Love as a Commodity

I have come to the conclusion that I don't really know what real love is. I'm not talking just about romantic love (which is probably a whole separate topic), but love in general. I have been thinking of what my action based definition of love is. Not my sunday school answer, and not what sounds good, but how I live it. This is what it eventually boils down to (kind of hurts to say it):

I love when it is convenient for me to love. Convenience can encompass all sorts of thing, but generally it comes down to compatibility. For instance, I have cool roommates and find it easy to love them because they share a lot of my interests, are laid back, and don't have personality types that clash with mine. On the flip side, there are the ones I don't love. One example is the homeless dude/aspiring songwriter who is lit up (vodka judging by his breath), and wants to talk about Christopher Reeves and comic books while I am trying to eat lunch in a restaurant with a bunch of friends. Theres the people that I purposely avoid because for one reason or another we don't click. There is probably a hundred other reasons why I might selectively choose to love or not love someone. Are you comfortable to be around? Do you make me feel good about myself? Are you cool? Do you smell funny? And the list goes on …

Blue Like Jazz is one of my favorite books. If you haven't read it you need to. Donald Miller, the author, has such an incredible "out of the box" perspective on what it means to be a Christian. One of his conclusions is that people in general, but especially Christians, have gotten to the point (or maybe have always been at the point) where we treat love as a commodity. Love is an item that is ours to give. It can be bought, sold, traded. It can be given away and it can be rescinded. We are the masters of our love. I can think of no greater analogy of how I feel about myself. That describes my demonstration of love towards others to a T (whatever "to a T" means).

The worst part of it all is that not only is this my personal experience, it fits the mold of how I have seen love represented in the Church my whole life. We like to talk about Agape and what it means for God to love us unconditionally, but we stink at practicing it. Why do we stink at practicing it? We are human, and because we are human it is engrained in us to be selfish. The selfishness of our sinful nature and the selflessness of the love we are called to represent are at war with each other, and collectively as the Body of Christ we are losing. The fact that we are losing is evidenced by how a non-believing world perceives us. I remember times in the past when I was a student at CSU and the fact that I went to a Baptist church would come up in conversation and the person I was talking to was immediately turned off to the topic. I’m pretty sure the reason is that we are so good as Christians at telling people what is wrong with them and then being totally fake with our own lives. Jesus hung out the sinners and outcasts of his time. His love wasn’t condescending, wasn’t based on convenience, it was real.

So what’s the solution? I've thought about this quite a bit and have come to the conclusion that no matter how hard I try to love the right way, I always fall short, and eventually just quit trying. I have also come to the conclusion that as weird as it sounds, for me to quit trying might be a step in the right direction.

1 Cor. 3:18And we, who with unveiled faces all reflect the Lord's glory, are being transformed into his likeness with ever-increasing glory, which comes from the Lord, who is the Spirit.

Jerry Bridges notes in his book The Discipline of Grace that "transformed" is a passive verb, something that is done to us, not something we do to ourselves. My capacity to love is a condition of my heart, which is rotten to the core. The exciting thing is, is that I know the One who can and who is changing my heart. The more he does, the more I will reflect the Lord's glory, and his love! It’s the unnatural becoming natural. How cool is that! I also take comfort that like Paul says in Philippians, Christ has begun the good work and he's not gonna leave it half finished. The only thing that is up to me is how fast that transformation is going to take place.