To Love is to Risk

"Jesus followers join churches because they want to be like Jesus and will risk loving others deeply. Don't ever deny the pain of this risk and naively think that truly living in community as the church with sinners is easy. Church squabbles do injure innocent people. Church leaders to disappoint when they don't live up the their calling. Other believers do betray trust and cause disillusionment. Every Christian both suffers these pains and causes others to suffer them. To love is to risk and grow through pain, and those who want to love well choose to suffer pain rather than self protect by abandoning the church." ~Mark Driscoll, Doctrine.

To love is to risk. Each of us comes to relationship with our own sinfulness, history, and hurt. To enter into relationship with other broken people is to risk (if not to guarantee) pain.

I believe that we all have both a fear of being known and a yearning for it. God said that it was not good for man to be alone. We were created for relationship with God, with our spouses, with other people. We all hunger for community and acceptance. But I am convinced that however much we want and need it, true community is rare.

True community is more than hanging out, sharing a meal, talking about the week, or discussing the Bible. It is more than occupying the same space. True community requires vulnerability.

It is difficult to be vulnerable with those truly dark places in our hearts. We allow people to come only so far, but no further. We are afraid that if others truly knew us, they would reject us. True community requires faith that others will be gracious with what they find in those broken places. It cannot exist without grace. Only grace gives the freedom to truly be known by another.

Being known is good for us. Our sin surfaces in deep community. We have a tendency to minimize our sin and deceive ourselves in regard to it. Jeremiah tells us that the heart is "deceitful above all things, and desperately sick." Other people often see us more clearly than we see ourselves. Conflict and confrontation in close relationship draws out the sin that we either fail to see or fail to repent of. This confrontation, while painful, refines us. It also allows other people to show us grace, driving the gospel deeper. If imperfect people can bear with one another in love in spite of sin and weakness, how much more a loving and perfect God? That another has loved us in our unloveliness helps us believe that God can and does.

These blessings, however, are unavailable to us if we do not allow ourselves to be known. To love and be loved. That's scary because people are sinners. True community gets messy. But if we guard against the hurt, and don't allow people in, we lose an opportunity to be love and be loved in a way that helps us believe the gospel. In the end, I believe the blessing is worth the risk.

I choose community. Even when it hurts.