I am convinced every person needs at least three conversions.
The first is to the God revealed in Jesus and to his way.
The second is to love for other people.
The third is to purpose, calling, and meeting tangible needs.
But here’s what I’ve discovered about change and conversion. You only believe you need change if the story you live in calls for it.
Listen to this insight attributed to John Quincy Adams, our sixth President: “Whoever tells the best story wins.” We are story shaped creatures. In other words, we make sense of reality by the story we tell.
Every pastor knows this about preaching: you can preach your heart out, use amazing illustrations, make stunning points that ring true to people’s current reality, be cogent and incisive—but it’s when you tell a story that all heads lift.
It’s the story we live in that tells us what needs to happen next. Here are three dominant stories we tell ourselves.
The American Dream story.
You struggle. You grind. You don’t quit in the face of adversity, no matter how hard. Expend this dream producing energy and this land of opportunity buoys and draws you as you do. You fight. Then one day, the vision arrives. You achieve the American dream. The story tells you not to quit, even if you burn out.
The Materialism story.
The universe is material—brilliant, complex material. Inside this whirl of billions of galaxies, this tiny blue speck randomly contains the conditions for life. You then are material, nothing more, a carbon-based life-form evolving at just the right moment—a continuation of this cosmic experiment going who knows where. So make the most of it. Go with gusto. Live life to the fullest. Because soon you will die, your ashes will be scattered, and you will be remembered no more, just a drop in the cosmic bucket of an unfolding universe. The story tells you to strive, because what else is there?
The Self story.
Be who you are. Own your truth. Manifest main character energy. Don’t let anyone keep you down. Kick the losers and haters out of your life and move forward into your story like you deserve. The universe will have your back as you manifest your authentic self. The story tells you to win.
In all these stories, if you take them at full dosage, one element is either missing, considered inconsequential, or seen as a threat.
Love.
The American dream story promises a better material tomorrow, with no real commentary on relationships. Never mind that, so go your relationships, so goes your life. There isn’t time for love on the road to success. Maybe you can have it ‘when you get there.’
The Material story promises you the brief moment of your carbon-based spark, with no need for love save as an evolutionary mechanism. “Love” moves us close to each other so we can procreate and keep the biological machinery moving forward. Along the way, you don’t experience love so much as you are used by it.
The Self story promises a spotlight that all too often never appears. The stage stays dark. I spend immense energy trying to maintain my main character role because if I am the center of the story, you are not. In fact, your story is a threat to mine. Love is a nice add-on if I have all I need (because you fulfil something I need), and a risk if I do not. To actually love is to move outside the self and frankly, that’s a threat to my story.
There are certainly other stories, but these three sound dominant notes in our culture that effectively negate the truth Jesus teaches: Love your neighbor as you love yourself.
Notice what Jesus is saying. Be converted to the reality that love is a better story.
We intuit that these stories neglect love because we intuit that love is somehow critical to our actual life. Of course, abuse, trauma, and the like can tell us love may not ‘come true for us,’ but that’s a case of the negative proving the point.
We wither without it.
But we have to be converted to it.
It’s why the first conversion is to the love of God. John, one of Jesus’ friends writes “And this is love: not that we loved God, but that he loved us and sent his Son as an atoning sacrifice for our sins.” (see 1 John 4:10)
In other words we—being human as we are—must experience it before we can give it. Jesus, the lover of humanity, the great evangelist of love, converts us with his life to its contours and warmth.
The first conversion (I wrote about it last week here) requires coming to terms with ourselves and God. It is utterly transformative for a human life and personality.
The second builds on it. We must be converted to the fact that other people exist and the reason they exist is to be loved and to give love.
Your ex.
Your enemy.
Your employee(s).
Your boss.
Your best friend.
Your bane.
Your teacher.
Your neighbor.
Your hater.
All of them. Every last one.
Love is the story.
But I have found that it takes a conversion to see. The light bulb has to go off. People are for loving—that’s what they are here for. And if that’s what they are here for, that’s what you are here for. Love is the great equalizer and the great totalizer.
Love is the story.
The barriers in place to keep this conversion from happening are immense.
Religious barriers.
Time barriers.
Self barriers.
Ambition barriers.
Selfishness barriers.
Pain barriers.
Financial barriers.
The list is almost endless.
But the fact remains, you don’t live a life worth living without loving someone and being loved by them.
If you can’t share love, life dims.
You can amass everything and miss love.
Your life will be a resounding gong or a clanging cymbal.
You can strive and try and reach and miss love. Your life will gain nothing.
You can win and miss love.
Your life be nothing more than a moment in a spotlight.
Those stories aren’t big enough to contain what God created humanity to be—crowned with glory and honor and compassion, rulers over divine handiwork, made a little lower than the angels.
Only love shared is big enough for that.
Next week. 7 ways to give love, 8 ways to receive it.
By Pastor Scott Marshall, Wichita First Church of the Nazarene