God does not sit aloof and judge, but God jumped into the midst of our experience. So that now we have a God who judges with compassion because He went through everything we went through except sin.
Those of us who strive to follow Christ also must not stand aloof and judge, but we are to throw ourselves into the experiences of those whom we would judge, so that we too may find that compassion. We do not think our way into compassion, neither do we talk nor feel our way into compassion, but we act our way into compassion, just as God acted His way into compassion, and just as every time the Gospels say that Jesus was filled with compassion, He acted (healed, fed, exorcised demons, or all of the above).
Thank you for your thoughtful comments. I pray for compassion and a good dose of humility as I consider how much compassion I am lacking.