“The issue is not whether I agree with someone but rather how I treat someone with whom I profoundly disagree.”
A thought by Philip Yancey (2014-10-21) from his book, Vanishing Grace: What Ever Happened to the Good News? (p. 26). Zondervan. Kindle Edition. (Click on the title to go to Amazon.com to buy the book.) Philip continues, “We Christians are called to use the ‘weapons of grace,’ which means treating even our opponents with love and respect. As usual, Jesus shows the way. When the Pharisees taunted him as ‘a Samaritan and demon-possessed,’ he denied the accusation of demon-possession but did not protest the racial slur. He rebuked the disciples for their call for violence against the Samaritans. Pointedly, he made a Samaritan the hero of one of his finest parables. He went out of his way to visit a Samaritan village and commanded his Jewish disciples to take the gospel to other such villages. Eventually the disciples got the point: when Samaritans became Christ-followers with ‘great joy’ after Jesus’ ascension, they received the Holy Spirit through the ministry of Peter and John