Christian love makes possible the continuance and spread of the church, the body of Christ and the community of Christian love. It is from the standpoint of love that this book comes at an emphasis on the church, its life and mission, which is being widely examined in congregations. A common emphasis or perspective for study at all age levels in many congregations is “When We Are the Church.” This book serves to undergird that emphasis across age lines by surveying the biblical and doctrinal backgrounds associated with love as the binding and energizing force in Christian community. The book may be used for adult Sunday school classes, for teacher training courses, and for individual reading and reflection.

The book comes to you in thirteen chapters, each suitable for study for a weekly session across a three-month period. Study guidance, including possible goals, discussion questions, and learning activities, appears at the end of each chapter. The course may be covered in a briefer time span by lengthening class sessions or by combining chapters. One way to combine chapters is as follows: Session 1 (Chapters 1 and 2); Session 2 (Chapters 3 and 4); Session 3 (Chapters 5–8); Session 4 (Chapters 9 and 10); Session 5 (Chapters 11–13). Those desiring additional leader’s helps for this course may find these in the September, October, and November, 1974, issues of Christian Leadership (Board of Christian Education, Box 2458, Anderson, Ind. 46011).

Introduction

“Love not only means you have to say ‘I’m sorry.’ It also means you have to accept the sorries of others.”

Keith Huttenlocker tells how to make the way of love our way of life. How to eliminate negativism and thoughtlessness. How to deal with the elements of childishness that are in each of us. He shows the relationship between what a man thinks and how he feels. He tells how to work through resentment; how to listen, hear, communicate. And how to forgive.

“We must love others not only for what they are but for what they can be. Real love is incurably optimistic and hopelessly futuristic … . Love and redemption are inseparable.”

Chapter 1
Facing Up to Love

IT WAS AN OBVIOUS case of suicide: an elderly widow found dead in her apartment. On the table beside her bed was a diary. The final entry read simply, “No one called again today.” Perhaps leaving that message was her last attempt to communicate with a world that had apparently failed to communicate with her.

“No one called again today.” Reason for taking one’s own life? Only those who have experienced the torment of loneliness are qualified to answer. This death would call for no coroner’s inquest. There would be no manhunt for a ruthless killer. Still, we wonder if there was not a murder here. Was not this fragile soul killed by neglect? Who did this to her? Whose call was it that she had been expecting? Jesus expressly commanded, “Thou shalt love thy neighbor as thyself” (Matt. 22:39). But whose neighbor was she? No doubt everyone assumed she was being cared for by someone else.

Three Basic Attitudes

That’s our presumed problem, isn’t it? To know when we are responsible. But since when have we looked to an organizational chart to determine how we feel about people? Of the three basic attitudes we are capable of having toward others, one will be preeminent in each association, and it won’t necessarily be because we’ve figured it out that that’s the way it should be.

Haters by Nature

We can hate people. No one assumes responsibility for hating another person. It is usually done spontaneously. It takes no self-discipline or specialized training. A person yields to the urge.

When Jack Ruby allegedly shot Lee Harvey Oswald, he may have felt he was acting on behalf of society and was executing justice. However, when Ruby first heard the news of President Kennedy’s assassination, it is highly unlikely that he said to himself, “I ought to hate Oswald,” and then proceeded to work up his anger. His hatred was likely instantaneous and unnurtured. Unless you believe in a sinister plot, responsibility had nothing to do with it.

Only God knows how many of us are basically haters. Though our hatred may not breed violence, it is possible that we bear in our hearts the same seething resentment—different only in degree, not in kind—that produces murder. This hate may be more common in society than anyone realizes, since most of us are sufficiently civilized to keep it largely bottled up inside us.

Hatred Will Come Out

Still the hatred in us seeps out like perspiration. The spirit of man has its pores, too. And so we catch ourselves feeling resentful of this one or that one. Could it be that the fever of hate rages deep down inside us? Is it not incidental which associate annoys us? Is not the more relevant and alarming fact that inner hostility has keyed us to conflict even before the associate acts with impropriety? Hatred is a quarrel looking for a place to happen. One day I walked into a hospital room in the maternity ward to be greeted by one of the most vengeful pair of eyes I’ve ever met. They belonged not to the patient, but to her guest, slouched as he was in a chair at the foot of her bed. Presuming him to be the husband of the expectant mother, I smiled and cordially introduced myself. He neither moved a muscle nor spoke a word. He just continued to glare at me in undisguised contempt. Awkwardly, the patient explained that she and the visitor were not married. I suspect he hated her and their yet unborn child would enter that man’s world as I entered that room—hated before I arrived.

Hostility is not always expressed through violence or verbal abuse. Among the more cultured and religious it often comes out as snide criticism, backbiting, ridicule, impatience, gossip, negativism, and other devious devices.

The Source of Hatred

However varied its objects and expressions, hatred is usually traceable to a single (or at least, primary) source. The person who is generally contentious or sour is reacting to an experience—past or present—which has colored his entire outlook on life. During the course of a counseling session it became apparent to me that a young minister was saturated with hostility. Over the course of two or three meetings it emerged that he was angry at his congregation for not paying him a better salary, at his fellow ministers for not ordaining him, and at church headquarters for fostering so much worldliness. This led me to ask, “What are you really mad about?” Together, we discovered that he was carrying a chip on his shoulder which dated back to his boyhood days. He grew up hating the world because he had never taken revenge on his despotic father. Now, everyone else had to pay.

And so, we can hate people. This is certainly not the Christian norm, but it is one option available to us.

Indifference Is Another Possibility

We also have the alternative of being indifferent to people. One certainly need not assume responsibility for being indifferent. By definition indifference is akin to irresponsibility.

A young lady finally wrangled a date from a handsome fellow whom she had wanted very much to go out with. The next day her best girlfriend, filled with curiosity asked, “How did your evening go?” “I had to slap him three times,” was the response. “That fresh was he?” exclaimed the friend. “No,” answered the girl, “I had to do it to keep him awake.”

Who has been trying to gain your attention? If he has succeeded, has it been worth his effort or has your interest been disappointingly dull? Recently, I visited the kindergarten department of our Sunday school. A doll-like little girl brought a pussy willow branch to show me. I knelt to be at eye-level with her. Quickly, we were joined by a second girl, equally lovely, who took advantage of my position to climb upon my knee. It was as if she were saying: Look at me; I’m important too. And so I divided my time between the two of them before rising to speak to other members of the class.

Neglect Is Dehumanizing

Neglect is a dull-edged knife. No one reacts kindly to being whittled with it. If a person suffers repeatedly from neglect, in time he will be reduced to a splinter. Splinters are sharp and someone usually gets jabbed. But the person jabbed by this splinter will probably not get the point. Instead, he will more than likely ask, “What’s he so angry about?”

Indifference is like silence. But it is not eloquent; it is profane. It is like a curse, minus the vocabulary. If the recipient of our neglect suspicions his unacceptability, our silence confirms it. No one is overlooked without being made to feel shorter.

In the midst of a hotly contested local election campaign, a business man once said to me, “There has only been one office holder that I really did not want to see reelected.” Then he told me this story. He had been stationed in France at the close of World War I. President Woodrow Wilson came to France to participate in working out terms of the peace. While there he was called upon to give a speech. A great crowd was assembled. The President addressed the French in their own language. “But,” reported this man, “he never said a single word to his own troops who were there. There were American soldiers there who were sick, those who were in wheel chairs and on crutches, most of them seeing their president for the first time, and he did not so much as acknowledge their presence.” With harshness in his voice, the storyteller concluded, “I never had much use for Woodrow Wilson after that.” Though you will have to determine for yourself the merit of the story, it illustrates the impact which neglect is capable of making.

Indifference May Be Carnal

Indifference may be hatred on good behavior. It is often a passive expression of anger—an attempt psychologically to blot out those toward whom resentment is felt. Clinically speaking, indifference is considered antisocial if adopted as a life-style. In other words, it is symptomatic of the beginning stages of mental illness. It expresses an unhealthy wish to live in isolation. To live aloof from society is a judgment upon either self or society, a declaration that one or the other is not okay. At very least, indifference toward others betrays self preoccupation and insecurity. It is an indication that one’s life is bounded by his own concerns.

And so, we can be indifferent to people. Though perhaps not as un-Christian as anger, it is certainly sub-Christian.

Love Is the Highest Choice

We come, then, to the third alternative available to us: We can love people. Nothing less is acceptable to Christ. Here is the norm he left us: “Thou shalt love thy neighbor as thyself.”

The parable of the good Samaritan teaches that our neighbor is anyone who needs us. The lesson leaves no place for passing the buck. With love, as with hate and indifference, the question of legalistic obligation is completely irrelevant. Responsibility goes with awareness, and it’s our business to be aware! Christ’s approach to mission goes like this: Give a man a loving nature and then let him do what comes naturally. Love helps as spontaneously as hate hurts. Love notices while indifference nods.

Each of us has a gift of love to express. The more we open ourselves to God and his love and the more we express that love, the more love we have to share. Love is a gift that is given to us. It is something that we can grow in the life of every person. It is something that can be expressed by everyone, from the youngest to the oldest; from the most humble to the most famous, from the least schooled to the most highly educated. But to grow and flourish, love needs to be expressed. If it is suppressed and ignored, it withers. Blessed be that community of persons who are tied together by bonds of Christian love. The church in which love toward each other and toward the needy persons of the world and toward God is expressed is a church that will flourish.

It Is Our Responsibility to Love

As Christians we should need no coaching along the Jericho Road. The gaping wounds of humanity are simply not going to be healed by those who limit their sense of responsibility to family and friends. As sure as we parcel out the world that way someone will be left out; like the Greek widows of the early church. If healing is to come it will come through those who cultivate Christ’s capacity to hear cues no one else hears and sight tears no one else sees.

Love is the genius as well as the genesis of ministry. It not only prompts us to serve; it enlightens us as to how best to do it. Love always finds a way. A friend of mine who was enrolled in a class taught by Dr. Wayne Oates, distinguished professor at Southern Baptist Seminary, told me that Dr. Oates spoke at an orphanage down-state in Kentucky. Having been raised in poverty he told the boys and girls how he used to make his own toys when he was a child. Returning to Louisville, he learned that a new book had just been published on how to make toys at home using common household items. Dr. Oates bought five copies of the book and sent them to the orphanage. Those who know this great man well say that this is typical of Dr. Oates’ thoughtfulness of others in unstructured ways.

Love Is Impulsive in Service

Compassion is compulsive. Those who are controlled by love are inclined to be uncontrolled in their sacrifice. Judas condemned the woman who emptied her alabaster jar of ointment upon Jesus in adoration. He protested that money from the sale of this might have been used for the poor. Yet, do you ever read of Judas doing anything for the poor? Evidence points to the fact that Judas had no charity but Judas. He wanted to argue responsibility. He sounded pious, but it was the impetuous woman who was the doer. Love comes through in season and out. Jesus said, “She has done a beautiful thing.” Love doesn’t deliberate, “Who is my neighbor?” Love declares, “Such as I have I give.” Love is made perfect in its impulsiveness. Legalists know nothing about this.

I worked my way through college and seminary largely through summer employment. The summer before my senior seminary year jobs were scarce. I searched for work in Michigan, then Indiana, and finally Ohio. A Middletown construction firm hired me to shovel pea gravel around foundations. Until I was able to secure lodging I made my home with a dear couple who provided me room and board without cost.

Their daughter and my fiancee were special friends, but they scarcely knew me. I was hardly any responsibility of theirs. Still, they treated me as a son. “Pop” Lucas has gone to be with the Lord now, but I’ll always remember him as an example of a caring person. Just thinking about him makes me face up to love.

Helps for Study

Goals

To understand that we can take basic attitudes ranging from hate, through indifference, to love for persons around us. To begin an exploration of what love calls us to do as Christians serving through the church and living in fellowship with each other.

Questions to Discuss

1. Are there times when indifference can be as bad or worse than hate?

2. Why do people sometimes say it is as bad to hate a person as to commit murder?

3. In what sense is indifference to other people going against God’s will?

4. How many different meanings of “love” can you think of? In what way is love always alike? What is different about Christian love?

5. In what sense can a person change his basic attitudes himself? How does God help?

Learning Activities

1. Build definitions of key words from this chapter in the style of “Happiness is a warm puppy.” Only you will use, “Hate is … ,” “Indifference is … ,” and “Love is … ,” (Eg., “Hate is a stone in your shoe.” “Indifference is doing the dishes in cold water.”)

2. Look through the newspapers, magazines, and family photo albums, noting whether each person you see there stirs some reaction ranging from hate through indifference to love. How strong is the feeling? Be honest with yourself. Why do you have the feeling? What all is involved in your love feelings? Do you feel indifferent to too many? Why of why not?

3. Share with one or two others whom you feel close to. What are some of your basic attitudes? How can they be changed?

Chapter 2
“Love Is Our Style”

MANY YEARS AGO when Japan and China were locked in armed conflict, a Japanese soldier came to worship at a Chinese Christian church. The Chinese considered the Japanese territorial aggressors, and the presence of this enemy soldier in the service stirred considerable consternation. Perhaps sensing the alarm he had caused, the soldier stood to his feet and announced, “I am a conscript soldier; but I am a Christian. I would worship with you this morning.” With that he became at once welcome. Following the worship service, the strange guest asked the pastor of the church to sign his name in his Bible, a Bible he had brought from Japan. To his signature the Chinese host added, “In Christ there is neither Jew nor Greek.”

Love Transcends All Barriers

The church is the one place in all the world where love should overcome every barrier. The Apostle Paul could have identified readily with that Japanese soldier, for he too had known what it was to be thought of as “an enemy in the camp.” As a new believer Paul sought to join himself to the community of believers who were meeting for worship at Jerusalem. They were all afraid of him until Barnabas vouched for him, telling the believers about Paul’s mighty preaching in Damascus following his conversion.

To tell another believer that you are a Christian should be sufficient information to assure him that he has found a friend, yes, even a brother. That statement must never suffer amendment nor conditional clauses. It is either true as it stands or the Church of Jesus Christ is violated. Perfect love provides perfect unity. Not necessarily universal agreement about doctrine or procedure. Not necessarily uniformity of standards or practices but “unity of the spirit in the bond of peace.”

Love Results from Salvation

The moment “the love of God is shed abroad in our hearts” through the experience of salvation we are equipped to be the most unique community on earth—an unbroken circle of love. Those who belong to the church are mandated to “love one another” because it is to be our nature to do so. No human organization (to the best of my knowledge) requires members to love one another on grounds that a miraculous transformation has taken place in their hearts. Only the church makes such extravagant claims. The church even dares to make love the test of membership. John writes, “We know that we have passed from death unto life, because we love the brethren” (1 John 3:14). Of course, this is no more stringent than the test Jesus made for discipleship, “By this shall all men know that ye are my disciples, if ye have love one to another” (John 13:35).

You see, love is not just ideological with the church. It is also very theological. It is not just a noble aspiration we strive toward for the betterment of society. It is an expression of the regenerating power of Christian conversion. It is here more than anywhere else that our claims to new life in Christ must prove themselves true. Either the saints love one another or their salvation is worth no more than the buttons on their lapels. Either Christ knits us together by the cross, or the cross is no better a needle than education, social reform, and all of the other tools which men have employed in vain to “bring us together.” Love has to win in the church because it is “our thing.” If we can’t make it work, who can?

Love Is the Life of the Church

Brotherhood is derived from a spiritual quality of life. It belongs only to the sons of God. It is one redeemed soul fellowshiping another redeemed soul in recognition of their common possession by Christ. In a study paper prepared for a Consultation on Doctrine this author wrote, “The church was not only essential; it was inevitable. It is the natural result of the kinship felt between twice-born men. The relationship of the body to the head defines the relationship of the members of the body to each other. To paraphrase an old theorem of geometry, ‘Things equal to the same thing are equal to each other.’ Accordingly, Christ, ‘ … having made peace through the blood of his cross, (did) reconcile all things unto himself … ’ (Col. 1:20) and to each other. Our peace with God polarizes the church around the son.”

Those in the church do not just happen to love one another. They love one another because “love is of God,” and they are of God. As sure as fish swim and birds fly Christians love one another. This fact was a great mystery to those who were first confronted by the church. The church burst out of the Upper Room into a world of perhaps unprecedented hate and suspicion. The heavy heel of Roman oppression galled men into malice not only toward the emperor, but even toward their neighbors. Hurling an oath at one’s stubborn ox seemed to release a little of the pent-up anger. Toppling a street vendor’s errant wagon was the next best thing to over-throwing the empire. Stoning a condemned harlot was a catharsis for self-hate.

Then a new breed of men appeared on the scene: men who gave a soft answer that turned away wrath. Men who not only did not curse the ox who had fallen in the ditch, but who helped him out, even on the Sabbath. They blessed and cursed not. When they came upon those who had been vandalized by the roadside they did not sneer and pass by on the other side. They stopped to give aid. They forgave their enemies and did good to those who despitefully used them. They rendered unto Caesar without complaint and were subject unto the civil authorities. Even those who were slaves willingly obeyed their masters, and masters loved their slaves. Most obvious of all was how these unusual people seemed to live for each other. “Behold how they love one another,” outsiders exclaimed. Such was the witness of the first century church to the world.

Love Covers a Multitude of Divisions

I have seen that New Testament Church reproduced in places where I have pastored. I cannot speak too glowingly of those wonderful people who were closer than any human family, and yet were always open to welcome new members into the family. I have seen board members rise above differences of opinion and never speak aught against one another. I have seen misunderstandings transcended by love that was greater than pride. I have seen forbearance that survived personality idiosyncrasies. I have seen doctrinal differences discussed with candor and then laid aside without malice. I look back at the times I was not wise enough or big enough to keep God’s people together. Yet, they stayed together. “Behold how they loved one another” is the best explanation I can give.

Unity Must Be Spiritual

We are destined to failure if we seek to create unity in the local church between any other than the born-again. Men and women cannot relate to one another as Christians unless they are Christians. Love cannot be practical until it is experiential. It is all but impossible to love as a matter of self-discipline. Koinonia is not achieved by the will of the flesh. It is the gift of the Spirit. Organization is never a sufficient foundation upon which to build the church. We have settled for affiliation when the church was made for fellowship. Joining the unregenerate to a local congregation is a vain exercise. At best it will produce indifference among the members toward one another. At worst it will produce division. That congregation of people composed of both saved and unsaved is not “fitly framed together”—Ephesians 2:21. It is not a “holy temple in the Lord.” It is not Christ’s way of construction. It is a hodgepodge of old and new lumber. He said, “I will build my church and the gates of hell shall not prevail against it.” And how did he do it? By “adding to the church daily such as should be saved” (Acts 2:47). Were any but the saved added to the church, a little of hell would have gone into the church, and like the Trojan horse, would foster its overthrow. The church which endures is that one made up of “lively stones … built up a spiritual house, an holy priesthood, to offer up spiritual sacrifices, acceptable to God by Jesus Christ” (1 Peter 2:5).

Division Degrades Christ

Local division, even more than denominational division, is a scandal upon the name of Jesus Christ and the heartbreak of those caught up in it. A fine young man in one of the congregations I served flew to a southern state to participate in arrangements for a business convention. That evening in the motel, he stretched out on the bed to do some reading before falling asleep. He had taken along a copy of Be-Attitudes for the Church, just off the press. His roommate was curious and inquired, “What are you reading?” That book has a great deal to say about the dynamics of local church unity. Bill’s roommate that night was an active layman in a prominent denomination. When he learned the nature of the book, he shared with Bill his great heaviness even at that hour because of the friction which was tearing apart the congregation to which he belonged back in Indianapolis. It seems reasonable to wonder how many members of that congregation were unconverted, basically carnally minded men who had “joined the church” out of a desire for prestige, fellowship, fear or guilt, or perhaps altruism.

Love Dares Not Be Superficial

To be perfectly honest, however, we must admit that evangelical congregations, too, have had their share of strife. Just because a person has made his way to the altar does not necessarily mean that he has been possessed of love. Some of us have written love on our Sunday cuffs so that we can give the right answer in church. However, we have not learned love as a way of life. Consequently, when we are caught off guard without time to peek at our sleeves, we give an entirely different and altogether wrong answer. The test of our character is seldom announced in advance. So indelibly learn that love is the answer that it will be an automatic response in every trying relationship. We may as well face it that we are not ready to proclaim the love of Christ to the world until we have first practiced it among ourselves. For a number of reasons (some of which will be discussed in succeeding chapters) we do not always possess the perfect love essential to perfect unity.

Love Heals Our Differences

Nearly twenty years ago a friend of mine became pastor of a congregation that was, according to him, divided three ways. For several months he struggled unsuccessfully to overcome the dissension. He wanted to have a series of revival meetings but because of the situation there was no money to pay an evangelist. Finally he determined to do the preaching himself. Attendance had dwindled so drastically that it was decided to hold the services in the chapel rather than in the main sanctuary. Midway through the week the pastor felt he could carry the load no longer. During the invitation he said something close to this: “You people know the mess our church is in. If we can’t get it straightened out we might as well close the doors. I want you to bow your heads and listen to me. If you are willing to forgive everything that has happened in this church in the past no matter how wrong you consider anyone else to have been, kneel there at your pew and pray.” One by one folks got down on their knees. Finally only three couples remained seated. One of those knelt together. The second went down side by side. For what seemed like an eternity the third couple refused to budge. The pastor waited and wondered what to do next. At last the third couple knelt. The pastor then began to pray. He says that the Spirit came upon him in a mighty way. All over the audience, tears began to flow. When he had finished praying, men who had not spoken to one another in over a year arose and embraced one another. My friend says, “From that day this congregation began to go forward.” Today it is one of the finest churches among us. The pastor took me to that chapel and pointed to the very pew where twenty years ago the last couple had knelt to pray. He encouraged me to tell this story as an encouragement to others to take the way of love.

Helps for Study Goals

To take steps in making the way of love our way of living. To grow in understanding the implications of love for the way the church fellowship is carried out and for the way it fosters unity.

Questions to Discuss

1. “Love transcends all barriers,” says the text. Even though you basically agree with that, does it seem to you that there are some barriers that should be maintained? If so, what kind?

2. While love is described here as coming from salvation, what about all those people who lay claim to salvation but don’t show much love?

3. What is the meaning of the idea that unity must be spiritual? How do mergers, practical cooperation between church bodies, and everyday Christian fellowship fit in?

4. Why is division sinful? It is sometimes argued that we need different kinds of churches to serve different kinds of people. It is sometimes said that there are often more differences between persons in a given church body than between them and certain Christians in other groups.

5. What is there about love that heals our differences?

Learning Activities

1. List all the kinds of barriers you can think of that come between persons. Then take some of the most important ones and consider how love changes things on both sides of the barrier and in the barrier itself.

2. Write, tape, or just think through a description of a person who has the highest kind of love as his life-style. Share and compare this description with others who have done the same thing.

3. Make a study of your community. What are the chief barriers that arise among its people? Among the church groups here? Consider how these barriers might be broken.

THE FELLOWSHIP of the church must be inclusive—not exclusive. Love that is sectarian is contradictory. The image of the church we see described in Acts 2 is that of an open fellowship. “And all that believed were together … and they, continuing daily with one accord in the temple, and breaking bread from house to house, did eat their meal with gladness and singleness of heart” (Acts 2:44, 46).

Recognition for Everyone

A popular syndicated columnist often reminds his readers that each of us wears a button on his chest which says: I want to feel important. The church ought to be a place where indeed everyone feels important: the widow who has but a mite to give, the little child to whom Christ has likened the kingdom, the woman whose reputation was not what it should have been before Jesus saved her, the rich like Lydia, the lettered like Nicodemus, the ignorant and unlearned like Peter, the disinherited like the lepers. Everyone!

Not that the church has nothing better to do than spend its time inflating egos. This is exactly what it attempts when it becomes an elite social club—whether composed of the ultra rich or, the ultra spiritual. Nor are we very helpful when even in all sincerity we “bend over backwards to be nice” to someone who has two strikes against him. God commands us to give special attention to his “little ones,” but may he save us from our patronizing, condescending attitudes toward those whom we receive more as a Christian duty than as a free expression of love. How sickening to be “made over” just because you are black, poor, handicapped, “new,” or whatever. Let us love, but let us be authentic in our expressions:

Paul says, “For he [Christ] … hath broken down the middle wall of partition between us” (Eph. 2:14). That should have been the end of exclusivism in the church—but barriers still exist in many local congregations. For the most part the persons who have erected those barriers are oblivious to them. They don’t realize what they have done. They are not intentionally shunning anyone. It’s just that having eyes to see they do not see the lonely individual who looks longingly upon their good times and wishes he were included. It’s just that having ears to hear they do not hear his hints that he too has a contribution to make or a need to be shared. There are too many outside insiders in the church.

We do not need to make anyone feel important. Everyone is important. If we would awaken to that fact we would overlook none. We would belittle none. If anyone is a member of the church he is one ransomed by Christ’s death. If Christ died for him, how important is he? Sometimes our practice lags far behind our theology.

Is Everyone Really Welcome?

It is perhaps fair to say that most congregations are dotted with pockets of isolation in the midst of communities of love. It seems good when a church says it loves everybody, unless, that is, you happen to be an exception to the rule. When I was a boy it was common for churches to put on their outdoor signs, “Everyone Welcome.” I venture to say that more than one person’s experience has been such as to make him want to spit on signs like that.

After I had conducted the funeral of his little boy, a certain man told me that he didn’t go to church much. And then he gave me a reason that on the surface didn’t seem to make much sense. He said, “I don’t think people ought to make fun of a child’s shoes when he goes to church.” In that moment I saw a small boy twenty years before marching off excitedly to Sunday school, and then coming home torn apart inwardly by the discovery that he was not accepted because his shoes were worn out. Maybe my imagination got the better of me. I hope so.

Apathy Appears as Coldness

But it isn’t only those we treat disrespectfully that we lose. The apathy of fine Christian people probably drives away more persons than do the unkindnesses of the relatively few.

While attending a conference on evangelism I found myself seated at dinner next to a pleasant, unassuming young public school teacher. She impressed me as being an enthusiastic and committed Christian. This prompted me to inquire about her church life as a college student only a few years earlier. Happily, I learned that she had been active in church during college days, continuing a practice begun while still a child at home. She appreciated the church’s ministry to her while away at college but found that one congregation excelled in this over another. She had changed church homes during her sophomore year in search of warmer friendships. What one congregation had lacked she found in another.

The local church must share its love if it is to be known as a community of Christ and enjoy the support of those looking for meaningful inclusion in the fellowship. What less could be asked of us? If the saints are not faithful over a stranger’s visits they will never be made rulers over his will to return. Fellowship, too, has its stewardship.

Bacon said, “A crowd is not company, and faces are but a gallery of pictures, and talk is a tinkling symbol where there is no love.” Let the church ponder that.

Friendliness Is Our Plus

The person on the edge of the church must often feel like a shopper who hasn’t received his trading stamps as promised. He comes to our worship services where he fills his cart with singing, preaching, and announcements. He puts his money (much or little) in the collection plate and checks out following the benediction. At that point he begins to look for that little something extra which gives this congregation an edge over the one down the street (the “merchandise” in his cart may not be superior to what he might have gotten elsewhere). Before he departs the premises he wants to know, “But where are the trading stamps I was promised?” In other words, “Where is the special love I was to receive for having come here?” If you want him to come back, church, don’t forget the “trading stamps.”

One man who had been quite a “rounder” prior to his conversion forsook his former haunts and departed from his former friends. He took his place among people of the church and took them to be his new friends and source of companionship. At first there was the customary “to do” made over him. Then, everyone just seemed to drop him. Patiently the man waited for members of the church really to accept him. Sunday after Sunday he suffered through the perfunctory handshakes and expressionless greetings. Remembering the good old days when he was never without cronies, he did a very level-headed thing. He went to the pastor of the church and said, “Pastor, I’m suffocating for want of friendship.”

If there is a newcomer to your congregation, go out of your way to get acquainted with him. Invite him into your home for a meal or snack. Find out when his birthday is and send him a card. Do more than scrawl your hurried signature. Take a few minutes to write a couple of lines that are warm and personal.

Love Is Not Reserved for Special Friends

Because we follow the line of least resistance in love, Christians gravitate toward one another. This, of course, has an advantage since it affords sustaining strength. Unfortunately, however, it also has a serious disadvantage. By surrounding ourselves with the loving, we insulate ourselves from those who most need our love. Thoughtless love is always exclusive. Living in our beautiful world of lovely people we find it easy to applaud ourselves for “loving everybody.” And we do! If, that is, the “everybody” is understood as meaning all those with whom we deliberately choose to associate and not literally the “everybody” out there beyond the walls of our little clique.

I remember how excited a minister’s wife once sounded when I phoned unexpectedly. Her husband was a fine person and fairly prominent. It was apparent she did not know who was calling. She obviously assumed I was a dignitary from “headquarters,” or perhaps an illustrious preacher or gospel singer. What a disappointment to learn who I really was. Her voice trailed off like one on a record when the stereo is suddenly unplugged. Love me? Yes, if I was the right person. Otherwise, no. That kind of selectivity has no place in the church.

Lofton Hudson writes, “The trouble with our love is that it is not love at all; it is a shrewd business deal: ‘I will love you, if you will love me, or show appreciation, or in some way feed my ego.’” [Lofton Hudson, Helping Each Other Be Human (Waco, Texas: Word Books, 1970), p. 53.]

Love Takes the Initiative

Our love must become more aggressive. We must take the offensive in initiating love. As Christians the burden of proof is on us to instigate fellowship. We shall have to learn to reach out to others (even when our temperament inclines toward shyness). John tells us that it is a characteristic of God to love others into loving him (1 John 4:19). This is a side of our personality that most of us need to develop.

For four years I walked across college campuses “saluting” those who saluted me. For three more years I walked across a seminary campus doing the same thing. Then several years later I did some graduate work and painfully discovered that love asks more than I had realized. I despised myself for the years I had loved only those who loved me. What a cheap way to lay claim to fellowship.

Nothing will constrain a newcomer to become active in the life of the congregation more than being treated like a first-class citizen. If he can drive up to the church building and say to himself, “Somebody in there likes me,” he will feel committed to that church. And more importantly, God will have hold of him. As he experiences the love of God through the fellowship of God’s people his soul becomes welded to the soul of God.

It’s been many years ago, but he still remembers it very well. He had never gone to church, didn’t know anything about being a Christian and didn’t really care much to know. But he was a whiz-bang of a softball pitcher and some fellows from the church asked him to come pitch for their team. Without giving it much thought he agreed. Of course, there was a hooker in the deal. In order to be eligible to play he had to attend worship several times a month. That’s where the surprise came in. He soon found out that those church people cared about him. They loved him, not as a pitcher but as a person. The softball season ended but not his church going. He became a Christian and entered into numerous other activities of the congregation. To this day you’ll find him there in church, right up front.

What About Those on the Inside?

Before we rush out to love the sinner beyond the doors of church, let us give thought to the unloved people right before us. Following World War II our nation was obsessed with helping the hungry of the world. It took us twenty years to notice the poor at home. The church has sometimes been like that. Just because we allow a man sixteen inches on a pew doesn’t mean we’ve accepted him. He can be as lonely as a stranger on Times Square on New Year’s Eve. We must have a strategy for reaching the person who has made it through the door, but as yet, not into anyone’s heart.

Jesus made it his special business to love the people no one else noticed. In fact, some of the New Testament’s most distinguished citizens were outsiders until he took them in. The list includes Zacchaeus, Bartimaeus, Mary Magdalene, and others. Can you think of someone who needs your special attention?

Helps for Study

Goals

To practice sharing love through the fellowship of the church. To learn more about how to draw people into the loving fellowship of the church.

Questions to Discuss

1. How can we make more people in our congregation realize their importance?

2. When someone appears cold and distant to you, how often is that really true of him? Or how often might it be shyness, preoccupation, or the way his face is built? What approaches do you take to the cold looking person?

3. You find friendliness both inside and outside the church. How is friendliness a special mark of the Christian? How is it a special mark of the church?

4. Who are some of the unloved people close around us? How can we recognize them? What do we do about it?

Learning Activities

1. Write some notes of loving appreciation to people you know who don’t ordinarily get appreciated much.

2. Consider why you picked the people you did for the first activity and how you usually address them. Consider what all this says about the Christian fellowship.

3. Imagine what Zacchaeus, Bartimaeus, and Mary Magdalene would have to say about Jesus and his acceptance of them. You could role-play this as an interview between the person and a reporter.

Chapter 4
Love And Our Illusions

“WHAT SHALL WE SAY when they open the door?” The question was asked by a member of our congregation who along with a number of other persons was preparing to participate in a house-to-house Scripture distribution. Someone suggested, “Why not say, ‘God loves you and I love you.’” Yet a third person objected to this, declaring, “There is no way I can tell a total stranger that I love him and say it with any degree of integrity.”

Love Involves a Commitment.

Let’s not argue about whether a genuine concern to see everyone converted amounts to universal love. On those terms it should be possible to say to even a total stranger, “I love you.” That’s not the issue. The issue is just how authentic we are when we spew out sentiment in the name of religion on the shirt fronts of people to whom we have made no commitment and have no intention of doing so. “God loves you and I love you.” That’s fine and noble-nothing, in fact, can surpass it as pure Christianity—providing we really mean it. But if we don’t, it’s a watered-down imitation of the feeling Jesus had for the rich young ruler. It’s an embarrassment to Christ and a lie to the world.

Is Our Love Fluctuating?

Our minds are so adept at playing tricks on us. Let us have a warm spot in our hearts for anyone and we think that’s love. It happens not only with the stranger whom we hope to win to Christ. The same applies to anyone who tickles our fancy. Let a family member or fellow Christian do something that we approve of and our affection for him overflows its banks. Or let him say something complimentary of us or of someone we hold dear, and again we cannot contain our feelings about him. Or let him do us a special favor and see how quick we are to idolize him.

King Saul wanted a comely young man with sound character and a good heritage to entertain him. The engaging and handsome shepherd boy, David, son of Jesse, fit the order to a “T.” David came to play his harp for Saul. The king liked the music because it soothed his troubled soul. He summoned David back for praise. David came and stood before Saul, and the scripture tells us that the king “loved him greatly” (1 Samuel 16:21). Yet, in but a short while Saul would hate David so intensely that he would try repeatedly to slay him. David had tickled Saul’s fancy but when his effect on the king was adverse so were the king’s feelings about him.

Love is not fleeting favor. If you can fall in love with someone who says your attire is becoming—you can fall out of love with him whenever his compliments turn to criticism. Any feeling that is conditional is therefore tenuous. And much of the good feeling we have for others is tenuous, as witnessed by the abruptness with which we become offended.

Love—An Action, Not Reaction

It is not difficult to love those who love us. Perhaps you and I cannot say as did one popular figure, “I never met a man I didn’t like.” But everyone of us can say: I never met a man who liked me that I didn’t like. Ah, such a fellow: he is our kind of guy.

Now Jesus challenges us to assign greater responsibilities to love. He says, “Ye have heard that it hath been said, ‘Thou shalt love thy neighbor, and hate thine enemy. But I say unto you, Love your enemies, bless them that curse you, do good to them that hate you, and pray for them that despitefully use you, and persecute you’” (Matt. 5:43–44). It is among the easiest things in the world to love those who love us, bless those who bless us and do good to those who do good unto us. It can also be a totally pagan practice. Such responses are not—whatever we have told ourselves—inherently Christian. Christ cautions us to expect no reward for this, asking, “ … do not even the publicans do so?” (v. 47).

Love—More Than a Good Deed Now and Then

Another favorite trick of ours is to insist that we are loving persons because we are “so goodhearted.” How that appeals to our vanity, to cite some good deed we have done and paint that as a true picture of ourselves! But the canvas of you and me is too big to be taken in by the swipe of a single incident, and if we face up to it, we’ll admit that not all of the strokes we make with the brush of daily deed are that becoming.

That marvelous Scottish writer, Alistaire MacLean, writes, “I confess with the utmost frankness that the praise of goodhearted people leaves me cold. I have the smallest respect for them … . All the good-hearted people I have known are the creatures of pure emotion, and you can no more trust them in the matter of steady thinking and steady doing and steady giving than you can the weather. You know the type I mean. They give a couple pounds to a widow and forget her existence the rest of their lives. They spend ten shillings on a whim and on Sunday offer the God of heaven and earth a copper. They do one thing and proceed to salve their conscience with the idea they have done everything.” [Alistaire MacLean, Radiant Christianity (London: Allenson & Co., 1942), p. 161.]

MacLean may be a bit too hard on these people, for I have known many good-hearted people who were as steady as the sun at high noon. Still, he is right about the danger of letting our goodness be ruled by whim. We can’t limit our love to the times the spirit moves us. There are days when the milk of human kindness doesn’t rise in me. At such times love has to be a matter of discipline, a response to a commitment that knows no season and minds no tide.

Love Is Consistent

I remember a moving scene from a popular television series featuring a benevolent bachelor uncle, his two nieces and a nephew, and a very British butler. In one episode the children became objects of attention of several young social crusaders who had a great deal to say about love. They sounded so right and seemed so superior to ordinary human beings. These impostors of love, however, soon defaulted on the obligations of love, floating away as quickly as they had come. Sobered by the disillusioning experience, one of the children said, “Uncle Bill is really the one who knows about love. He doesn’t talk about it; but he took us in when we needed a home.” Love is a fraud until it gets around to particulars: Whom? When? How? Where?

Love Gets Down to Cases

It is not too difficult to love the anonymous. Many of us have no doubt fancied ourselves at the side of Jesus sharing his compassion for Jerusalem as he looks down from the mountain upon the condemned city. As I listen to the daily news my heart aches for the whole world, and I, too, would like somehow to shelter it beneath the wings of my love. However, my nobility at times nearly faints when I meet that world face to face, “one to one.” When it comes to living with them, the Herods and the Caiapheses aren’t so easy to love as I had imagined.

Let us distinguish between loving from long range and loving close up. The former is much less demanding. We may love “sinners,” but not Leroy Jones, local juvenile delinquent. We may love the Africans, but not the black family that has just moved into the neighborhood. We may love the “poor,” but not that smelly little boy who rides the church bus to Sunday school. Great lovers—from a distance. Let’s do better than that.

Love is nothing until it is expressed. Discount its genuineness if it abides only as silent sentiment or a noisy slogan while never taking the shape of deeds well done. The bus owned by one congregation bears the motto, “A Community of Christian Love.” The inscription was recommended by a student who as an active participant in the life of the congregation was witnessing to the nature of the church as he perceived it. I believe that motto rings true because behind it stand thirteen task forces, manned by concerned Christian laymen and laywomen who perform the ministry of Jesus Christ seven days a week. And, of course, the nearly 300 people comprising those task forces are buttressed by a host of other persons whose service is unstructured.

Love is a great principle, providing it is applied to people, not theoretical situations. It is nothing in the abstract. It is everything in the concrete. If we cannot love those whom we have seen, how can we say we love those whom we have not seen? That’s not Scripture, but it’s pretty close.

It was said of one fellow that he loved everybody in general and hated everybody in particular. Check yourself. Love without a recipient is like a ship without a port. It sails the seas of fancied service with flags flying high. Yet it never unloads its precious cargo in any harbor of need or fellowships the misery of awaiting shoremen.

Meeting the Test

It was one of those hot summer days in the Ohio Valley when the sun seemed malicious in its attempt to scorch all who dared venture out into its light. The afternoon seemed to linger deliberately as if to make sure everyone wearied in the heat. I left the comfort of my air-conditioned office to mail a letter in the box across the street.

While returning I saw an elderly man sitting on the steps leading to the church sanctuary. It was apparent that he was a transient, his entire belongings no doubt packed in the simple gym bag at his side. Many times travelers have come to my office seeking a handout. When they leave I wonder if the money I’ve given them will buy the meal they profess so desperately to need, or a bottle of whiskey somewhere down the road. I thought I might ignore this fellow. His head was bowed in semi-sleep. He had not bothered me yet; why should I invite a “touch”? Then I remembered the precepts set forth on these pages. I approached this traveler on our doorstep. Speaking softly so as not to shock him, I asked, “Are you all right?” Shocked none-the-less, he roused, focused his attention on me and replied, “Oh, yes; I have been hitch-hiking from Florida. I am sixty years old and I’m very tired.” I invited him into the church to rest. He accepted with eagerness and appreciation. After “showing him to his room,” I lingered to chat a little. With a decided New England accent he told me that he had once been a domestic of the late President John Kennedy. He recalled the day Mrs. Kennedy gave him $200.00 severance pay and a recommendation for a job in Florida. Now unemployed, be was returning northward, hoping to work a few more years to enhance his social security benefits: I left him there to sleep in the church nursery, an Irish Roman Catholic suspended in limbo between his past and his present. How do I know his story is true? I really don’t, of course. But this I do know: Had I left him to wilt beneath the burning sun I would have no business writing a book about love.

Helps for Study

Goals

To understand that the highest Christian love involves steady, committed action.

To arrive at a realistic view of Christian love apart from the romance sometimes associated with it or the disillusions about it.

Questions to Discuss

1. Is it possible for you to say and really mean it, “I love you,” to hundreds of people? Why is this true or not true for you?

2. Most of our affection and good feelings toward other people goes up and down depending upon circumstances. The author says, however, that “love is not a fleeting favor.” How, then, is true love different from our rising and falling affections?

3. “Love must get down to cases.” What does this mean?

4. When people come asking for handouts, how should we respond? Should we always refer them to the correct welfare channels? Is it better to err on the side of generosity or caution?

Learning Activities

1. Study 1 Corinthians 13 to see how it undergirds this chapter. Make your own paraphrase of it or your own meditation guide.

2. What problems are people in your congregation and in your community having right now? Apply Christian love specifically to these cases. What does it say to these people? What does it say to you about them?

The Christian Counter