Love

Doug and I have often discussed the differences between Christians and good people. In both of our businesses and backgrounds, agnostics and atheists reign supreme, and both of us knowing good people who claim atheism over God, want to find some place for them in our eternity because surely our sovereign God would not condemn them–let alone the lonely African so-journer who never heard of God.
Last night, he said something that resonated with me–perhaps more than anything that I have heard in a while:

“What is hard about being nice in America?”

In this country we live better than royalty throughout history, so why wouldn’t we be nice.  If you take away all that somebody has, and we don’t eat for days or weeks, can we still maintain kindness.  Hell, I can’t be nice when I am fat on three meals and riding high in nice car.

I guess the thought is that a Christian is fed by a love that is incomprehensible, so despite any of their adversity, they will still exude love. Unfortunately, many are disillusioned by a christian and not Christ.  I don’t even know what it means to have a connection with a source of love so deep that you would still love even when heckled, beaten, taunted, and crucified, but apparently that is what Christianity is all about.  All this time I thought it was about a checklist of do’s and don’ts, rights and wrongs, and Phat mansions.

Elaborations, Doug?


Jeremy Floyd

Jeremy Floyd is the President at FUNYL Commerce. Formerly, he was the CEO and President of Lirio, Bluegill Creative, a marketing and communications firm in Knoxville, Tennessee. In addition to managing the digital strategies, Floyd was an adjunct professor for the University of Tennessee Chattanooga MBA program teaching digital strategies and social media. Floyd blogs at jeremyfloyd.com and tweets under the name @jfloyd. Jeremy is licensed to practice law in the State of Tennessee and holds a law degree from the University of Tennessee College of Law and a Bachelor of Arts degree from MTSU in English and Philosophy.

  • Looks like you’ve summarized this well. Not sure I can add much except that hope that somehow I might realize and live this kind of love in some small degree. The constant arguing and finger-pointing in our society exhausts me. Everyone is so sure they are right. I’m not so sure about a lot of things. But I do know that I’ve been loved and would to God that others might know that love as well.

  • wife

    I’m impressed with your elaborations on Doug’s teachings. To forgive 70 X 7 and to turn the other check is biblical however it seems hardly possible with your loved ones and quite impossible with your enemies. However that is the example we have been given. We are loved and so the work begins in me.