I was speaking to a group of believers recently and this little piece of advice slipped off my tongue: Learn to love radically. I realized as I said it that I don’t know what it means. I have learned to love better than I once did by watching people who love better than I do. But I haven’t got it all figured out – I suspicion those that I am watching don’t either. In spite of not having it all figured out, we are working together towards this goal – the goal that Christ laid out as an example for us to follow.
At the risk of being wrong, let me lay out what I perceive it to mean today (while reserving the right to think differently later as I move farther along the path!). It means:
Listening – really, truly listening to the other person. Making eye contact, not interrupting with my next thought before they have finished their thought, having the patience to let people process out loud without immediately telling them the “right” answers I have in my head. Asking questions so they can clarify their thinking. Loving means listening. This is so different from the world’s view that says speakers are important – the world says you need to be a speaker into the world to have your point of view heard. Power is in speaking. I can slip into that mode of thinking so easily – it is rampant in the ideology of the world. But power is not the goal of the ambassadors for God’s Kingdom, is it? Power is God’s alone. It is but ours to borrow thru the Holy Spirit in us. His power is so that we might love, not accrete respect and money and authority to ourselves. So radically loving is about not speaking, but listening until the other person is done.
Serving – and here I don’t mean just greeting people at the door on Sunday, or volunteering to repair someone’s home or car, or any of the other formal ways we serve in the body of the church. I do mean those things, mind. But I mean it in a much wider way. Serving others happens throughout my day through interactions with other people. Here are just a few ways in which you and I might practice radical love through serving moment-by-moment the people God puts in our path:
- Thank the person in front of you for being at work today to serve you, because dollar to a donut, they didn’t want to be there today. Your single statement of gratitude for their help can be the light that makes their shift worthwhile – it can transform their drudgery of work into hallowed ground where they see they are making a difference, not just earning a paycheck.
- Hand out a genuine compliment – and make a special effort to those people who don’t behave in ways that normally attract compliments. Underneath every grumpy, cranky person is someone who feels undervalued and unloved. If you can find something about them that is genuine to comment on, you are shining light where there is a lot of darkness. Feel free to pass out a genuine compliment to the sunshiny people as well. Even shiny people appreciate a genuine compliment.
- Notice those who are hurting – slow down long enough to give what you can, such as prayer. You may not be able to fix their pain, but you can carry that pain to the foot of the throne for them in prayer. Yes, if you ask people, “May I pray for you?” you will find some who say ‘no’. But you will find vastly more who – in their pain – will say ‘yes’. This is love, that we would not only carry other people’s wounds to God when they cannot, but that we would also risk the occasional ‘no’ for the good of all the ‘yes’s.
There are more (vastly more, I suspicion!) ways in which we can start to love radically. These few are so far beyond our comfort zones though, that we needn’t look much farther. If we simply start practicing these daily, we can see our will-to, want-to, our “muscle” to love get stronger. As we get stronger, we will see ever more ways than these to love radically.
Humans will not change the world to look like The Kingdom – God is going to do that. But we can be conduits for the love of God in the places where God has planted us. I may not be enough to sway the flow of history or change any single person – but there is enough of the Holy Spirit in me, to sway my choices today. I want people to leave my presence stronger than when they entered it – even if it is just a tiny little bit. Tearing others down is easy — building them up is Godly. God’s crazy love is love that heals. If I wish to practice radical love, I must look for both the big and small ways in which kindness, patience, peace, and mercy can flow thru me into those around me. This is radical love: to not only wish for the best for others but to proffer it up thru our actions and words.