Loving the Unlovely.

What you say and do has a bigger influence than you think.
I just finished reading an email from a friend of mine who used to go to my school (which is a CHRSTIAN school, staunch Baptist.) He left last year because he had gone there since preschool, and he still felt that he didn't fit in. I don't know when the rumours started, but some guys started telling everyone that he was bisexual, and then gay...and I know he wasn't always this way because he liked my friend (who was a girl) when we were in ninth grade and last year he asked me to homecoming. These guys thought it'd be funny to creep out one of their friends, a "homophobic", so they told this friend of mine to go in the bathroom and corner the guy to creep him out. And he did. Nearly everyone made fun of him...and he wasn't unaware of this.
A little while before he left the school, he wrote me a letter confessing all kinds of hurts in his life, and I won't expose those but I will say that he was hurting. A LOT. He felt used. Situations at home were far from perfect, and he contemplated suicide all the time.
In the email I got tonight, he said "What bothers me the most about [your school] is that they make fun of people for being different, I became so stressed, I almost killed myself, then I found a friend in something that didn't judge me, didn't bother me, didn't put me down, it was music. It opened my mind to the ideals that being different scares people and that can mean being superior." Marilyn Manson understood his hurts, Marilyn Manson's lyrics applied to him. His gay friends understood him, his gay friends accepted him. His boyfriend cares about him. And as for everybody else: if you can't make them love you, make them fear you. So he spread some death threat rumours, told people he was communist, etc. etc. And mission accomplished: everyone feared him.
My friends, we failed at showing this guy the love of Christ. When he was telling me about his new school, he even said "there are a lot more nice people there than there are at my school (which is sad, cause many would think the opposite.)" 2 Corinthians 5:20 says "Therefore, we are ambassadors for Christ, as though God were making an appeal through us..." We've done a pretty bad job representing the love that Jesus has shown us. How is he to know that a Saviour loves him? He's heard the gospel a zillion times, but he hasn't SEEN the gospel, if that makes sense. The Marilyn Manson song he told me about that really had lyrics that applied to him has a part that says "I never really hated a one true god but the God of the people I hated." If God acts anything like "His people" do, then he's not interested. OUCH.
Do know that I'm not trying to preach to you guys and hate on everyone, because I have done a cruddy job loving others too, but man...how far will we go for a joke? He mentioned that another thing he didn't like about my school was that some find it humorous that they think some people are going to burn in hell. You guys, hell isn't a joke. Hell is for real. It is a sick nasty place worse than anything we can ever imagine; it is eternal separation from God and that is sickening. Yet we joke "haha you're gonna go to hell for that", etc. etc. Is it really worth it? (And while I'm on that note, I just want to remind you guys, especially those of you who have been walking in Christian circles for a long time: don't get so comfortable with the things of God that you no longer fear Him. And when I say fear I mean revere Him...a lot of times it's very easy to make jokes about Him or to so casually mention the name of Jesus, and we don't realize the power that is in the Name and we obviously don't have a good picture of how truly awesome our LORD is. Just a reminder.)
Is it worth it, friends, to joke about gay people? Their lifestyle is wrong, yessir, and homosexuality is a choice they have to make for themselves, but most of the time it's our fault for leading them on that path anyways. If they're told constantly "haha you're gay" or "go away, faggot" then it might enter their brains that maybe they are. It's like eating disorders...if a perfectly normal-sized girl hears some people snickering about her weight, she'll think "Oh my goodness I'm fat" and she might develop an eating disorder...was she really "fat"? No. But others' heartless words led her to believe that. And she acted upon it.
I just want to challenge you guys: watch your tongue. Watch your facial expressions. People notice if you exchange judgmental glances with a friend after someone said something a little odd. We're ripping people apart with our words. What we may see as harmless leads the harmed to go home and long for dying!
It's far better to be known for being silent than to be known for tearing down others. And the latter is far easier to do; I think those who don't talk that much have a lot more wisdom than the rest of us.
So, my friends, I'm asking you to love people. Yeah, they might say or do strange things and it might be really easy to make fun of them (even behind their backs), but right now what they're not getting from Christians is love, and they're not getting the gospel. I beg of you, please...love the "unlovely."