by Meagan DeJong

Created on: March 30, 2009

My favorite verse in the Bible is 1 John 4:20:

If anyone says, "I love God," yet hates his brother, he is a liar. For anyone who does not love his brother, whom he has seen, cannot love God, whom he has not seen.

One of the reasons that this is my favorite verse is because it is very easy to interpret, yet often overlooked among Christians. Keep in mind that In this passage, "brother" is not meant literally. It is meant in the same terms as "neighbor" is in other verses in the Bible. Also keep in mind that there is no asterisk after the word "brother" which excludes any type of human being. It states that no person can claim to love God if they do not love their neighbor.

This verse is wonderful. Unfortunately, it does make hypocrites out of many so-called "Christians". As previously mentioned, there is no asterisk after "brother" which excludes any type of human being. The passage does not say "love his brother*"...*except anyone who is gay/liberal/Muslim/Chinese,etc. It does say that a person (or at least a follower of Christ) can NOT say that he or she loves God if they hate their brother. That poses a problem for a lot of Christians, or at least many Christians that I know.

I also love the entire Sermon on the Mount (Beatitudes). For me it is very visual and simple and beautiful. Jesus sits in the position traditionally sat in by rabbis. He essentially sits indian-style and has a casual kind of lecture with his followers. He gives lessons that are good to attempt to follow even if you are not religious. The qualities of mercy, pity, peace, non-judgment, and love are all valued and embraced.

These are only my favorite verses, however, I must say that I wish that more Christians would focus on the parts of the Bible that examine love and peace (of which there are many), or those that discuss how we are to treat the poor. Or simply focus on those passages spoken by Jesus. I think that if Christians would focus more on those passages instead of a single passage in Leviticus (which is in the Torah, by the way) or Genesis, they would be much more compassionate towards their fellow man. Instead, there are a lot of passages being focused on because they back up a particular agenda. If anyone looks hard enough, they can find a passage that will back up just about any agenda they can think of, and so I think it would be more productive to focus on the real message of Jesus- love.

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