Everybody Always 2...Fear to Love
In the first chapter of Everybody Always we find a confession: "For a long time, I saw Jesus from a distance and thought we'd met. It still happens to me every time I avoid people God made in His own image just because I don't understand them. My fear of them leaves me only with glimpses of Jesus" (p. 5).
Based on the basic claims of the book, we could call this "the fear to love."
That confession is pressed to extend to others in the church who consider themselves to be living their lives according to the Bible but who are avoiding the discomfort of loving in the way that God loves. "If I am only willing to love the people who are nice to me, the ones who see things the way I do, and avoid all the rest, it's like reading every other page of the Bible and thinking I know what it says" (5). Biblical Christians, we might say, very often do not live in the comfortable places of the church. This is a major indictment of many who regard themselves as strong Christians but who never dirty themselves with the love of those who they don't already like. It is also a warning and a positive challenge for those who have ears to hear.
Here are some bullet points that the first three chapters of Everybody Always make:Jesus does not ask those who follow him to "agree with him" but to do what he tells us to do--to love (6).
Understanding these principles is great but the reality of love moves us back into the uncertainty and awkwardness of real relationships with real people. Now, we just have to step forward and love. If love is to become real we have to realize that "There's no school to learn how to love your neighbor, just the house next door" (19). We can't learn to love by lecture or study. We can find inspiration and direction there but we will never love until we love (if that makes sense).
Bob Goff, Everybody Always: becoming love in a world full of setbacks and difficult people (Nelson Books, 2018)
This post is part of an effort that I am making at digesting resources for easier application.
Based on the basic claims of the book, we could call this "the fear to love."
That confession is pressed to extend to others in the church who consider themselves to be living their lives according to the Bible but who are avoiding the discomfort of loving in the way that God loves. "If I am only willing to love the people who are nice to me, the ones who see things the way I do, and avoid all the rest, it's like reading every other page of the Bible and thinking I know what it says" (5). Biblical Christians, we might say, very often do not live in the comfortable places of the church. This is a major indictment of many who regard themselves as strong Christians but who never dirty themselves with the love of those who they don't already like. It is also a warning and a positive challenge for those who have ears to hear.
Here are some bullet points that the first three chapters of Everybody Always make:Jesus does not ask those who follow him to "agree with him" but to do what he tells us to do--to love (6).
- Jesus tells his followers to love their enemies (6). We can see those who we do not understand or agree with as our enemies. We love them.
- Pursuing us in love, God is still present to us when we wander (6).
- Having right opinions does not have the same significance in love as stepping outside of our comfort zones for the sake of someone we disagree with (7).
When God pursues us in love, God "gently reminds us who we are" (7). As a parent I often want to tell my children what to do. It feels more direct and is usually done with a sense of desperation. I know that it is more effective to "remind my children who they are" and they know how the person they are should act. Identity is much more powerful in shaping a child than rules are. Rules have their significance in their correspondence to a healthy identity not vice versa (I think we see this in the fact that the Ten Commandments and the Levitical laws are part of God's covenant relationship with the people of Israel and not stand alone collections of rules). This is not different for making disciples. I have an impulse to tell people how they are to act and especially to tell them what is wrong with them. God's simple (to use the term in the way I mentioned in Everybody Always 1) approach is to give people identity and empower them to live into that identity. We see this in God's calling of a covenant people and calling his people his children who are living into an identity of being "in Christ" and "like Christ." (Check out the song: No Longer Slaves.) God "convinces us with love, and He does it without fear of shame" (8). When someone has a revelation that God loves him or her despite his unworthiness it empowers him to live into the identity that God has provided.
In the end we will see that God has ensured that this love "will work" (9). We fear that love will not work like we fear to love but faith in God is faith that love will accomplish God's good intent. We do not need to fear either venturing out to love nor the possibility that love will fail. We can live with a "childlike faith" that has such confidence in God that fear will no longer "call the shots" in our lives (16-17). Instead of a life of fear we can live one described as being moved "from merely wishing things would get better for us to bearing up under the circumstances God gives us" and being moved "from running away and hiding from our problems to engaging and embracing them" (17).
Understanding these principles is great but the reality of love moves us back into the uncertainty and awkwardness of real relationships with real people. Now, we just have to step forward and love. If love is to become real we have to realize that "There's no school to learn how to love your neighbor, just the house next door" (19). We can't learn to love by lecture or study. We can find inspiration and direction there but we will never love until we love (if that makes sense).
Bob Goff, Everybody Always: becoming love in a world full of setbacks and difficult people (Nelson Books, 2018)
This post is part of an effort that I am making at digesting resources for easier application.
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