my strong opinion

I AM STRONGLY OPPOSED TO EXCLUSIVITY.

Funny that I feel like ranting about it, and that I've recently felt so passionately against it considering about a month ago I found out my "greatest strength" is inclusiveness! (see three blogs down)

I think exclusivity is a sin. It is the conscious choice to leave someone out. It is the physical declaration that someone isn't worth your time. It's being unChrist-like! Christ included everyone, no matter what difference, disliking, or opinion he had - or was suppose to have - about them. We are called to love others. That's the second most important commandment besides loving God. And honestly, if we wanna get deep about this.. it's a result of loving God and therefore is basically AS important as the first. How will others know we're Christians? By our love. Love, love, love, love, love. LOVE in general is the greatest command. Love has no room for being exclusive. End of story!!!!!

Now, to be specific, there are times in which excluding someone from something is how it's suppose to be. Like, when something is one on one. There are always those relationships where you'll need alone time to get personal.. but that doesn't include being alone in a public, popular environment, that's impossible! Or, I've been in a few situations where only a certain number of people are ABLE to participate, therefore you have to exclude someone somewhere otherwise you wouldn't be able to do the activity at all because it'd be too stressful or busy or there'd just be too many people in general.

But other than that... there should be all-inclusiveness. God includes all of us in His Kingdom. God loves all of us as we are and NOT AS WE SHOULD BE. Therefore, we should include everyone into our lives. We should genuinely love people as they are.. that doesn't mean we have to like them, we have to LOVE them. Care about them, their well-being. We can't confuse love with spending time together either. Time can be a fruit of love, but it's not always a fruit. More and more as I live I'm discovering ATTITUDE is the biggest fruit of love. If my attitude is loving, I'm being loving. If my attitude sucks, I'm not. WHEN. DOES. ANYONE. EVER. EXCLUDE. SOMEONE. OUT OF LOVE. (besides the two cases I mentioned about)

I guess, I'm just tired of cliques. I'm tired of hatred. I haven't had a specific "group" since... sophomore year. And in college I thought a lot about getting a best friend, finding a group I could belong to, and I think I'm finally realizing: God's calling me to something more. God's calling me to stir the pot here. To love. Like He loves. AND HOLY CRAP I'M NOT PERFECT, I'm not anywhere close to loving like God loves me. But I'm striving. I thought I would just fall into place somewhere here. But all the "places", all the "groups", I don't know if they're really God-honoring. I know no one is perfect. But I don't want to associate myself with some particular people and then therefore be associated with something associated with those particular people. I just love loving everyone. And too often here I find some people loving some people but excluding these people. The whole idea of a clique is including those who belong and excluding those who don't. So why not make the world you're clique, include them all! I want to do that. I'm going to do that.

I may slip up and exclude someone here and there, but God has really been opening my eyes to the idea that I'm made for something more than the conventional. College is meant for growing me. It's not meant for fun. It's not meant for finding my best friends. Those can be parts of it, but those aren't my ultimate goal. And growing looks different for everyone. But for me.. right now.. it's learning to include and growing into an includer.



p.s. rereading this blog I'm also not saying that you shouldn't get close to people and have best friends. It's so important to have those people you can go to no matter what. I've found a lot of those in my life, but it's just more like I have a lot of best friends in a lot of different places from a lot of different "groups". It gives me really good perspectives on things since they're all so different! But it also makes it really hard security-wise. But I think God's just trying to remind me.. my security comes from HIM not from people. Amen!
Okay, NOOOOW I'm done. Haha, YAY I LOVE HOW MUCH BETTER ONE FEELS AFTER A GOOD BLOG RANT! :D