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According to the Pew Research Center, violence and hostilities stemming from religion have reached new highs all over the world, and especially in the Middle East and North Africa. More than 2 billion live in countries where violence and hostilities take place. That is on top of the violence we see in our own country. Rodney King’s question keeps coming back: “Why can’t we all just get along?” Of course, we know fundamentally, people are estranged from God, and this causes us to be estranged from each other. Yet even many followers of Christ struggle to get along with each other. Almost every apostolic letter in the New Testament urges God’s people to love one another. Here is just on text by the Apostle John that urges us to love one another—1 John 4:20-21: “If someone says, ‘I love God,” but hates a fellow believer, that person is a liar; for if we don’t love people we can see, how can we love God, whom we cannot see? And he has given us this command: Those who love God must also love their fellow believers.” Since our world is in desperate need of models on how love operates, surely God’s people ought to be those models—in word and action.
