How You Treat People Is More Important Than Anything Else You Do (Yes Anything)

In our Saturday morning free store conversation we talked about something Jesus said in his famous sermon on the mount.  He basically told his friends that if they were at the altar with their gift and they remembered that someone had something against them that they should leave their gift and go and make things right with that person.  We talked a bit about what it meant to take a gift to the altar since this wasn't something that was very familar to us.  Someone said that it was like taking an offering to church.  This made sense and we all agreed that Jesus was most likely talking about the religious act of presenting a gift to our God, whether it be in a synagogue, temple, mosque, or church.

Someone asked the question why human beings feel like we have to give gifts to God.  We wondered what it says about God that we think we have to give gifts in order to receive the divine favor.  Someone suggested that it might be because we are afraid of God and feel like we have to pay for our mistakes in some way.  We laughed when someone said that at least we don't have to offer animal sacrifices anymore because we only kill them for hamburgers at McDonalds now.

At this point in our conversation someone said that it was pretty radical that Jesus told his friends to leave their gift at the altar and go make peace with the person that had something against them.  It seemed radical to us that Jesus would say that our relationships with people trumps our relationship with God.  That is exactly the opposite of what most of us had been taught at church.  Our friend Debbie said that it was probably harder to deal with people so instead we focus on our relationship with God.  When questioned about what that meant she said that if we think that God loves us then we sort of know that we will be accepted.  However, people don't have to accept us when we reach out to them so it's a bit more risky for us.

We talked a bit about what kinds of things that people might hold against one another. One of our friends said infidelity was hard to forgive.  George thought that lying and stealing were pretty good reasons to be upset with someone.  Sheila said that it was very difficult to deal with someone that wouldn't communicate with you.  It was sobering to realize how many things that we can do to offend and hurt others.  But at least we have the opportunity to minize the damage that we do by reaching out in friendship even when we have made mistakes.

As the discussion moved toward a conclusion the question came about why treating others could be more imporant than even our worship of God.  After a bit of silent reflection someone suggested that since every person is made in the image of God then the way we treat people is in reality the way that we are treating God.  Although we found that statement a bit challenging it is also very encouraging.  Every person matters and no one has a right to abuse another human being.