Love is an Orientation

Tonight was the last night that I got to spend with a group of people I have come to love. Nearly every Monday night for the past two years I have been going to down to South Dallas to serve the residents of Park Manor, a retirement community in a very impoverished and high crime area of the city.

The first time I walked into Park Manor nearly two years ago I was not extremely excited about being there. It was a requirement of Dallas Seminary that I serve in some capacity through a missional community. Walking into the recreation room for the first time to share the gospel and play bingo with over fifty people, the majority of whom were older and African-American pushed me out of my comfort zone. How could I relate? What would I say? Why was with these people?

A major area of sin in my life is pride, and looking down on others, especially others that I serve. As I was serving these people I often found myself feeling superior to them in so many ways. I admit it. Like they somehow needed me, they were (dare I say it) lucky to even have me there. I went to an elite liberal arts college, I am now attending an elite seminary, and I have big plans for my life, plans SO much bigger than just playing bingo with some old people every Monday night. I was better than them. This is the truth.

How God killed my pride and my entitlement mentality these past two years. Serving others is supposed to humble us, but I think it can just as easily exalt us. We are the great saviors, we are the great heroes, we are the ones who come in to save the day and help those people who always seem to need our help. We are the enlightened ones and those that we serve just aren't. Oh the sin in that type of thinking. The people of Park Manor are just like me. The Cross levels the entire playing field. Grace makes everyone even, there is no one greater than anyone else in the Kingdom of God.

The 86 year old African American woman needs Christ just as much I do. Our life circumstances may be different, but we share a sinful nature and the need for a great Savior. I think it is important to view the people that we serve as people to love, and not people to convert. Most of us are the people who get asked to serve others and this can make us seem much more important than we actually are. What a tragedy it would be to spend your life thinking it was you who saved anyone, to spend your life feeling that you are better than someone else.

As we serve others it is important that we love unconditionally and realize that the grace of God makes all people equal. Genesis says that ALL people are made in the image of God and this means that all people have inherent dignity and worth. All people. Regardless of race, gender, socio-economic status, sexual orientation, or age all people deserve God's love because all people are created in the image of God. So to think of myself as better or more worthy than someone else? Absolutely sinful.

As Ephesians 2 makes clear we once were separated from the family of God, but have been brought near by the blood of Christ. All of us were non-Christians at some point, and all of us were deserving of God's wrath. But through God's great mercy we now have peace with God. So do we give lip service to service? Do we love only those people who are like us? Do we think of ourselves as better than others?

Let's tear down those walls which separate from one another. Let's be reconciled not just to God, but to each other. The Gospel united me with over 50 older, African American people for the past two years in a radical and powerful way. They humbled me greatly, teaching me far more than I taught them and loving me far more than I ever loved them.

The way to serve people is to truly love people. And to truly love people you have to go where the people are and live where they live. We have to do more than just send people down to the ghetto to tract bomb people. You can't phone in mission, you have to be there and get your hands dirty loving those people for the sake of Jesus Christ. So be faithful to the work God has for, whether what you are doing seems "cool" or not. Being cool is vastly overrated and often hinders us from walking the path God has for us.

Judging people is easy. Pointing out others sin is easy. Ranking people around you in terms of how cool or awkward they are is easy. Loving people unconditionally is hard. Loving people different from us unconditionally is even harder. Do the hard work of the Gospel, loving others and extending grace and acceptance to them on their own terms and not your own. This is, after all, the great news of the Gospel, that God came in pursuit of all of us in Christ, not showing favorites or thinking of himself as better than anyone else. He came not to be served but to serve and move in with the poorest of the poor, loving, serving, and giving himself for them.

Would we do likewise.

R.D.