Missouri is called the ‘Show Me’ State. Every Christian should be a Missourian. At least that’s what 1 John 5:1-2 (CEB) suggests:
Everyone who believes that Jesus is the Christ has been born from God. Whoever loves someone who is a parent loves the child born to the parent. This is how we know that we love the children of God: when we love God and keep God’s commandments.
Those who are Christians and worthy of the name love God. And, they do what God says. They ‘show’ the world that they aren’t simply simple minded ‘spiritualists’ who ‘love God’ in some sort of immaterial and inconsequential non-concrete way. They prove their love for God by doing what God commands.
It stands to reason, therefore, that those who do not keep God’s commandments do not, in fact, love God. Oh sure, they may stomp their feet and protest their ethereal ‘love of God’ but the proof is in the pudding. If it were true, they would ‘show me’, and you, and everyone else.
But, and most importantly, Christians have to ‘show me’ to themselves. Infelicitously put as that is, what I’m suggesting is that Christian folk are required to put up or shut up by first ‘examining themselves’. Only then will they be able to help remove the speck from their less than sincere brother’s eye.
Zwinglius Redivivus 