Loving is sharing

Christian loves requires material sacrifice. PLUS: That incident at Panera, teaching from "The Anti-Greed Gospel", and 3 idols to smash today.

I’m still beating myself up about it. Especially now.

I frequent two establishments if I want to write and work outside my home: Panera Bread and Old School Bagel. Both places owe some credit to my writing output, for my books and newsletters, and in book 3 of my Super Jake series (Super Jake and the Hacker, coming soon), I am dedicating it in part to a particular Panera Bread where I became a regular.

So, yeah, if one wants to support a poor author like myself, besides buying my books, you can send me Panera or Old School Bagel gift cards… My DMs are open!

Yet, I’m still disappointed in myself for a recent interaction at a Panera Bread. It was a quiet afternoon, around 3 o’clock, when the lunch rush had faded. Few souls were inside the restaurant besides me, clacking away at some writing project or harebrained idea. I actually enjoy a little bit of noise, so it’s harder to concentrate during these less busy dips in the day.

I needed to refill my cup with Diet Dr. Pepper to fuel my empty mind, charging me back into a flow state. I took my cup up to the soda fountain and filled it up again with the calorie-free but definitely subpar version of the divinest of sodas.

There, a lady approached me, her voice cutting through the silent atmosphere. “Excuse me, I haven’t eaten in 24 hours. Do you have some cash to spare so I can eat?”

Without pausing to think, I replied, “I’m sorry, I don’t carry cash.” I went back to my seat with only a tender smile to offer her.

Nothing I said was a lie. I didn’t have cash in my wallet. I rarely do.

Sitting back down, the interaction played in my head again. I remembered I had a credit and debit card in my wallet. I was in a restaurant, where one could pay for food to eat. I even had the Panera app so I could order without going to the counter. I likely would have only paid $15 tops for a meal—and I had points to spend. There was literally no excuse for me not to get her some food!

Though my mind started creating excuses.

Immediately, I noted that she looked “normal.” She didn’t give off a homeless-person vibe. Her clothes were new enough and nice. Maybe she was lying. Maybe her need wasn’t really that great. I tried to brush off the encounter.

Who am I kidding? I was just making lame excuses. I could have helped her, but my mind had a ready rebuttal that slipped out like a Pavlovian cue: “I don’t have any cash.”

Suddenly, realizing my sin a few minutes later, I looked around for her. She wasn’t in the store anymore. I saw her far across the parking lot, seemingly walking to another restaurant. I thought to run after her, offer to get her food—a chance to atone for shutting down a pretty easy request. But I didn’t.

I am an unfinished creation. The rush of guilt I felt after denying her request for help reminded me of this. I pray that next time someone asks, I can give. I want to change my default response from a “no” to a “yes,” finally knowing then that I’ve let Jesus do some work on my heart.

We can all talk a big game about “loving” people. But it’s moments like this that test our commitment to the cause: Are we willing to love when it requires sacrifice?

I argue today, based on the fine work in Rev. Dr. Malcolm Foley’s book The Anti-Greed Gospel and also the clear teachings of the New Testament, that Christian love doesn’t just sometimes mean giving to others, but significant and serious material investment is at the core of what it means to love as a follower of Jesus.

Body & Stuff

As Foley writes in his book, it all begins with John 3:16.

Say the verse in your head—I’m sure you know it. “For God so loved the world that…” That what? What did God’s love of the cosmos lead to? What tangible result came from that love?

“…he gave his one and only Son.”

This is the grandest gesture of generosity. It’s not the giving of something insignificant, like the old story that if Bill Gates dropped a couple thousand bucks, it wouldn’t be worth his time to even pick it up. God’s love is giving up something so precious and meaningful—God’s very Son!

Jesus shows love by humbling himself, by giving up glory and power through living a mortal life and dying an excruciating death. Philippians 2’s Christ hymn and 2 Corinthians 8:9’s similar statement both affirm that Jesus gave up a lot to be with us. Because of his love for us.

God shows love through sacrificial giving, what Foley calls “divine philanthropy,” using “philanthropy” not in the sense that billionaires today use it, but in its root word definition—“love of humanity.” An affinity for humankind leads God not to hoard blessings and glory and power for personal benefit, but to give them away.

Greed, Racism, Violence, and Empire - Malcom Foley

When the New Testament brings up love, it consistently reminds us that love requires us to give up something to someone else.

The first Johannine letter is quite concerned with proper loving, admitting that loving one another is something taught by Christ from the onset (1 John 3:11). He contrasts love with murder, continuing Jesus’ tradition of linking hate with murder (see Matthew 5:21-22). Then 1 John 3:16-18 makes the connection between love and sacrifice crystal clear:

“This is how we know what love is: Jesus Christ laid down his life for us. And we ought to lay down our lives for our brothers and sisters. If anyone has material possessions and sees a brother or sister in need but has no pity on them, how can the love of God be in that person? Dear children, let us not love with words or speech but with actions and in truth.”

Love as Jesus demonstrated means being willing to give up life and possessions, body and “stuff.”

The early church lives this out so clearly, typified in Acts 2:44-45:

“All the believers were together and had everything in common. They sold property and possessions to give to anyone who had need.”

This isn’t socialism, not some government program. This is radical generosity—the voluntary sharing of their possessions, for they understood that loving each other meant making material sacrifice.

Later, a few chapters later, we see again in Acts 4:32-35:

“All the believers were one in heart and mind. No one claimed that any of their possessions was their own, but they shared everything they had. With great power the apostles continued to testify to the resurrection of the Lord Jesus. And God’s grace was so powerfully at work in them all that there were no needy persons among them. For from time to time those who owned land or houses sold them, brought the money from the sales and put it at the apostles’ feet, and it was distributed to anyone who had need.”

They were living out the call of Israel in their tight-knit community. If you read those books you may have skipped—Leviticus and Deuteronomy—you’d know God is very concerned with how our actions economically reflect the Lord’s impact on our hearts. The Prophets too, you may recall, chiefly call out nations and leaders for the very existence of needy and disenfranchised people in the land, a national travesty.

Lest we be tempted to think that all these examples apply only to fellow Christians, don’t forget that Jesus calls us to love our enemies. We have no basis to think that the same definition doesn’t apply to enemies. The Samaritan, after all, gives up time, money, and even arguably safety to transport the beaten Jew in the parable that bears his name. This parable is, of course, told specifically to address the concept of our ethical treatment of others and what it means to love our neighbor.

Foley summarizes his view of love: “love is best understood fundamentally and inextricably as material investment in one’s neighbor” (115). Even though his definition includes the word “material,” even Foley gives examples of intangible and spiritual investments we might make in others—suggesting even that choosing not to inflict some actions on your enemy, like choosing not to kill someone in self-defense, is a profound act of love because it refuses to take from someone you are called to love. The investments we make in our neighbors (and enemies) require us to give up a little something real: time, money, resources, energy, or pride.

Later, Foley notes quite nicely: “When everything we possess is a gift from a loving God, love looks like sharing” (117).

Loving Other Smashes Idols

The consequences of this investment view of love are multitude.

But since our purposes here require us to smash some idols, it will suffice to point out a few idols that get smashed immediately if we consider love as sacrificial investment. We’ll cover Greed, Nationalism, and Violence.

Greed

While we don’t like to talk about the elephant in the room with pupils made of dollar signs, the pursuit of more stuff and resources isn’t good for us. Not only do greedy endeavors too often steal from marginalized folks who either work for criminally low wages or are otherwise disadvantaged by our more efficient means to hoard wealth, but greed goes against the whole project of Christianity, which is to give away. Sorry, hoarding for the purpose of giving away is still going to cause issues in the way it shapes your heart.

Nationalism

If love requires investment in people, then there is no way to love people and support policies or nations that help one group and hurt another, especially when the group being hurt is historically disadvantaged and has trouble getting a leg up in a society that keeps pushing them down. Nationalism, an extreme exclusionary love for country, makes no sense in the Christian sense—not just because any division is contrary to the church’s mission of radical unity, but because we cannot in good faith think citizens of our context deserve any more material investment than anyone else on the planet.

I choose neither

Violence

It is impossible to make a life-giving investment in someone you kill or support killing. Full stop. Not up for debate. You cannot love an enemy and seek their material well-being when you want to see them killed. Failure to see any other option besides violence is a failure of imagination and a clear indication that Jesus has some work to do on your heart.

Getting punched by a Nazi

Final Thoughts

There are many more idols that get smashed if we see love as requiring serious, often material investment, as Scripture does. Love in this way changes everything. It bars Christians from certain actions and pursuits and calls us to:

“Give to the one who asks you, and do not turn away from the one who wants to borrow from you.”

-Matthew 5:42

This verse is right before Jesus launches into loving one’s enemy. That’s not a coincident. It hits at the core of our faith.

I’m sorry, I’m just uninterested in any “buts” and excuses for this clear teaching of Jesus. I’m going to pass on any Christian faith that can’t see love in this way. God’s love, which we model, calls us to live radically differently.

I should have followed Matthew 5:42 when that woman came up to me at Panera. She was a stranger, but I’m called to love strangers too. Between loving my neighbor and loving my enemy, no one is excluded. I know I have work to do on living out Christian love, as we all do. So I’m going to get to work on that right away!

I now understand that love requires investment, not just “words or speech” (see 1 John 3:18 again). I hope you’ll join me in this commitment to love. Can you imagine if the descriptions of the church in Acts 2 and 4 were true today? You couldn’t count the number of people who would rush into our Christian communities!

To God be the glory!

Life Updates

• Subscribe to the Smashing Idols podcast on your favorite podcast platform.

• Currently working on my book “The Inefficient Gospel” about how the Gospel calls us to the slow and people-centric path.

In love and its sacrfice,

Jake Doberenz

Photo by Debby Hudson on Unsplash

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