by Craig Larson
Sometimes love is effortless. Sweeping a toddler off his feet and kissing his cheeks, giving a symbolic jewel to a spouse with childlike eagerness, or embracing a friend we last saw five years ago require about as much fortitude as telling a five year-old to eat his dessert. Other times, however (many times if we care to be honest), love’s labor exposes our love of self more than anything else.
Christ commanded His disciples to love each other. His new command was new in that it stated explicitly what the Law had affirmed implicitly all along—the Law is fulfilled in love. Specifically, He commanded a love that followed His example. Rather than a docile acceptance or heightened tolerance of others, Christ demonstrated a pro-active love through confrontation, in order to teach and achieve what was best for those He loved. Imitation, for us as His disciples, is the metric by which the world will identify us with Christ. It is also the catalyst that offers the most profound opportunity to benefit the life of another.
Consider the premise, “True love does what’s best for the beloved.” (It apparently is not axiomatic because doing what’s best for the one we love, or should love, does not rule the day.) The modern Evangelical remake might be restated, “True love is nice.” As with all incomplete truths, this modern version has a merciless endgame. It causes people to abandon their families and culture to the vacuum of non-intervention. By defining love as niceness, love may say, “How is your job going?” or “I‘ll pray for your allergies.” It will never say, “Your impulsive spending wars against finding joy in God,” or “Your child will grow to hate you if you allow that behavior,” or “Your harsh attitude toward others reveals lies about yourself.” Niceness does not stand between hell and the beloved to oppose destructive decisions. Niceness needn’t discerningly appraise its neighbors’ actions. It may not have been nice of Jesus to call Peter a traitor (even before his treacherous act), but it was certainly for the apostle’s benefit. It was also for the benefit (aka, glory) of God in that truth was revealed by a lover confronting error in his beloved.
Some people are not nice simply because they don’t care. Others are nice, not because they care, but because they seek the flow of least resistance. The Spirit targets our apathy at this point of tension, revealing “best” and “nice” as frequently in conflict. But how do we know if what seems best is actually loving when it isn’t nice? Isn’t there unacceptable risk in confronting where toleration has been the rule? Isn’t love blind? To the contrary, the Spirit mingles the spit of circumstance with the clay of relationships to activate the relevance of truth in the mind’s eye. The believer must introspect until he has in mind the things of God for the welfare of another. Simply put, we must check our motives. Self-examination is an inescapable predecessor to truly loving another because the mind is the rudder of love and the will is the motor. Together, they turn and propel us back upstream against the inertia of merciless niceness. Positioned against the current, love contemplates how to benefit its neighbor more with less duplicity.
Our capacity for love was attenuated by the fall. Our mind quickly links love to responses from the beloved that most closely match the view we wish to have of ourselves. But as a believer’s capacity for love expands, self-consumed (false) models of love become less satisfying. This expansion comes as we feel the weight of the Spirit’s encroachment upon our motives like a slow-moving press, yielding the milk of human kindness as it crushes self-obsession. We discover that love is an act of deliberation, not something we fall into. It’s how Christ loved Peter. It’s how God, who is love, loves us. And we find that in order to love as God loves, we must buffet ourselves to mimic thinking that is not native to our natures. Therefore, when we follow Christ’s new command to love one another, we must seek the approval of Christ above the approval of the beloved. To do less is to make a fraudulent claim to comprehend the nature of love .
Consider a circumstance in your life where confrontation might be best for the beloved. You must love your neighbor as you love yourself. How should you proceed? Begin by asking yourself, “Do I feel concern for their well-being?” If you need help in this evaluation, recall who you love most in this world and determine if you have a similar type (not necessarily degree) of concern for this person. If the answer is no, stop and pray for divine enablement to love sacrificially.
If the answer is yes, ask yourself, “How will this intended act of love be received?” If it may be received with hostility, stop and re-examine your motives. Clearly define why love demands confrontation in this instance. Ask yourself honestly, “Is self-validation among my motives?” If so, pray again for divine enablement to love sacrificially. Ask God to forgive and correct your double-mindedness.
Once you’ve determined that the confrontation is really about the beloved and not yourself, ask yourself, “Is the benefit and impact of this engagement reasonably clear?” If not, rework your thinking on how to best infuse courage and hope into the beloved’s life. When the benefit seems clear…act. Speak love into their life with careful honesty. Listen with as much passion as you speak. Be willing to be hurt and unwilling to become embittered by their response. Bitterness is a loud and leading indicator that your quest for validation has skirted outside of Christ and become dependent on some other desired form of recognition. The satisfaction you obtain in loving others must be rooted in God’s quest to glorify Himself in the beloved’s life, not in your quest for human approbation. This is to join Peter in learning to bear in mind the things of God over the things of men.
Loving as Christ loved can feel risky. And it is. In fact, it’s deadly to whatever part of our identity is rooted outside of Christ. This presents us with a painful choice every time love isn’t nice. We must separate our commitment to the beloved’s well-being from our desire for their approval. It is necessary to stare headlong into the potential demise of the relationship.
A friend once confided in me her inner turmoil over this very dilemma. Love impelled her to confront her friend Julie (not her real name) who was filing for divorce. She realized this meant going against the “support” Julie was receiving from all of her other friends, as well as the emotionally-charged rationalization Julie had assembled to form a platform of moral justification. My friend feared that her admonishment would mean the end of a friendship that had spanned a decade.
Her self-assessment passed the criteria laid out above: Did she feel concern for Julie’s well-being? Deeply. Did she evaluate how love-as-confrontation would be received? Excruciatingly so. Did she search her motives for selfishness? Extensively. She also identified the benefit of potentially saving a marriage and a friend from lifelong, irreparable error. Then she acted. After some rebuttal, Julie assured her that her concerns were received as love, and there were no hard feelings. Then she divorced her husband, and the context for comfortable interaction between two friends drifted from view.
Is this an unsatisfying ending? Who says it’s an ending? When doing what is best for the beloved, we are not in control of the ending. Long-term ramifications remain an unknown until they come to pass. Our task is but to train ourselves to model the inconvenient command of Christ with increasing skill throughout a lifetime of fallen relationships.
True love discards tactics that mimic love, but can’t reproduce its satisfactions or achieve its proper objectives. In the pain of potential rejection, bear in mind that union with Christ’s sufferings can absorb your own. The bold love of Christ can seem evasive when shrouded by our own sinfulness. But once located, it inoculates us against our own finitude and mitigates our fear of confrontation. It moves us beyond niceness to do what is best for the beloved.