God is love. Everyone who loves knows God. The greatest spiritual gift is love. The most important thing is to love God and your neighbor, as yourself. Love your enemies. Love sinners. Love yourself. Love one another as I have loved you. Love is to be compassionate as you father in heaven is compassionate. Love is more important than being right. Love is harder than keeping the rules. Love can cost you your life, but love never ends. Love is what flows between the Lover and the Beloved (between the Father and the Son) – the essence of God is mutual outpouring of love. Love is the shape of God. Justice is love in action.
As the incarnation of love and of God, we believe Jesus taught and embodied these four themes how and who to love: the earth, the poor, the stranger, and the peacemakers. These themes will be supplemented, nuanced, and expanded upon, but by consistently stating these themes for ourselves – we believe we will stay on track with Jesus and with God and ‘keep the main things, the main things.’
In these four areas we are creating a four-part virtuous cycle of inspiration and education, action and reflection. We are continuously seeking leaders and participants to execute this process and looking to partner with community activists involved in similar work.
As each of the Four Loves grows and evolves their leaders and focus we continue we ask ourselves questions:
Do we want to learn more about the theological and scriptural reasons leading us to act?
Do we want to learn more about the science, economics, and social components behind the actions?
What are we called to act on and to do – both personally, as a church, and in our social and political institutions.
Can we develop group supports and spiritual practices in the church that can support both activism and spirituality, putting faith into practice, and become spiritual activists?
We believe that prayers and thinking should be integrated with planning and action. God in us can change the world. And f we cannot change the whole world at least the world will not change us.
