Love Can Get Messy

Last night the Trustees honored BBC employees for years of service, from five years to fifty.  Yes, for those who know BBC, Dr. Loescher has served there for fifty years.  And my Jim was honored for 25 years of ministry at BBC, both men motivated by a love first for God and then for students.

As I reflected on last night, it came to me how true these words I read in an article this morning were: “Love Can Get Messy.” We’d like to think that love is all good, filled with understanding, sharing, and kindness, but if you think that is all, you are in for a let-down.  Sometimes love is messy, and you have to do or say hard things, things people don’t want to hear or do.  However, if you really love someone, you will ask the hard questions and warn them of consequences of certain choices, knowing all the while that they may question your love.

The article I referred to is, How We Misunderstand ‘Love the Sinner, Hate the Sin’ written by Suzanne Munganga at http://www.relevantmagazine.com/god/practical-faith/whats-wrong-love-sinner-hate-sin#zRDXFebg2seDjoBC.99.  She says that “we often find it easier to ignore the sin altogether and confuse blind acceptance with genuine love.” And that’s where real love gets messy.

I worked with Dr. Loescher and then with Matt Pollock for a total of 20 years in Student Development. My husband and I have been in vocational ministry since 1975, so I can tell you that where we lived and worked, not just at BBC, but definitely at BBC, there was a lot of messy love, a lot of conversations with students where we had to say things they did not like, or ask questions that they did not like, but that we did so because we cared about them. I can tell you this, we did it even though we knew that conversation might bring pain to them and us – because they would confuse us with the message; we loved them enough to take the risk.

So I guess my challenge today is from something I learned a long time ago, care enough to take the risk. That doesn’t mean we are not responsible to think carefully about how we would have this conversation, about choosing the right place and the right words.  Munganga puts it this way, “Grace in this situation is also realizing that we are all sinful—no one person more sinful than the other—and in that, we should be coming from a place of love, rather than judgment or condescension.”  And we must understand that no matter how thoughtful we are and how loving we think we are, we will still risk rejection.  BUT, if our love for the people around us is more than words, we will want to take the risk.  It is evidence of real love!

We live in a world that is so filled with the message of acceptance, of not judging, that everyone has a right to do their thing, that our kids may easily come to believe that message, first that “to each, his own” is OK, then to believe that it is wrong to think otherwise.  This week a young woman went missing after a night of hard drinking.  I heard a discussion between newswomen that young women must know how to defend themselves against attackers, but what was missing was that she would not have been vulnerable had she not been engaged in a “night of hard drinking,” their words, not mine. Have people become so fearful of sounding judgmental that they cannot say the obvious, if she had not been drinking so heavily, she would not have been such an easy target.

I am not, in any way, saying she deserved what she got.  I am saying, we need to tell the truth, there is a flip side to “partying,” and we need to love our kids enough to tell them the truth, whether they want to hear it or not.

I don’t think it was a coincidence that I read that article, attended that dessert and heard that news piece in the last 24 hours, so there it is: Risk messy love for those God brings into your lives.  It’s better than wishing you had.