Crazy Christians

Matthew 22:35-39 35One of them, an expert in the law, tested him with this question: 36"Teacher, which is the greatest commandment in the Law?" 37Jesus replied: " 'Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind.' 38This is the first and greatest commandment. 39And the second is like it: 'Love your neighbor as yourself.’

Have you ever truly meditated on this scripture? Have you ever held it up next to your life to see if it is how you truly live? The first part about loving God with your whole life would look something like a love relationship
between a man and a woman, the kind of relationship that we would call an obsession. Then after Jesus lays that one out there He then raises the bar a little higher. “Love your neighbor as yourself”. If we take this literally what would that look like? What kind of things do I do for myself that I would never think to do for a neighbor?

Recently I finished a book by Francis Chan called Crazy Love. In this book I was challenged to really think about what my life would look like to others if I loved my neighbor as myself. I think most people around me would think I was crazy because it would not make much since. Let me give you some examples that I read about in this book that were crazy. Have you ever heard of a church giving away 55% of its contribution? Doesn’t that sound crazy? Their reason is because they want to love their neighbor as much as they love themselves. They took Jesus literally and said if we give ourselves a certain amount to live on, then we should give that much or more to others. What about the family who decided to sell their house and buy a smaller one so they would free up more money to give. In our culture that is crazy. What about Nathan Barlow, a missionary doctor who lived in Ethiopia for 60 years using his skills to help hurting diseased people in an effort to open doors to spread the Gospel. Once while living there he developed a severe tooth ache that caused him to leave the country to get medical care. Here is the crazy part. He told the dentist to pull all his teeth because he did not want another tooth to slow the progress of the Gospel in Ethiopia.

What emotion is stirred within you when you hear of stories like these? I hope they are emotions of excitement of what you could possibly do out of your obsessed and crazy love for God. You see if we truly begin to live like Christ calls us to people around us will say that is a crazy kind of love and I want some of it!

—Will Tucker