Radical Love

I was up late talking with a close friend this past weekend (my best thinking starts after 10 pm.) She has just finished her freshman year at college and was telling me about how much she loved her new church. They immediately made her feel welcome and included, without even knowing her at all, she said. She described it as if they we saying to her, "We love you, we don't know you yet and we'll have time for that later, but we are choosing to love you anyway."

This church group is 90% of what I hear come out of her mouth and it's obviously impacted her life in a huge way. She longs to be around them and with them and loves them like family.

I knew I had read about this sort of radical love somewhere...oh, yeah. The Bible. This is exactly the kind of love that God has CALLED us to give to one another. In John 13:34 Jesus hits his disciples with an new way to live life. He says, "A new command I give to you: Love one another. As I have loved you, so you must love one another."
"As I have loved you" refers to God's unconditional love for us and it says that we are to love others with that same unconditional love, meaning without reason. I am going to call this Radical Love. It is not an earned love or a reward for good behavior, rather a decision made to love this person regardless of who they are, how they treat you, what they do, or what they believe.

So, if we are obviously commanded (that's an order, not a choice) by God to radically love others, what's the hold up? So many people despise Christians, saying their judgmental, hypocritical, and fanatics. Personally, I doubt that any of the Christians these people met ever loved them radically. Folks, that's OUR FAULT. We are the ones to blame for our unloving behavior toward others and yet we complain that numbers are down in the church or that others mistreat us for our faith. It is my belief that, just like my friend who deeply desires to spend time with her church group, others would long to be with us if we chose to love them unconditionally.

I believe that we could all begin to love people better simply by changing our greeting-style. Take a look at this typical salutation between Joe and Sarah.
Joe-"Hi"
Sarah-"Hey"
Joe-"How are you?"
Sarah-"Good. And you?"
Joe-"Good."
They part, both relieved to have finished with social formalities without having to tell the other person how they're actually doing because, let's face it, the other person doesn't really care anyway.

Why do we ask how they're doing if we don't care? Would it not be better just to not ask them at all and save them the discomfort of lying to you? Or, we could shock them by asking a different question to show that we are actually interested in what they have to say. For example, "How was______? (fill in the blank with a recent activity they had), or "What's God been up to in your life?. Or maybe, "What's new with your life?" (and don't take "nothing" for an answer)

Think of how strongly we could rattle the world's perception of Christians if we showed them that having Jesus in our lives actually makes a difference in the way we lived, even in the way we greet others.

So, What WOULD Jesus do? He'd love radially.