On June 28th Tina and I moved back to Columbia, South Carolina after a two year stint in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. To be honest, I did not want to return. The Burgh (as the native Yinzer’s call their fair city) is a great town. Pittsburgh felt much more like home than does Columbia. I had several solid connection with people, and believed that given more time, long lasting and intimate friendships would have developed with many of them. There was also a sense that Pittsburgh could be a place of long term ministry opportunity. There were two churches whose vision and leadership solidly beat in time with our own. The hope was to serve our church community and find a place ministering in the church.
On top of all the positive reasons for our desire to stay in Pittsburgh there exists not a few strained relationship I have in Columbia. The fact is, two of the people, perhaps the only two individuals, I genuinely loath live in Columbia. In both cases, there will unfortunately be no way to avoid interacting with them at some level. Like David in the imprecatory psalms, I have cried out to God for their destruction. Harsh? Absolutely. Unfair toward the individuals in question? Definitely. But it is the reality of my sin nature and the sin nature of every fallen human being to hate. Even if the human in question is redeemed by Christ, we will still finds ourselves in enmity with individuals and with God himself.
If you do not believe this I encourage you to read Bold Love by Dan Alellender and Tremper Longman III. Within the pages of the book you will be challenged to see both the unlimited power of a Christ like love, and the depths of our inability to love as he did. This book by NavPress should come with a disclaimer, “Reader Beware! Opening this book, taking it seriously and reading it thoughtfully, also means wrestling with the darkness of your own hatred toward others.” I have filled pages upon pages in my journal with reflections and wrestlings on the ideas and challenges contained therein. A friend of mine literally went through 3 large blank journals, writing only her reflections from this book. Reading this book can be a devastating monster in the best sense. Even as I read it through once more, I read 3-4 pages at a time, stopping to journal and reflect.
Why is this book so devastating and important at the same time? Because from the beginning the authors are making incredibly difficult claims on and about the human heart. First, they remind the reader forcefully, “Love is the measure by which my life will be assessed.” We are judged not on the ministries started, the size of our bank accounts, the worship done properly, or souls we have brought into the kingdom. None of those things are the bench mark. Love is. Please allow that to sink in—Love is the measure of all things. Love can not be defined by numbers or qualified with data points. The greatest lover could literally fail in ever other measurable quality of life and eternally be greater then the greatest spiritual heavyweights in our history books.
Even so, or as one might expect love is not something one does with ease. For “Bold Love is courageously setting aside our personal agenda to move humbly into the world of others with their well being in view, willing to risk further pain in our souls, in order to be an aroma of life to some and an aroma of death to others.” The last three chapters of the book are Loving an Evil Person: Siege Warfare, Loving a Fool: Guerrilla Warfare, Loving a Normal Sinner: Athletic Competition. It’s why more than ever I need to read this book at this moment. I have a feeling that the next few years will challenge me more than ever to make love the standard and measure of my life. Those two people may provide an a wonderfully painfully way of growing my capacity to love. The fact that I am in Columbia, a place and a culture I am generally not comfortable with confronts me with the challenge to love even when I find it much easier to hate. Sanctification is not a pleasant process most of the time but with books like Bold Love it can awaken us to what is at stake. A book like Bold Love can also remind us of God’s overwhelming grace and love toward us.
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