God created us to love. From the foundation of God’s unconditional love for us, God calls us to love and worship God and serve and pursue justice for the people around us.

Created to Care

As you may or may not know, this Forming Faith blog usually provides reflections on the upcoming Narrative Lectionary readings throughout the program year, along with a monthly series of practical posts For Leaders. Each summer, I switch to more general topics of faith formation, often grouped in series.

This post marks the third post in a series inspired by Spirit & Truth Publishing’s five-lesson unit on environmental stewardship called Learning Together: Created to Care (click here for a review). I specifically say “inspired by” because this blog series is not about environmental stewardship but on other things we are created to do. So far, our series includes “Created to Care, Created to Work” and “Created in God’s Image (Pride Month).” Future posts will be on how we are created to worship and created for fellowship.

Created to Be Loved

This series is about what God created us to do, how God wants us to live. But God’s call for us is based on an essential foundation: what we are created to be. We are most of all created to be recipients of God’s unconditional, unearned, and inescapable love. This is what we are at our most basic level: God’s beloved. We are all bearers of God’s image and equally deserving of dignity, but we are also each created to be unique individuals. You are created to be YOU, and you are beloved as you are.

God Loves, so We Love

As image-bearers of God and followers of Jesus, we are called to follow their lead. And that’s even before Jesus clearly pointed out the top commandments of loving God and our neighbors. Jesus, like many Jewish rabbis, pulled two commandments from Scripture to summarize the entire Torah, and he chose Deuteronomy 6:5 and Leviticus 19:18. Paul does the same (e.g., Romans 13:8-10). The author of 1 John even asserts that you cannot truly love God if you don’t love others (1 John 4:19-21). When all the laws, commandments, instructions, and teachings in Scripture are boiled down, they are all the same: love God and love others.

But what is this love? An imperfect (and clunky) definition I’ve used before is:

Love is the inclination, intention, and action for the improvement (increase in shalom) of the recipient of that love.

It is both internal (inclination and intention) and external (action).

Justice, Shalom, and the World to Come

With love being this foundational, it doesn’t come as a surprise that love is central to God’s vision and intention for the world: God’s kingdom or the World to Come. One important word that describes this reality is shalom, which is one of my favorite theological concepts. Shalom describes a community where everyone has everything they need to thrive (not just survive, though that’s a start). And it’s important that shalom is about community, not individuals.

Individual loving actions—acts of service—are important, but since much suffering arises from the central systems of society, living out God’s love requires working for systemic justice. While I do believe that true and complete justice and shalom can only be attained by God scrapping our current reality and replacing it with a perfect one in the future (the “to come” part of the World to Come), God calls us to pursue that goal every day.

What Does Love Look Like in Difficult Situations?

While it is always complicated to turn something general (love others) into specific actions in our daily lives, certain situations make it even more difficult. How do you love an abuser, a toxic person, or even someone who is being self-destructive (with addiction, etc.)? Should you?

The answer to whether we should love these people in general is easy: yes. Jesus teaches us to love our enemies. But that does not mean to accept and condone their harmful behavior. And it certainly doesn’t mean that you should remain in a situation that is harming you in any way. In some situations (after you are in a safe place), you can leave them in God’s hands and pray for them to change. In other situations, you must leave them in God’s hands and try to never think of them again.

How to love people in real life is basically the purpose of the discipline of ethics. And it’s certainly not an easy or straightforward process, and it doesn’t necessarily leave you with “the right answer.” Loving people in real life is a goal not an expectation for perfection.

Loving in Faith Formation

How can you translate this into your faith formation setting? Well, I expect that you are already doing a lot. It’s not like I’m breaking any new ground here. But whatever your context, you can likely incorporate this foundation in whatever you do.

• Teach the foundation: First, foremost, and repeatedly teach that God loves us just as we are, even if we might want or need to make significant changes in our lives.
• Ask the questions: Loving God and others should be the basis of everything we do. Following these commandments with all that has been entrusted to us is stewardship. So, whether you are a Sunday school teacher or member of the property committee, challenge yourself and others to identify how what you are doing is showing love to God and others.
• Provide opportunities: Organize service projects, justice work, and more for your participants. Even within your worship services, you can introduce projects and challenge worshippers with (specific) ways to show love outside of worship (which is itself a way to love God).
• Debate ethics: Another way to say this is to discuss and role-play “How can you show love in this situation?” This can be done in most settings and developmental levels from verbal children to seniors.

Go in the love of God!

Gregory Rawn (Publisher)

Order Faith Formation Resources

Are you looking for resources for the summer: VBS, family/intergenerational events, or Sunday school? Check out our Learning Together series, a set of five-lesson units on a variety of topics. You can read outside reviews on both our newest Created to Care and Do Justice units! Our faith formation resources are easy-to-use, theologically sound, and inclusive.

Introducing our newest Learning Together unit: Created to Care! Wonder at God’s creation and learn about what we can do to protect and heal it in these five lessons, intended for children and intergenerational groups, family or churchwide events, or Vacation Bible School. This curriculum is published in collaboration with BibleWorm, a weekly Narrative Lectionary podcast, to accompany their summer series on Creation Care.

Our 2024-2025 resources have launched and are available to order! Narrative Lectionary, Revised Common Lectionary, Classic Sunday School, and more.

At Spirit & Truth Publishing, we might just have exactly what you are looking for:

• Resources for the Narrative Lectionary (2024-2025): Products for all ages.
• Classic Sunday School Curriculum: Key Bible stories for PK-2nd and 3rd-6th, also great for your Christian elementary school!
• Learning Together: Five-lesson topical units for VBS, Sunday school, children, and intergenerational classes.
• Cross+Generational Confirmation
• Resource for the Revised Common Lectionary (2024-2025): Intergenerational classroom.
• Worship and Liturgy Education

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