To follow Jesus is to respond to God’s invitation to love everybody, always. For the past few weeks I have been reading a book with a group of earnest Jesus followers. Everybody, Always by Bob Goff is all about “Becoming Love in a World Full of Setbacks and Difficult People.” Sounds simple, right? A little self-help book, perhaps? That’s what I thought, too. Well, not so much. Bob’s stories and practical “next steps” have been forcing me to actually change, to admit some things about myself I would have rather left buried. It’s been so hard, and so transformative.
Loving everybody, always sounds great, doesn’t it? And it is. It is the way God’s Kingdom is being built. It’s the work Jesus came to do during his years of ministry and it’s the work he accomplished in his death on the cross.
But that’s just the thing. Loving everybody, always is actually incredibly painful and difficult. Loving everybody, always requires us to die to ourselves. But even that phrase, “Die to ourselves” sounds kind of holy and good and spiritual and not so bad. Sure, I’ll die to myself. That’s what Jesus said to do, so I’ll do it. I can left my husband pick the restaurant tonight. I can serve at the soup kitchen for an hour. I can do the dishes after the potluck. Dying to myself isn’t all that bad…
In Everybody Always Bob Goff writes,
People who are becoming love talk a lot more about what God’s doing than what they’re doing because they’ve stopped keeping score. The next time you’re tempted to boast, just say under your breath, ”It’s not about me.”
Loving everybody, always actually starts by acknowledging our prejudices and our fears and our selfishness. Loving everybody, always is a constant invitation to move towards the people who weird us out or are on the wrong side of the fence about abortion or gay rights. It’s about moving towards the ones who have landed themselves in jail and “deserve what they have coming.” Jesus moved toward the mentally ill, the literally dirty or diseased or smelly people. Jesus acknowledged the ones who even his earnest followers wanted to ignore – the interrupting children, the women, the beggars. To love like Jesus isn’t about going to the other side to bring them over to our side. That’s an agenda. That’s not love. Loving like Jesus is going to be with “those” people, no strings attached.
With a growing desire to love everybody, always comes the need to be honest with myself, to put words to the inner workings of my mind. What types of people do I avoid? Who creeps me out? Why do I feel so uncomfortable around them? Why am I making this all about me instead of thinking about the other person or paying attention to what Jesus is doing? It’s embarrassing to admit these things because they’re gross. But the truth sets us free!
I’ve been pushing myself, with the help of Jesus, toward intentional interactions with a few specific individuals who I have tended to hold at arm’s length. I have to admit, it was just as awkward and uncomfortable as I feared it would be. But I just kept repeating, “It’s not about me. It’s not about me. It’s not about me.” Because it’s not. Loving people is about them and it’s about Jesus. And maybe, hopefully, in those moments of sweaty palms and awkward pauses, the Love of Jesus is tenderly chipping away at my defenses and my prejudices and my agendas manifesting itself more fully than before.
