View all articles
Coffee Shops, Pharisees and Loving Others
Too often, we can forget that the second most important commandment is to love others. Unfortunately, it's sometimes easier to focus on following the less important commandments even though loving others should be one of our priorities.
A Caramel Macchiato, Please
I love going to coffee shops. Whether I'm with a group of friends or just sitting alone, there's something about the coffee shop atmosphere that feels right. It's a totally unique atmosphere: Acoustic music in the background. Friends catching up while sipping their lattes. A teenager staring at his laptop and humming along to the music playing through his headphones. A young couple staring into each other's eyes. A barista explaining different drinks to an overwhelmed newcomer.
In a coffee shop, everyone is equal. The customer who walks in for the first time is just as welcome as the regular who spends hours there. Everyone is appreciated and made to feel like they belong, regardless of their appearance, socioeconomic status, or choice of beverage.
Church should be the same way.
Church or Coffee?
I recently met a girl at the church I attend. This church has amazing programs and every department is pretty successful by Christian standards. This girl has been attending the youth group for more than a year, but when I mentioned her to the youth group regulars, most of them had no idea she even existed. I couldn't believe it! How could a youth group totally ignore a teenager for so long? After a year, she probably should have moved beyond the "new" phase and should have made some friends with the regulars.1 If she didn't know she was walking into a youth group, would she have been able to tell that she was around Christians?
It's a sad commentary about Christians if the local coffee shop is more welcoming than the church a few blocks away. Do we welcome the wealthy businessman but try to avoid the teen dressed in black and covered in tattoos and piercings? Will we urge a new family to get involved in the children's ministry, but brush past the teen mom? Are we excited when a young man accepts Christ, but barely acknowledge another young man who looks like he just slept off a hangover? Have we joyously celebrated a wedding, but distanced ourselves from a young girl who confides she's struggling with homosexuality?
Ironically, it seemed to be the exact opposite with Jesus. We find Him with the prostitutes, tax collectors and outcasts. He said His harshest words to the religious people of His day — the Sunday morning regulars, if you will.
Majoring in the Minors
In Matthew 23, Jesus is furious with the Pharisees, calling them everything from "blind fools" (v. 17) to "whitewashed tombs" (v. 27) to "a brood of vipers" (v. 33). Ouch. This isn't the Jesus we usually picture during our Sunday School lessons. He's telling the Pharisees that their priorities were contrary to God's heart. Jesus says,
Woe to you, teachers of the law and Pharisees, you hypocrites! You give a tenth of your spices — mint, dill and cumin. But you have neglected the more important matters of the law — justice, mercy and faithfulness. You should have practiced the latter, without neglecting the former.2
The Pharisees seemed to have it down. They even tithed their spice rack! Unfortunately, though, these guys were so busy obeying the letter of the law that they forgot the spirit of the law. They were so caught up in doing church-y things that they forgot the whole Church Thing.
In the case of the youth group I mentioned earlier, they may have been so busy making sure the service went smoothly or catching up with their friends that they neglected to reach out to the hurting individuals who came. Having a great youth service is a good thing, but it's like tithing a spice rack. There are more important things.
really able to know us by our love?
In the chapter right before Jesus criticizes the Pharisees, He tells us what's most important. "Love the Lord your God with all of your heart and with all of your soul and with all of your mind. … And the second is like it: Love your neighbor as yourself."3 Jesus wasn't mad at the Pharisees for being meticulous about following the rules; He was mad at them for focusing on the less important commandments and forgetting the two most important. Love God, love others.
Did you ever hear that old Christian song, "They Will Know We are Christians"? I remember singing it at Sunday School. The lyrics are pretty simple:
We are one in the Spirit, we are one in the Lord.
We are one in the Spirit, we are one in the Lord.
And we pray that our unity will one day be restored.
And they'll know we are Christians by our love, by our love.
Yeah, they'll know we are Christians by our love.
Are non-Christians really able to know us by our love? Or are we too often identified with the Bible-thumping, bullhorn preacher on a soapbox?
Don't get me wrong — there's a place for confronting people who have sin in their lives (which, by the way, is all of us). However, we need to check our motives when we confront people. Are we doing it out of love for them or because it makes us feel better in a holier-than-thou sort of way? Paul reminds us in the famous love chapter of the Bible that if we don't have love, we're nothing but a "resounding gong or a clanging cymbal."4 No one wants to listen to that.
Moving Toward Love
Jesus' command to love others as we love ourselves should be obvious. Humans are the crown of creation, and yet we don't treat everyone we run across with the respect they deserve. Augustine, an early Christian philosopher, put it this way:
We stand in awe of the ocean,
The thunderstorm,
The sunset,
The mountains;
But we pass by
A human being
Without notice
Even though
The person
Is God's most
Magnificent
Creation.5
What would happen if we, as Christians, genuinely loved our friends and even (or especially) our enemies? What message would we send if we wrote a short note to an acquaintance who was struggling or if we devoted our time and money6 to helping the poor? How many lives could we change if we took loving others seriously? What if we reached out to the one lonely person whom we may see once a week and intentionally built a friendship with her?
C O F F E E S H O PGod will put people in your path to love, and you may be the only one who can show them what true, unconditional love is. Just like the girl I met this summer, there are people around you who are unnoticed. Loving others isn't one of the great spiritual lessons that is revealed when you read deep Christian literature by philosophers like Thomas Aquinas or G.K. Chesterton. It's one of the two basic commandments of Christianity. However, it's probably one of the hardest to put into practice. I'm still working on loving others, and I probably will be until the day I die, but hopefully, each day, I'm a little more Christ-like and a little more loving to everyone God puts in my path.
- If I had been in her shoes, I probably would not have stayed at that youth group as long as she did. I don't really like being around non-welcoming people. Back^
- Matthew 23:23, NIV Back^
- Matthew 22:37, 39 Back^
- 1 Corinthians 13:1 Back^
- Duane Elmer, Cross-Cultural Connections, (Downers Grove: InterVarsity Press, 2002), p. 93. Back^
- Yes, I know college students are inherently short on both time and money, but it's not a legitimate excuse. If anyone could use the "no time or money" excuse, it'd be Jesus. He literally had to escape from people to get some free time; He also had to get his temple tax money from a fish. Back^
Rebecca Kelch attended the Focus on the Family Institute during the fall 2007 semester. She is a student at Spring Arbor University majoring in English and minoring in Christian Ministries. She plans to graduate in May 2009. She doesn't know what she'll do after she graduates, but she hopes God will reveal it to her soon! Like most college students, she loves hanging out with her friends, especially at coffee shops where she'll order anything with the word "frappe." She loves traveling, reading, rollerblading, ice cream and Burt's Bees® chapstick.
Back to top