Is love enough?

Is love really enough? I wrestle with my fundamental thinking all the time with this one.  I so want to believe that it is, but somewhere in my ingrained mind that runs to the very core of my being, I hear the rantings of my old self.

"You have to balance love with the rest of scripture."

"God is a just God!"

"Love the sinner, hate the sin!"

As I said in my last post, I am reading the Bible again.  Not studying it, just reading it.  I am trying hard not to read it with any preconceived ideology.  (Which is very hard when you have been indoctrinated for over 20 years of your life.)  I am reading different versions of the Bible too.  Whatever strikes my fancy that day...  I read this scripture today and my old mind said, "Boy, that sure does sound New Age!! There has to be a counter for this scripture."  But I stopped myself.  Because it is just that beautiful.

Dear friends, let us continue to love one another, for love comes from God. Anyone who loves is a child of God and knows God. But anyone who does not love does not know God, for God is love.

Scripture

I started reading The Bible again.  Well, online.  Not the paper kind.  In the 22 years that I have professed to be a born again Christian, I have read (and studied) the Bible several times through.  Always through my 'evangelical glasses' of course.  Things have to line up with what "Christianity mainstream" teaches, or your interpretation of scripture is wrong.  Sure, we take parts of scripture literally and others figuratively.  How do we know which is which? Well, don't let me bore you to death but the process is long and involved and uses words like hermeneutics.  The point of this post is, I love Scripture now.  I do!!  I don't believe what I used to believe.  At all.  But what I do know is that Scripture is now beautiful and flowing and lovely.  I would have never used those words to describe the Bible before.  But reading the Bible with my new untainted eyes is liberating and joyful.  Matthew 22:37-40 says, "You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your mind." This is the greatest and foremost commandment.  "And the second is like it, you shall love your neighbor AS YOURSELF." On these two commandments depends the WHOLE LAW and THE PROPHETS."  Love, love, love.  I choose to love.

The Parenting Trap

When I had Camille, I was 28 years old.  I really wanted to parent her "correctly."  There were/are so many philosophies to choose from.  Growing Kids God's Way (blech!), Attachment Parenting, The Ferber Method of sleeping, and of course the The Pearl's crazy ideas!  (let's beat our child with rubber tubing) Now that I am 43 and on child number five, I can honestly say there is no parenting method that fits every child. To be quite honest, it doesn't matter when they use the toilet, if they know their alphabet by the time they are three, if they color inside the lines, if they can count, or stack blocks, or all of that hooplah.  By the time they are in the third grade, it all evens out.  Josiah didn't even know his alphabet when he started Kindergarten and by the end of Kindergaten he was reading just like every other child.  I am so happy I am not that crazy "have to do it right" mother that I used to be.  One more reason I am so grateful for leaving that legalistic, cultish Christianity I was a part of for so long.  If Jesus is the example of love, then I will be that for my children.  Everything else will fall into place.