Loving people sucks

profound title.

Ok, first off, some definitions (let me know if you disagree with me here): to love someone is to want what is best for them, even at the expense of what is best for you (apart from the fact that loving people is what's best for you, let's skip the paradox). Love is... an action not a fuzzy feeling. Love is not wanting people to be happy (insert some analogy of a happy child playing in a street or something).

So, Sheryl and i are doing a talk on evangelism this Friday, then a talk on discipleship (i think) next Friday. (not the "why?"s; the "how?"s as we understand them from Fellowship). One of the parenthetical, preambulatory, prologue-type things we want to say is that it has to be done in Love; love for God and love for the people and that this Love has to come from God ("oh, that's why you're talking about loving people...").

Love is a fruit of the Spirit (i.e. it comes from God when we belong to him (although not without some pruning sometimes)). So, we have it. If we evangelize without love it becomes selfish; we try to convince the other person that I am right! (and you are wrong), we do it out of duty for our holiness points, we do it from guilt, from wanting a bigger group...sometimes we don't even know why we do it, we just do. It's hard to love people i don't know.

Sometimes it's harder to love people i do know. Sometimes it's harder to be patient and kind, humble, slow to anger and all that 1 Corinthians 13 stuff with people i'm close to because, well, i'm close to them. I see the flaws more clearly up close and they bother me more, they actually impact me; i'm in the splash zone and i get other people's mess all over me, which is frustrating because i'm having a hard enough time managing my own...

did you catch that? i figured it out after i had the thought. Two things in there are glaringly wrong. 1. I'm scared to get my hands dirty (i think it was Victoria Reynolds from whom i heard this first): Love is being willing to get my hands dirty; to get in the mess and work with people; to see their flaws and embrace them; to see them as God sees them. 2. I'm trying to manage my own mess. That, my friends, is such a mistaken attitude. I'll handle my life, you handle yours. Yes, we're responsible for our actions, but we can't handle that responsibility. What, after all, is this whole Christian thing about? We need God. We need each other. But this is America! Independence is our blood virtue! (that's for a country, not a person) For people (maybe for a nation too, but i don't do politics here), Independence is only one step in the process. Dependence is immature, but Independence is not full maturity. Interdependence is what we are made for.

Can you handle your life on your own? Do you need other people? My heart answers "Yes, i can handle it! I don't need anyone!" ...or is that my Pride talking? I feel like i'm pretty self-sufficient as far as people go: i'm a middle child and can skip on the whole attention thing; i'm introverted to the point of being anti-social sometimes; i'm low-key, low-maintenance and low-rider (but that doesn't apply); i'm not very emotional or relational. I constantly think that if i had fewer People, i'd have less drama. I feel like the Grinch sometimes, whose heart was just too small. So what did my life look like outside of community? I was depressed, i hated myself, i was directionless, i was green and lived on a mountain with my dog-minion, Max (that's not true (it was a cat)). See, the thing is; we were made to Love. The first not-good thing in all of the Bible is that Man was alone. We are made to love God and to love each other. The best way to do that is the gospel. ("Really, sharing the gospel?") Living the gospel. Sharing it with those who don't know it; living it with everyone. Give people Grace. Unite with the Body of Christ; we are Christ's ambassadors here, we are supposed to be like he was.

So, if i don't have God's heart for people (inside or outside the Church)? I ask for it (dangerous) and choose to love people regardless of what i feel about them. Sometimes God will give us heart-breaking glimpses of how he sees people and fill our hearts to overflowing with just a little drop from His. Other times God will grow our hearts slowly, but it's usually as we choose to love.