April Fool’s Day is somehow not in order this year. Laura and I were talking about difficulties we’ve had at “this time of the year” for the last few years, and then remembered, it was this time of the year in 2003 that we were falling in love. That’s a good thing to remember. Actually, in 2003, we were getting ready to meet tomorrow at DFW.
Yesterday we were in Topeka…now Google…or now Tapookle (or not ta pookle, that is the question!). It was OK but our real heart is waiting on the Lord. That was my prayer this morning. It doesn’t mean a lack of joy or anything, but reality is, that we are being pressed by the earth’s gravity and by sin and by living in this cruddy body, legally blind, legally deaf, and recovering from insanity. We just want the Lord…and a place to sow and reap with people who want to sow and reap…and will love the lost for Christ.
We now have many more birds in the yard. I’m not kidding, Laura and I both saw something from different levels of our house, out different windows, a male cardinal went after some seed on the ground near our house. His wife flew up to him, and I kid you not, he turned toward her and kissed her. We couldn’t believe it. We both…in different parts of the house…. saw it and yelled to each other. I was so excited I went down stairs and gave her the cardinal greeting.
In Tapookle yesterday, I found a little shelf thing for $2, that I’ve hung on the tree as a sort of bird feeder thing. Still a lot of experimentation going on. But what I’m wondering is if I’m becoming a bird lover. Seriously, I go out every morning, give them fresh seed in 3-4 areas and then fresh water. Then when I take a break, I’m looking out the window to see if they are enjoying it all.
So what is a bird lover. I’m sure a real bird lover, a professional, would scoff at me. Or would they welcome me because I have a “growing” passion. I’d like to think they would welcome me and show me the ropes.
So what does it mean to love God? I mean with all your heart, soul, mind and strength? That has really been on my heart lately. There is a spiritual relationship promised that I have to believe is more than we think. Jesus talks about something in John 14:21-23 that I’d find disappointing if God told me, “Oh Dan, you’ve had that for years.” I don’t think I do. When Jesus talks about the mutual abiding of John 15, I have to believe there is a purer simplicity to yielding to Christ than I have dared to live and that it naturally brings everything I want but am not willing to surrender for. The words in Luke 6 and in Luke 9 about being a disciple, give you the idea that we can hold back….and then, for the sake of insanity, call it “normal.”
Surely a “God lover” has to be a rung above a bird lover. The constant interest to see if they like what you put out there, just watching them, trying new things, captivation. Man, if I even loved my wife like this…crazy. So I really want to know what would I be thinking about if I was really a “God lover?” Would I be thinking about what to get Him…not to repay Him, but just to give Him a kick, to show how special He is to me. Would I be constantly running to the window to see what He’s up to. Would there be excitement and energy? What does “all your heart and soul and mind and strength” look like? I hope it isn’t what I’m doing now. And what if following the commandments of Christ is active, not passive like not getting in trouble, but active like showing love to the Lost He wants to reach and …bearing fruit…more, and more, and make better and better disciples?
And that leads me to something I read in Blue Like Jazz. The basic core of being a Christ-follower is to show love, love that loves when it hurts, love that is rooted with Christ and Salvation and is absolutely amazing on this earth. And we don’t, I think, really ever get to this love. Example, do we thrive on our relationships to non believers? NO. We don’t even want to talk to them, much less really get to know them, much less have the connection with Christ that would allow His love to flow unhindered through us to them (and I’m back to Jn 15 again). We never really get there and that’s why I think I’m (we’re) missing something in loving God and being spiritually transformed in/connected to Christ. We’re just “good” sinful people with “our limits.” Again, funny how in a place like Romans 13…you don’t even know what’s in Romans 13 because it is a secret chapter that nobody (particularly a republican) wants to read…but you find that we should love our neighbor as ourselves…even in the guts of this chapter. Wouldn’t it be a horrible thing to get with Jesus and he gives us our performance review (Rom. 14, probably @Starbucks) and He would say, “All you had to do was go next door. You didn’t even have to give them the 4 laws or steps to peace. All you had to do was love them, like them, hang out with them.” But be warned, don’t look up from your latte and ask Jesus “who’s my neighbor,” because the only guy in history to have done that has eternal egg dripping down his face. Wouldn’t it be odd, I’m just thinking, if “neighbor” meant “neighbor?”
Donald Miller in Blue Like Jazz says it in a way I won’t forget. (pages 218-221)
Mr. Spencer then asked us about another area in which he felt metaphors cause trouble. He asked us to consider relationships. What metaphors do we use when we think of relationships. We value people,…we invest in people…Relationships could be bankrupt,…people are priceless…all economic metaphor. I was taken aback.
And that’s when it hit me like so much epiphany getting dislodged from my arteries. The problem with Christian culture is we think of love as a commodity. We use it like money. Professor Spencer was right, and not only was he right, I felt as though he had cured me, as though he had let me out of my cage. I could see it very clearly. If somebody is doing something for us, offering us something, be it gifts, time, popularity, or what have you, we feel they have value, we feel they are worth something to us and, perhaps, we feel they are priceless. I could see it so clearly, and I could feel it in the pages of my life. This was the thing that had smelled so rotten all these years. I used love like money. The church used love like money. With love, we withheld affirmation from people who did not agree with us, but we lavishly financed the ones who did.
The next few days unfolded in a thick line of melancholy, thought, and introspection. I used love like money, but love doesn’t work like money. It is not a commodity. When we barter with it, we all lose. When the church does not love its enemies, it fuels their rage. It makes them hate us more.
After Greg Spencer’s lecture, I knew what I was doing was wrong. It was selfish, and what’s more, it would never work. By withholding love from my friend, he became defensive, he didn’t like me, he thought I was judgmental, snobbish, proud, and mean. Rather than being drawn to me, wanting to change, he was repulsed. I was guilty of using love like money, withholding it to get somebody to be who I wanted them to be. I was making a mess of everything. And I was disobeying God. I became convicted about these things, so much so that I had some trouble getting sleep. It was clear that I was to love everybody, be delighted at everybody’s existence, and I had fallen miles short of God’s aim. The power of Christian spirituality has always rested in repentance, so that’s what I did. I repented. I told God I was sorry. I replaced economic metaphor, in my mind, with something different, a free gift metaphor or a magnet metaphor. That is, instead of withholding love to change somebody, I poured it on, lavishly. I hoped that love would work like a magnet, pulling people from the mire and toward healing. I knew this was the way God loved me. God had never withheld love to teach me a lesson.
Here is something very simple about relationships that Spencer helped me discover: Nobody will listen to you unless they sense that you like them.
If a person senses that you do not like them, that you do not approve of their existence, then your religious and your political ideas will seem wrong to them. If they sense that you like them, then they are open to what you have to say.
After I repented, things were different, but the difference wasn’t with my friend, the difference was with me. I was happy. Before, I had all this negative tension flipping around in my gut, all this fundamentalism and pride and loathing of other people. I hated it, and now I was set free. I was free to love. I didn’t have to discipline anybody, I didn’t have to judge anybody. I could treat everybody as though they were my best friend, as though they were rock stars or famous poets, as though they were amazing, and to me they became amazing, especially my new friend. I loved him. After I decided to let go of judging him, I discovered he was very funny. I mean, really hilarious. I kept telling him how funny he was. And he was smart. Quite brilliant, really. I couldn’t believe that I had never seen it before. I felt as though I had lost an enemy and gained a brother. And then he began to change. It didn’t matter to me whether he did or not, but he did. He began to get a little more serious about God. He gave up TV for a period of time as a sort of fast. He started praying and got regular about going to church. He was a great human being getting even better. I could feel God’s love for him. I love the fact that it wasn’t my responsibility to change somebody, that it was God’s, that my part was just to communicate love and approval.
When I am talking to somebody there are always two conversations going on. The first is on the surface; it is about politics or music or whatever it is our mouths are saying. The other is beneath the surface, on the level of the heart and my heart is either communicating that I like the person I am talking to or I don’t. God wants both conversations to be true. That is, we are supposed to speak the truth in love. If both conversations are not true, God is not involved in the exchange, we are on our own and on our own, we will lead people astray. The Bible says that if you talk to somebody with your mouth, and your heart does not love them, that you are like a person standing there smashing two cymbals together. You are only annoying everybody around you. I think that is very beautiful and true.
Now, since Greg Spencer told me about truth, when I go to meet somebody, I pray that God will help me feel His love for them, I ask God to make it so both conversations, the one from the mouth and the one from the heart, are true.
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