crazy_love

morgan young 5.1.05

Now in contrast to the relationships we saw in the drama, there are these kinds of relationships. (pic of Cleo the dog)

This is the newest addition to our family. This is Cleo the retired racing greyhound.

We call these snoopy-esque creatures "Man's best friend." And in the six weeks or so that she's lived with us, I can see why they're man's best friend. Relationally, they are a piece of cake! A veritable breath of fresh air compared to the spider-webbed complexity of human relationships.

Dog's are easy to love because they're predictable. After living with a dog for a while you get to know their routine. There's no surprises; she's not going to "open up to me" on a morning walk and tell me about how her parents abandoned her as a pup, then she was treated harshly by trainers at the track and they only loved her when she won and that's why she's suffering anxiety over receiving my doggie biscuits of grace without having truly earned them. ;-)

They're emotionally stable. You can yell at them for doing something wrong and they drop their head and walk away. Then two and a half minutes later you can say, "C'mere girl," and in they trot, you give them one sentence of baby-doggie talk and their tail wags like it's powered with Energizer batteries. Yell at a fifteen year old and you'll get eye-rolling angst for the rest of today and 'til just past 3:15 tomorrow!

And perhaps in some small ways they bring out the best in us. I notice that I don't stay mad at her like I can tend to w/other creatures who live in my house. She's shown me that I hold on to stupid stuff that humans do, but I forget her mess-ups in about five minutes.

Unlike dogs, human relationships can be just a tad harder to navigate. And then there's this whole "love" thing. We use the word "love" in a crazy variety of ways:

I love gyros--those Greek sandwiches w/lamb & cucumber dressing, onions...

I love new tennis shoes---the smell--that springy feeling and that perfectly clean quality...

I love my motorcycle--that fat tank, wide handlebars, the sound, the feeling...

I love watching little league baseball---we live right by the field...

I love it when people pray for me

I love it when good friends invite you over for good food and laid back conversation

I love it when someone accepts Christ

I love it when you get some fast food thru a drive through and when you think it's all gone, there's two more fries...

I love it when people at the church ask me out to dinner---and buy ;-)

Not only do we use the word "love" in so many different contexts but I think the definition of it is pretty hazy and even warped. In fact, this morning I want to talk about love and relationships by looking at two love LIES.

But before I jump into these points, I want to ask you a question. Who in your life is hard to love? Spouse, a child, a parent, an extended relative, neighbor, co-worker, boss, employee. For you, who's hard to love right now? Try this: put their face on an imaginary baseball card and hold it in your left hand, and then every so often look down at it.

Lie #1: Love is a magical emotion.

I think we're guilty of defining love as this magical force, this uncontrollable emotion; it's this external thing with a will of its own that either moves your heart or it doesn't. It doesn't feel controllable like air-conditioning. Instead it feels like an unbridled, unpredictable force; like the wind. "Will I ever know love? Will it come into my heart? Why don't I feel more love for him / her?"

We say that we're LOVE-STRUCK. We're a victim of love. It's something that magically happens to us.

It's like sometimes we feel like there's this psychic-scientific device in our chest that detects the presence or absence of love. And the interesting thing is, if we don't FEEL love--if it doesn't register on the "love meter" in our chest, be it for a friend, family member, whoever; we don't tend to express love or loving actions to them.

And if you want to really get goofed on love, watch some movies. Here are some Hollywood love lies:

1. Love at first sight is the only true magical kind of love.

2. When it's TRUE love, it just happens & you don't really have to work at it.

3. Every problem can be fixed in an hour or with a really good kiss.

4. You too are guaranteed to find the man/woman of your dreams if you look like:

Ben Affleck, Austin Kutcher, Leonardo DiCaprio, Angelina Jolie, Halle Barry or Sandra Bullock.

One the reasons "love" is hard to nail down goes back to words. When the New Testament was written, the Greek language had four words for love. Philia was love between friends. Storge was love between family members. Eros was a romantic love and agape was Godly love; love the way God defined it.

I think it's interesting that the word agape didn't come into being until the writing of the New Testament; because up to that point in time, no other form of the word "love" really described the message that God was conveying.

So for the rest of our time together, when I use the word "love" I mean agape love, which is love the way God defines it.

And He defines what love is in 1 Corinthians 13:4-7 The Message

Love never gives up. On a friend, a spouse, family member, a lost person, a mean person.

Love cares more for others than for self. It's not about me, it's about you.

Love doesn't want what it doesn't have. Success, someone's spouse, money, possessions

Doesn't have a swelled head, When things go good, we credit God, not us.

Doesn't force itself on others, it's ok when people aren't where we think they should be

Isn't always "me first,"

Doesn't fly off the handle,

Doesn't keep score of the sins of others, we all struggle & make mistakes so let's not tally others' sins unless we want to tally our own.

Doesn't revel when others grovel, When someone gets what they deserve, we don't smile.

Takes pleasure in the flowering of truth,

Puts up with anything,

Always looks for the best, it's optimistic about people not pessimistic

Never looks back, it doesn't judge people on what they did last week

But keeps going to the end. No matter what.

Look at that list. God's definition of love isn't a magical uncontrollable emotion. According to God, love is ACTION-ORIENTED, not EMOTIONALLY-DRIVEN. It's what we DO or DON'T DO, not what we FEEL or SENSE. When you look at God's definition of love, it is not an emotion. To God, love is a verb.

When you look through the Bible to see how God loved, it's always marked with action. "For God so loved the world that He gave His only Son, so that everyone who believes in Him will not perish but have eternal life." John 3:16 In the Garden, God gives life to man and then decides to make a woman for the purpose of keeping each other company and "multiplying..." ("multiplying" is a gift in itself!) All through His Word, God clearly demonstrates love to us through what He does and how He interacts with us.

Disclaimer: I'm not saying that we can't or shouldn't have magical fuzz-bunny loving emotions. What I'm saying is that emotional feelings of love tend to come AFTER loving actions. Too often we try to put them the other way around. We want to FEEL the desire of love BEFORE doing loving things. In God's definition, we DO loving actions and then we will most likely feel closer to the other person, we will most likely feel loving emotions.

Show me two friends who love each other and I'll show you two people who DO things for each other in 1 Cor. 13 kinds of ways.

Show me a truly happily married couple who feels the magical emotions of love, and I'll show you a couple who's actions are loving unselfish and sacrificial. You'll see 1 Cor. 13 residue all around their house.

A while back a good friend of mine was having some pretty serious marriage issues; so much so that he and his wife had been living apartliving apart for a considerable length of time. They would get together every week but the commitment level in the marriage was weak. He didn't honestly know if this marriage was going north or southhe was getting tired of it being in limbo, in this holding pattern.

Over a long lunch he told me some really weird things like:

They liked each other.

They got along well.

They had fun date nights.

The "eros" part was even good ;-)

After a while I'm scratching my head. He's describing a relationship that sounds as good or better than most marriages I know of.

It turns out one of the big problems for him was that he wasn't feeling the magical love-struck emotions. That little monitor in his chest wasn't pegging the Hollywood love meter.

In so many words, I suggested that love done God's way is a verb. And that what he was doing, was "nothing" and wondering why he wasn't feeling love for his wife.

I suggested that before this marriage drifted into Attorneyville, maybe he should try LOVING her. Doing things that were about her and not him. I gave him a prescription for love that fits God's definition and not the world's. I said, try that and see what happens, see if after a while, you feel love.

I was at their house for dinner a few weeks back. They both live therebeen living together for while in fact. They were both smilingreally smiling, not fake "we have company" smiling. It felt good. And in the middle of talking about sports and politics, he said, "Heyj--ust want you to know they we're doing really good. God in the middle of our marriage has made a ton of difference." She smiled and chimed in...

This point has mostly been around marriage relationships, but that's not the only application. The person on your baseball card you're holding? This works on him / her too.

Lie #2: We should not dispense love like money.

(credit: Donald Miller Blue Like Jazz)

We use metaphors in interesting ways. For instance, with life-threatening diseases, we use "war metaphors." We fight cancer, be battle Alzheimer's, we declare war on aids. When someone lives through the disease they're a survivor.

In relationships, we use economic metaphors.

We value people.

We invest in people.

People can be priceless.

Relationships can be bankrupt.

We make relational deposits and relational withdrawals.

Here's the temptation: If somebody is doing something for us, offering us something, be it gifts, time, popularity or whatever, we feel they have value. They are worth something to us. And when people are worth something, we dispense love, we dispense approval. In our actions, we're very accepting to people we perceive have value.

When people don't have value to us or they do things or believe things that we don't agree with, we withhold approval, we withhold love. Instead of being accepting, we lean towards rejecting. We're tempted to be unloving.

Let me give you examples that are hot in our culture right now---just a few words: (Caution: there are volatile issues ahead!)

abortion... homosexuality... republicans... democrats...

I'll wager that wherever you stand on these issues, you have the tendency to judge the people who have a differing view. (I know b/c I do it too.) Not only do we tend to judge those people, but we often tend to disassociate with them--we tend to distance ourselves from them. We withhold love.

As Christians we're tempted to believe that if we hang out with and accept someone who has an "anti-Christian" view, we're endorsing their beliefs. That's incorrect.

Jesus said, "You're familiar with the old written law, 'Love your friend,' and its unwritten companion, 'Hate your enemy.' I'm challenging that. I'm telling you to love your enemies. Let them bring out the best in you, not the worst. When someone gives you a hard time, respond with the energies of prayer, for then you are working out of your true selves, your God-created selves.

This is what God does. He gives his best--the sun to warm and the rain to nourish--to everyone, regardless: the good and bad, the nice and nasty. If all you do is love the lovable, do you expect a bonus? Anybody can do that. If you simply say hello to those who greet you, do you expect a medal? Any run-of-the-mill sinner does that.

In a word, what I'm saying is, Grow up. You're kingdom subjects. Now live like it. Live out your God-created identity. Live generously and graciously toward others, the way God lives toward you." Matt. 5:43-48 The Message

The way God lives toward us is LOVINGLY!

And Jesus didn't just love them from afar--he didn't just love them in theory. Jesus hung out with them. He became friends with prostitutes, loose women, men of the lowest standing in the community, irreligious people, and people of differing faiths. He didn't approve of what they did, but in His economy, everyone deserves love and acceptance. He loved the sinner and hated the sin. Only by Jesus accepting them and loving them would they ever want to listen to Him. (repeat)

The one thing that is supposed to differentiate the Church (family of God) in the world is love. God is not looking for a band of followers who can point fingers--anyone in the world can do that. God is looking for a crazy band of followers who can love other people, especially sinners and people we don't agree with.

And this dispensing love like money thing doesn't just play out in political and social scenes. It plays out in our homes and our closest interpersonal relationships.

(from pgs 219-221 Blue Like Jazz, Donald Miller)

There was this guy in my life at the time, a guy I went to church with whom I honestly didn't like. I thought he was sarcastic and lazy and manipulative, and he ate with his mouth open so that food almost fell from his chin when he talked. He began and ended every sentence with the word dude.

"Dude, did you see Springer yesterday?... They had this lady that was hangin out with a midget. It was crazy, dude. I want to get me a midget, dude."

That's the sort of thing he would talk about. It was very interesting to him. I don't enjoy not liking people, but sometimes these things feel as though you are not in control of them. I never chose not to like the guy. It felt more like the dislike of him chose me. Regardless, I had to spend a good amount of time with him as we were working on a temporary project together. He began to get under my skin. I wanted him to change. I wanted him to read a book, memorize a poem, or explore morality, at least as an intellectual concept.

I didn't know how to communicate to him that he needed to change, so I displayed it in my face. I rolled my eyes. I gave him dirty looks. I would mouth the word loser when he wasn't looking. I thought somehow he would sense my disapproval and change his life in order to gain my favor. In short, I withheld love.

By withholding love from my friend, he became defensive, he didn't like me, he thought I was judgmental, snobbish, proud, and mean. Rather then 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 I discovered: 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 religion and your political ideas will all 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 in my friend, the difference was with me. I was happy. Before, I had all this negative tension flipping around in my gut, all this judgmentalism 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 television 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 loved 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. (end quote)

When I first read that, I was convicted, deeply convicted. I could see how I would pull back when my kids or wife would do things I didn't like, or when I wanted them to change. I could see how I pulled back when people I work with did things I didn't approve of or agree with. I could see how for years I pulled way back from my oldest brother for all the things in his life that I don't agree with. And with God's help, I'm trying to change my course and quit dispensing love like money.

Maybe now's an appropriate time to glance at that baseball card in your left hand & just reflect for a second (pause)

If you're a person that's more on the analytical side of life than the emotional.

If you're a person who's maybe a little uncomfortable with expressing yourself.

If you're a man and it's hard to break out of your quiet shell,

I have to tell you that love is not an a-la-carte option on the menu of Christianity. It's a non-negotiable.

Check out these words from 1 Corinthians 13:1-3

"If I speak with human eloquence and angelic ecstasy but don't love, I'm nothing but the creaking of a rusty gate.

If I speak God's Word with power, revealing all His mysteries and making everything plain as day, and if I have faith that says to a mountain, "Jump," and it jumps, but I don't love, I'm nothing.

If I give everything I own to the poor and even go to the stake to be burned as a martyr, but I don't love, I've gotten nowhere. So, no matter what I say, what I believe, and what I do, I'm bankrupt without love."

1 Cor. 13:1-3 The Message

And maybe the boldest craziest statement in the Bible on love:

"The person who refuses to love doesn't know the first thing about God, because God is loveso you can't know Him if you don't love." 1 John 4:8 The Message

When I started this message I had some pretty strong ideas and thoughts that God had stuck in my weird little cranium. But as I was writing this I kept asking the question, "God, what's the antidote? How do we make love a verb? How do we stop dispensing love like money---like it has to be earned?

And as I thought about that, and really looked these scriptures in the face---and read afresh the kind of love God wants from me I realized that perhaps this idea of dispensing love to everybody regardless of who they are and what they believe and regardless of what "stupid" thing they've just doneI realized that dispensing 1 Cor. 13 love is much harder than anything else God asks me to do.

God doesn't want me to love the people that are worthy in my mind. He wants me to love everyone, unselfishly and sacrificially, because that's how he loves me.

And then in a cool weird God trick that I thought was only a friend asking me for computer advice, He led me to this verse:

"If I acted crazy, I did it for God; if I acted overly serious, I did it for you. Christ's love has moved me to such extremes. His love has the first and last word in everything we do.

Our firm decision is to work from this focused center: One man died for everyone. That puts everyone in the same boat.

He included everyone in his death so that everyone could also be included in his life, a resurrection life, a far better life than people ever lived on their own. Because of this decision we don't evaluate people by
what they have or how they look. We looked at the Messiah that way once and got it all wrong, as you know. We certainly don't look at him that way anymore. Now we look inside, and what we see is that
anyone united with the Messiah gets a fresh start, is created new. The old life is gone; a new life burgeons! Look at it! All this comes from the God who settled the relationship between us and him, and then called us to settle our relationships with each other. God put the world square with himself through the Messiah, giving the world a fresh start by offering forgiveness of sins. God has given us the task of telling everyone what he is doing."

2 Corinthians 5:13-19 The Message

In this verse God reminded me that the antidote for loving His way is to go back to the cross. Because crazy love started when Jesus let His life be hammered to a cross. And in this verse, we are reminded that His death was for everyone---the people who irritate us, the people who think differently than we do, the people who live on both sides of abortion, homosexuality and both sides of the political isles.

Crazy love is you and I extending love to all people regardless of who they are, what they believe, what they've done, ethnic background, skin color, anything...

Crazy love is allowing the Holy Spirit in us, the freedom to lead us in living unselfish sacrificial lives, as we love people generously and allowing God the prerogative to change them.