It's worth repeating...

A few years ago I read Blue Like Jazz, by Donald Miller, and there is an amazing chapter about loving others. I posted an excerpt on my blog a year or so ago, but so many of you weren't reading yet. So it's worth repeating...

…The problem with Christian culture is we think of love as a commodity. We use it like money...If somebody is doing something for us, offering us something, be it gifts, time, popularity, or what have you, we feel they have value, we feel they are worth something to us, and I and, perhaps, we feel they are priceless. I could see it so clearly, and I could feel it in the pages of my life. This was the thing that had smelled so rotten all these years. I used love like money. The church used love like money. With love, we withheld affirmation from the people who did not agree with us, but we lavishly financed the ones who did.
The next few days unfolded like a thick line of melancholy thought and introspection. I used love like money, but love doesn't work like money. It is not a commodity. When we barter with it, we all lose. When they church does not love its enemies, it fuels their rage. It makes them hate us more.
Here's how it worked out on a personal level:
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?" he would say. "They had this fat lady on there who was doing it 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…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 on 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.
…I knew what I was doing was wrong. It was selfish, and what's more, it would never work. By withholding love from my friend, he became defensive, he didn't like me. He thought I was judgmental, snobbish, proud, and mean. Rather that being drawn to me, wanting to change, he was repulsed. I was guilty of using love like money, withholding it to get someone 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 to 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 Spencer helped me discover: 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 religions 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 with 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; my part was just to communicate love and approval…