The scriptures say that Jesus was hated by the world of the religious leaders and Roman officials for the radical things he said and did. In a dialogue with the disciples in John 15, he tells them that the same will happen to them if they follow him. He starts with the command "love one another as I have loved you." He finishes with, "and you will be hated for it."
When I look back over my life, I can't recall times I was hated for loving people. If anything, I've done things not out of love that cause people to retaliate against me. I can't say that I've ever been purely hated solely on the basis of what I believe or the way I love though.
There was this one time where my buddy Ricky and I got the crazy idea to go stand on an intersection in Houston "flying signs." We had just read a book that had turned a lot of heads at the time due to its countercultural concepts, and we were going to take the city by storm. So, we made a couple of cardboard signs. Mine said "Jesus was homeless." I don't remember what Ricky's said. We had a bunch of donated Bibles sitting in the garage, so we took them along in the hopes of passing them out at this intersection.
We found a nice spot to loiter for awhile, and there was heavy traffic. There was a bucket sitting in the grass, so we took turns sitting while the other passed out Bibles to the drivers waiting for the light to turn green. I remember one driver seeing my sign and yelling out the window, "Don't be shittin' on Jesus!" Another driver flipped the bird at us. All in all, Ricky and I gave away many of the Bibles and walked away with the sense that we had just experienced "persecution."
This was the closest I'd ever come, but it was manufactured. We created our own sense of persecution, and rightfully so.
I used to have this idea in my head that if I wasn't being hated or persecuted by the "world," then I was doing something wrong. I would bang my head against the wall trying to figure out ways to live radically, so that the "godless world" would notice and rise up against me. I did things like send out a mass email to a megachurch, explaining how they were spending their money on "building campaigns instead of opening their eyes to the world around them." I would use this blog to create controversy amongst people who believed differently than I did, and provoke my "unbelieving audience" to send frustrated comments under my posts so that everyone could see how I must be doing something right if all these people are sending angry comments to me.
For some reason, I just don't think this is what Jesus meant by "the world hated me." I don't believe he went around trying to provoke people to retaliate. He didn't love so he could be hated. He loved and therefore was hated.
It's safe to say that there are not religious leaders walking around scrutinizing what Jesus followers are doing today. There may be controversy every once in awhile, but they are not ready to arrest anyone who they consider heretical. There are authors and artists, preachers and musicians who are spreading a message of love and grace currently who are considered as heretics for "watering down the gospel," but the most that's used against them is social ostracism and attacks on Facebook.
The point that I'm trying to get at is this: Just because we're not hated for practicing a radical form of love doesn't mean we're not doing it right. I can't guarantee that in China or Iran this would hold true, but in America there isn't much hate toward Christianity. If anything, the hate speech in America is directed toward Islam, but that's another story.
What I have experienced in loving the way I believe Christ loved the people around him is, social tension. There was a time when I was a hiring manager at my old company, and one of the applicants was very poor. He didn't have a ride, so I volunteered to go pick him up in the company truck on company time. He was a black man and was in desperate need for a job, so I thought he deserved at least an interview. He didn't end up getting the job, but there was definitely a tension going on. I knew he wasn't the "average" applicant, and he would probably be looked at with scrutiny, but I believed Jesus would have done the same thing.
There was this other time when a guy I knew who had some major issues going on didn't have a place to live. Due to the nature of his problems, I couldn't let him stay at my apartment, because I had two other roommates, and I had to be honest about what he was dealing with at the time. My roommates graciously gave us two days to figure out what to do next. The problem was, no one was willing to take on the guy and his problems. For one week, we bounced around from one apartment to another, trying to figure out where to go or what to do. I believed that Jesus would have loved him regardless of how bad his issues were at the time, so I believed that I should as well. The tension was created when we would enter other peoples' comfort zones. We finally agreed that the best place to go would be the Star of Hope mission in Houston. He would get the kind of help that I couldn't offer.
Love is a choice. It's a choice because, it's already inside of us and we get to choose how and when we let it out of its cage. Jesus says that when we love, we are loving God. God is love. Love is God. Whenever we take part in loving someone or receiving love, we are essentially tapping into the source of energy and life that connects all of us together. When we tap out of loving other people, we disconnect from the heartbeat of humanity, the source of life which connects us.
Jesus says to love one another. The "another" is whoever crosses our path today. Whether it's family, a stranger, a customer, a boss, or a hurting friend, we love. Love does not get offended, and sometimes it's an investment that gets no return. My job is to learn how to not get offended, if I'm having a hard time loving someone. It's not my job to try to manipulate them to do what I want. That's not love, but revenge. Radical love, in my opinion, is seeing through other peoples' mistakes, history, baggage, and flaws, not getting offended, listening more and preaching way less.
Today's Action: What is one thing we can do for the people at work today? How are we going to be open to the "interruptions" of people today? Do we have a plan? Lets enact it before we leave the house this morning, and love in a way that spurs on the people around us to tap into the source that "loved us first."
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