Last week I came under fire from two non-believers who didn’t want to associate with “Bible-thumpers who oppose same-sex marriage, etc.” I laughed, “Hey knock it off! I’m not one of those kinds of Christians.”

In fact, I often tell people I am not a “Christian.” Shocks most since they know I am a pastor. I do cop to being a Christ-follower. But never do I relate to the self-righteous club that spend so much time criticizing each other, let alone those outside the family of God.

All of which brings me to the point of this short treatise. We are called to love our enemies.

Such a call certainly means that we should love not just our enemies, but our allies as well.

I recently experienced a conversation with a new guy in our congregation. He felt “called” to inform me of all the mis-quoted Bible verses and the “New Age quotes” in Rick Warren’s Purpose Driven Life.

A well-meaning person, he was loaded with what he called “great ammunition.” I told that the word “ammunition” in the same sentence with a devoted Christian leader left me a little cold. Also told him that he is spending far too much time on the internet.

He wanted to be sure our church was safe for him and his family so the conversation eventually came around to homosexuality, the acid test for Evangelicals of the 21^st Century.

When he finally agreed that a celibate gay person stood on the same ground as a celibate heterosexual I warned him to keep his opinion to himself for fear of inciting a couple of hundred new websites aimed at exposing him for the sin of “tolerance.” He got the point—love is supposed to be the defining mark of a Christ-follower. Take it away and we got nothing!

But love runs deeper than a theme-song for faith.

Think for a minute. Followers of Jesus Christ are the only people on the planet called to love their enemies. Liberals preach tolerance toward everyone but those who disagree with them. The new atheists preach hatred just short of genocide. Speaking of which, I recently hatred firsthand in Mongolia. After anti-Communist riots took five lives in Ulaanbaatar, a prominent Buddhist monk took to the TV to proclaim that Christians were the cause of the unrest and “…now is the time for us to rise up and rub them out!”

No other thought-system on the planet calls its followers to love their enemies. Few actually even call people to love their neighbors.

This is a pure Jesus play. And, you either do it or you don’t! The ball is in your court.