Love Like Money

"We value people...we invest in people...relationships could be bankrupt...people are priceless...All economic metaphor. I was taken aback. And that's when it hit me like so much epiphany getting dislodged from my arteries. The problem with Christian culture is we think of love as a commodity. We use it like money...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...but love doesn't work like money. It is not a commodity. When we barter with it, we all lose. When the church does not love its enemies, it fuels their rage. It makes them hate us more...The power of Christian spirituality has always rested in repentance, so that's what I did. I repented....I replaced economic metaphor with something different...That is, instead of withholding love to change somebody, I poured it on, lavishly. I knew this was the way God loved me. God had never withheld love to teach me a lesson."
- Donald Miller, Blue Like Jazz

In Donald Miller's recapitulation of a speech he had heard, he strikes at the very beginning of how our minds need to be transformed in order to be an effective communicator of Christ and His teachings. We know that "love covers a multitude of sins" but do we really practice that in our daily interactions with those around us? how about our interactions with those who we don't agree with? or those we dislike? or those who have hurt us?

What does it look like to lavish love on those around us, regardless of their "economic love status", from the depths of a heart that has first been loved by God despite our depravity?

Hopefully, as we mature as followers of Christ, we won't have to love in this way so intentionally, but it will become our very own nature. We won't even know that we're doing it - it will just happen.