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As Ourselves


So in Christ Jesus you are all children of God through faith, for all of you who were baptized into Christ have clothed yourselves with Christ. There is neither Jew nor Gentile, neither slave nor free, nor is there male and female, for you are all one in Christ Jesus. (Galatians 3:26-28)
            I didn’t choose these verses. I have been checking for the passage of the day with a Bible website, and they chose it, but it’s one I’ll gladly rant about. There are folks who scream that “victims” need to be believed and that it’s wrong for us to make them relive the horror of their attack in a public courtroom, with lawyers who accuse them of lying. Then, those same folks who scream for everyone to believe and pity the victim, hold up pictures of their current “Victim Poster Child” and scream their story across the world wide web where millions ogle and drool over details that will let them exploit that victim for their own purposes…all in the name of their -ism. The victim is no longer a human being with feelings, but an example of the oppressed group(s) that include him/her, interchangeable with all the other victims from the same oppressed group(s.)  
            God doesn’t call us to love people as members of people groups. He calls us to love each person, each neighbor as ourselves. According to Scripture, there are only two kinds of people: Christian, and not-yet-Christian. Christians are to be loved as part of the Body of Christ, which means we’re to love them as ourselves. Not-yet-Christians are to be loved like neighbors, which means we’re to love them as ourselves, not as members of some oppressed group. I suspect the standard for loving others as ourselves is higher than pitying – or even loving – them as members of some group.

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