Heaven Without You

"I was recently asked by a non-Christian friend if I thought he was going to hell. I said, 'I hope not. It will be hard to enjoy heaven without you.'"
—Shane Claiborne

I just finished reading this article by Shane Claiborne on Esquire and this quote stopped me in my tracks. I actually sensed love in Shane's response, rather than simply a theologically accurate answer to the friend's question or articulation of a formula to convert the friend from one eternal destination to another.

As I continually sort through the good and bad of what Christianity has become, clinging to what is good, and abhorring what is evil, things like this stand out. Do those around us, who may not understand the good news that Jesus is, feel loved by us? Speaking truth is obviously necessary, but what good is truth if we are blind to the blatant hypocrisy in what we're saying? Loving someone does not equal telling them about Jesus in some pre-packaged way. Loving people is unique. It takes effort, sacrifice. It takes time out of our busy schedules. It takes interruptions. It takes some soul-searching and good listening, to understand people better and know where their hearts are, what their needs are. I think that creates the fertile soil to speak truth into. But if we haven't gained the capacity to genuinely love and care for the people around us, without the agenda of trying to "steer the conversation towards the Lord", our words about God will fall flat in the face of our lack of sincere concern. People know when they are being loved. People know when they are being pitched to. The gospel is not a pitch. The gospel is supposed to be a radical revolution of selfless love, rooted in a deep experience of the love of God in Jesus Christ, that pours itself out in an upside way, disrupting the kingdom of this world, the constant in-break of heaven's kingdom into the earth's.

May we who profess to be Christians be more focused on genuinely loving our neighbor with no strings attached than converting them... Let's let love define us, not causes or agendas or political platforms...