Loving All Your Neighbors

God is Love. He loves all of His children impartially and without reservation. “God saw every thing that he had made, and, behold, it was very good.”(Gen. 1:31) He does not know man as white or black, Jew, Christian or Muslim, male or female or even as gay or straight. Man is His perfect idea. Man is here only to love one another and to do nothing else.

Recently in California the Supreme Court ruled in favor of gay marriage. Many in the gay community were encouraged by this ruling. Those opposed felt horrified that such a ruling could take place, believing that gay living is against the Christian principles they were taught.

Jesus once had an adulterous woman thrown down at his feet by a mob. They screamed that their law said she must be stoned to death. Jesus calmly replied to them, “He that is without sin among you, let him first cast a stone at her.” (John 8:7) Each person in the mob was moved by Jesus’ remark, “convicted by their own conscience,” to quietly walk away “one by one.” Jesus finally told the woman to go and not sin again.

How often we hear stories of gays being harassed by an angry mob or being cast aside by their own families. Jesus pointed out to us “Judge not, and ye shall not be judged: condemn not, and ye shall not be condemned: forgive, and ye shall be forgiven” (Luke 6:37).

When I first met the woman who is now my wife, she told me she had a few friends that lived a gay lifestyle. When she wanted me to meet them, I refused. I felt they were different than me. It disturbed me that two people of the same sex would have a relationship together. However, I have always been attracted to my wife’s wonderful quality of caring for others. She never put labels on people, especially her friends. She loved them because of the qualities they expressed. It did not matter whether they were straight or gay, white or black, Christian, Jew or Muslim.

When I was in high school, I was with a friend driving around in New York City when he saw a gay man and stopped the car. My friend got out of the car and slapped and pushed the man while I sat watching in the car, doing nothing to help the man. This has always bothered me. I knew that feeling prejudiced against any group of people was wrong. If I wanted to heal the problems of the world (and I did!) I needed to start with my own thinking about others.

Soon after I began to pray about this, I came across this statement in Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures: “Jesus beheld in Science the perfect man, who appeared to him where sinning mortal man appears to mortals. In this perfect man the Saviour saw God's own likeness, and this correct view of man healed the sick.” I began to examine my thinking in light of this statement. I saw that I had no right to judge another’s behavior. My duty was to love everyone I came into contact with, in spite of their behavior, and that includes those who call themselves gay. God made man in His own image and likeness, pure and perfect. If I was seeing a sinning, lustful person, then I believed that God made a mistake. God does not make any abnormalities. Man is the perfect idea of God and I could see and witness nothing else. All that I can ever see is God and His idea, man. I made it a goal to hold firmly to this truth about God and man. My prejudiced ideas about gays began to fade. I started to see the spiritual qualities my wife’s friends expressed, such as kindness, gentleness, and grace. I began to be more receptive to socializing with more of her friends. Later, I began to get calls in my practitioner work from people that called themselves gay.

Jesus pointed out that we must love our neighbor as ourselves. He ate with sinners, touched and healed persons with contagious diseases, and even forgave those who crucified him.

Let us pray that we can love all our neighbors. Let us put no labels on man but love him like God does. Mary Baker Eddy once said, “Students are advised by the author to be charitable and kind, not only towards differing forms of religion and medicine, but to those who hold these differing opinions. Let us be faithful in pointing the way through Christ, as we understand it, but let us also be careful always to "judge righteous judgment," and never to condemn rashly.”(444:13-19)