Desperado, why don’t you come to your senses?
Come down from your fences, open the gate
It may be rainin’, but there’s a rainbow above you
You better let somebody love you (let somebody love you)
You better let somebody love you
Before it’s too late

Eagles

I just read an amazing story by the writer Walter Wangerin, it is a story about a sad and lonely woman that is standing in front of him at a check-out line. They are both waiting to pay for groceries at a local 24-hour supermarket and it is midnight, and he notices that out of a sense of embarrassment by what she is buying, the sad woman avoids the checker’s eyes.

What is she ashamed of? He writes, “Two six-packs of Tab, because your buttocks, sheathed in shorts, are enormous and hump up your back as you shift your weight from foot to foot. You Sigh…Four frozen dinners, a carton of Marlboros, five Hershey bars, Tampax, vitamins with iron, a People magazine, pills to fight appetite, two large bags of potato chips, and at the very last minute you toss a Harlequin paperback on the counter.” He then wonders, “Is this what you read at Sunday dinner? Is this your company?”

And then as she begins to pay for her groceries something very interesting happens, listen very closely: “When the checker rings your bill, you drop a quarter which rolls behind me in the line. I stoop to pick it up. When I rise, your hand is already out and you are saying ‘Thanks,’ even before I have returned it to you. But I do a foolish thing, suddenly, for which I now ask your forgiveness, I didn’t know how dreadfully it would complicate your night…

I hold the quarter an instant in my hand: I look you in the eyes – grey eyes of an honest, charcoal emotion – and I say, ‘Hello.’ And then I say, ‘How are you?’ I truly meant that question. I’m sorry.”

And then he writes, “Shock hits your face. For one second you search my eyes, your cheeks shaken, then, as though they lost their restraint and might cry. But then your lips curls inward, your nostrils flare; the grey eyes flash; and all at once you are very, very angry. Like a snake, your left-hand strikes my wrist and holds it, while the right scrapes the quarter from my hand. I am astonished, both by your strength and by your passion…

You hissed when you hurt me. I heard it and remember is still. Then you paid, crunched the sacks against your breast, and walked out into the night, the thongs on your feet sadly slapping at your heels.”

That is the story. Not much too it. But then he asks this question to himself and it really got me thinking: “Was my mild commonplace question too lethal, too probing, too threatening for the delicate balance your life has created for itself? Does kindness terrify you, because then, perhaps, you would have to do more than dream, more than imagine the Harlequin, but then would have to be?”

Wow, I never had this thought cross my mind before, but in his little story a light came on: Maybe the problem with humanity is not that there is a lack of love and kindness in the world, it may just be that there is a larger percentage of people in the world who don’t want to be loved and run from kindness. Maybe the bigger problem is that people are not willing to open up and be loved by others because somewhere in their past they have been hurt, or they don’t want to change, so they would now rather be left alone than let anyone in.

Colossians 1:21 is a verse that always has fascinated me because it reveals why people hate God: “Once you were alienated from God and were enemies in your minds because of your evil behavior.” Alienation, which means separation and distance from being with God, is not necessarily the result of his Holy standards as much as our penchant for hiding. By nature, I like to wallow in the mud and mire of sin, pleasure, laziness, foolishness, and frivolity. And yet if I draw near to God I know all of that will be exposed and expunged. I don’t want to give it up, so instead of letting his love in, an unconditional passionate love which wants the best for me, I put up a barrier.

God becomes my enemy, not because he is unloving, but because, like the lady in the story, I would rather “scrape the quarter of his grace out of his hand and stomp away” than letting him into my life.

Walter Wangerin writes this staggering statement: “To cross the gulf from Life Alone to Life Beloved – truly to be real, truly to be worthy in the eyes of another – means that you are no more your own possession. You give yourself away, and then games all come to an end. No longer can you pretend excuses or accusations against the world; nor can you imagine lies concerning your beauty, your gifts, and possibilities. Everything becomes what it really is, for you are seen and you know it.”

Oh my, that is it!

It is far harder to be loved than to love because I have to let people in. And when people come in they may tell me the truth about myself. And truth exposes. I don’t want to be exposed.

If this is true, and I believe it is, then this opens up some very clear reasons on why people are the way they are:

(1) Tough Guys and Tattoos: The easiest way to reject others attempt at love is by setting up a wall of granite to keep people out. We think leather jackets, skull tattoos, Harley-Davidson motorcycles and the ability to swear shows just how tough I am – but if I am right, and I know I am right – it actually shows how weak and vulnerable a person is. I don’t want to let you in because I am scared at what you will find, so I will play the part of the leather-hardened desperado who has been out riding fences for so long.

I remember I had to work for three weeks with the same guy on a landscaping job. He loved to swear and the “F” word was his best friend. I couldn’t take the constant flow of “F-adjectives, F-nouns, F-verbs” that cascaded out of his rotten mouth. But then I figured it out. It was all a smoke-screen to hide the emotional scars he lived with every day. His life was a wreck and he didn’t want to let anyone in so he swore like a sailor.

One day after he let out a fast current of “F’s” I turned to him and said, “Hey, I get it! I finally figured you out. Every time you swear you are trying to hide from me how sweet and kind you actually are.” Oh was he mad. He started up with “F” this and “F” that, so I said, “You don’t need to pretend with me how tough you are because I know.” He just got madder, and I just kept saying, “I know, I know.” After about two hours I broke him. It was so weird. He actually stopped swearing! And then he asked me a question, “Hey, you really believe all that Christianity stuff?” For the next three weeks, we had some deep and serious conversations with limited “F” bombs, it was amazing.

He let me in.

(2) Poor Victims and Government Aid: Just like the story of the lady in the supermarket I believe there is a vast pool of people out there who would rather wallow in pity and dependency than be loved and helped to actually change. I know this for a fact because I am a pastor. Weekly people come to the church asking for monetary handouts, but what they really want is for us as a church to leave them alone – keep our advice and practical help out of it- and just give us the money so they can handle it alone. It is easier to blame people in your mind for something they never did, than it is to let people in to actually try to help you. This is why non-personal, zero-committal social programs and government money never really works. As long as you let people hide behind excuses and trumped up hurts, letting people believe that everyone is against them because the world is full of racist, homophobic and mean people, they will never change. They will take your money and go back to getting lost in their Harlequin romances, watching their NFL channel, and binging on Netflix while the world passes them by. “Give me my quarterback and leave me alone!”

(3) Rich, Affluent, and Lonely: If a person has enough money they never think they need another’s love. The accumulation of nice things and a busy extravagant life can fill the hole of alienation for quite some time until it is too late and no one wants to be with you when you really need them. The story of the Rich Man and Lazarus is a classic example of this – the rich man found out too late that he had no one to help him cool his tongue in his hell of loneliness.

Jesus says to the rich in Revelation 3:17-19 – “For you say, I am rich, I have prospered, and I need nothing, not realizing that you are wretched, pitiable, poor, blind, and naked. I counsel you to buy from me gold refined by fire, so that you may be rich, and white garments so that you may clothe yourself and the shame of your nakedness may not be seen, and salve to anoint your eyes, so that you may see. Those whom I love, I reprove and discipline, so be zealous and repent.” 

See, the point of this rebuke is love. Jesus longs to love the rich, but their riches bar the doors from him ever entering their lives and seeing real soul transformation. It will be a scary day when they finally have to give an account to him. Maybe instead of getting mad at the rich, we should pity them.

Walter Wangerin ends his story by saying something chilling: “Love-God’s love- always comes in light. That’s what scares you. Light illuminates truth: obesity, the foolish game between diet pills and potato chips, between cigarettes and vitamins. These things are the truth. These things you hide. Yet it is only truth Jesus can love. He cannot love your imaginings, your riches. Sell all that you have.

Undress-