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 We are pleased to offer a new eight part series 'Learning to love' by Mike Mason. They are edited excerpts from his book 'Practicing the Presence of People (Waterbrook Press, 1999) Mike, a regular contributor to canadianchristianity.com, is perhaps most well known for his book 'The Mystery of Marriage.' that won the ECPA Gold Medallion award.
[other pieces by Mike Mason]
Letting God be who He is, so that you too can be yourself, is the first step to a life of love. The next step, which follows naturally, is to let other people be themselves. Isaiah's metaphor of the potter and the clay applies just as much to our relationships with people as it does to our relationship with God. Will you, a mere pot, presume to tell the Potter what He can and cannot do? In the same way, will you dare to lay a hand on one of His creations? Does one mug in your cupboard say to another mug, "I don't like the way you're made"? Does one broken shard lying in the dirt say to another broken shard, "Here, let me fix you up"?
If you want to be free, set others free. Give everyone lots of rope, even if they try to use it to hang you. Set people free to complicate your life, embarrass you, affront your standards, step on your toes. Don't be a doormat, but neither be scandalized when people act human. The more you reel others in and try to squeeze them into your mold, the less you'll like them. To love people is to enjoy them, truly, warts and all. Give everyone the freedom to be imperfect. The American slaves were not set free because they were all jolly good fellows, but because they were human beings.
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Do we long for our unbelieving friends to find freedom in Christ? First we must set them free to be unbelieving sinners. It is easy to give others the freedom to be kind and loving; the freedom we do not want to extend is the freedom to sin. But doesn't God Himself grant us this freedom? Astonishingly, He has given all of us full license to hate and reject Him, and to do so as fiercely, as deviously, or as politely as we wish. Before we go around accusing others of enslavement to sin, we ought to take stock of our own freedom. If we are truly free, then the freedom of others will be vastly important to us. We would much rather see people freely sinning than have them fall into the clutches of pious legalism.
People do not want to be told how to live. They want to be loved. Lecturing, cajoling, and manipulating will only foster a cynical attitude toward humanity. Even when others do happen to change under your influence, you will not respect them for it. If you want people to be human beings rather than puppets, take your hands off their strings. Give them plenty of room to breathe, and you'll breathe easier yourself.
I cannot set anyone else free. Only God can do that, and even He needs their co-operation. But if I make a habit of treating others as if they are already free, they'll stand a much better chance of getting the hang of it. The reason they are not kind and loving may well be that no one has ever treated them as if they are. If you want to see kingly qualities, treat people like kings.
This is the essence of the Golden Rule, "Do to others what you would have them do to you" (Matthew 7:12). Do you want your in-laws to accept you? Accept them! Do you long for a blessing from your father? Bless him! What is it you lack? What do you long for day and night? What do you want so badly you can taste it? Whatever it is, this is your precious gift for others. Give it away!
For forty years I thought that a gift had to be something I was good at, not something I was missing. Now I know that the fact that I think so much about love, and am constantly wondering how to do it, shows that this is my gift. Now I know that it is precisely people like me, the desperately lonely, who have the gift of intimacy.
April 10/2008
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