Dear Classmates,
I would like to start out my letter to you all by saying it has been a really enjoyable year, and I have learned very much, from this class, and from all of you.
It seems to be the general consensus of this class that Blue Like Jazz by Donald Miller is an enjoyable read. Miller uses a very non-confrontational, self-deprecating approach that is appealing to our generation. Yet, he does not write a wishy-washy, obsequious novel that just seeks to please. In fact, he brings up some very convicting points. Miller remarks on the irony that Christians should be the most loving people on earth, and yet they are often the most unloving and judgmental.
In his chapter, entitled “How to Really Love People,” Miller uses the example of the hippies that he lived with in the forest. He says “When I was with the hippies, I did not feel judged, I felt loved. It felt so wonderful to be in their presence, like I was special. I have never experienced a group of people who loved each other more than my hippies in the woods.” However, when he leaves the hippies, and goes to work at a church camp, it is a different story. He arrived at the camp smelling of smoke and looking shaggy. The Christians at the camp looked down at him because he looked and behaved in a way unusual to them.
Shouldn’t it be the other way around? Shouldn’t Christians be known for their love, not their judgmental attitudes? Miller finished the chapter by concluding that we as Christians view love as a commodity, like money. We give it to the people that give to us, and only to those that we expect something from in return. That is the wrong point of view: love is not money, it is a gift.
We need to give our love unselfishly, with the grace and mercy that God used towards us when he rescued us from our sinful lives. We need to love in a radical way as we have been loved in a radical way. As Christians, our love for others should be evident in everything we do. As Dr. Alberta Wilson said, “I want God’s love to shine through me, so that when I walk into a room, people say ‘Wow, her God must be awesome!’”
Jesus himself showed great love to those around Him throughout the Scriptures. Besides the obvious( His great act of love on the Cross) Jesus also spent time loving the least. He took the time to talk to a Samaritan woman who was a social outcast, rescued an adulterous woman from being put to death, and even ate dinner with tax collectors and “sinners.” This last act outraged the Pharisees, the Jewish religious leaders of the time, and they asked how Jesus could dare make such an offence. His reply was “It is not the healthy who need a doctor, but the sick. I have not come to call the righteous, but sinners.” Mark 2:17
The band Casting Crowns says it well in their song “If We Are the Body,” where they tell the story of a young girl mocked by church members and a traveler sitting in a back pew who is made to feel as if “his chances are better out on the road.” The chorus hauntingly asks “If we are the Body, why aren't His arms reaching? Why aren't His hands healing? Why aren't His words teaching? And if we are the Body, why aren't His feet going? Why is His love not showing them there is a way?” As Christians, people that have experienced the greatest love all time, we should be the most loving people that this world has to offer. We have the cure to the cancer of their soul; we should be exhilarated to share it.
I hope that this motivates you guys as much as it motivates me to go out and reach my world for Christ!
Mary
