Crazy Jesus Love: 3 Ways White People Can Love Our Black Friends

Let’s face it: all each of us wants is to love and be loved, to live life free and in peace, to know our children are safe in the world.

I don’t think you can be human and not be affected by what’s going on in our country, even if your reaction is vastly different from those of other people. We each respond differently, but at its core, our response comes from either fear that our ability to maintain or obtain the ability to love and live freely and without fear is threatened, or it comes from a belief that love can and will conquer all.

I come from the latter camp, with the caveat that it can’t be just any kind of love — it has to be that crazy Jesus love that doesn’t really make sense. That kind of love is not defensive but selfless. It’s not interested in self-preservation; in fact, it gives itself away with an incredible kind of generosity.

Here’s one thing I’ve noticed about that crazy kind of Jesus love: it’s active. It doesn’t just sit around singing kumbaya and talking about love. The crazy kind of Jesus love is a dirty-handed kind of thing. It’s a disruptive kind of love that stops you in your tracks, breaks you a little bit, cuts you open so you bleed. It’s the kind of love that runs out of the “holy places” into the streets, where the curbside prophets hold up placards.

It’s the kind of love that listens, without trying to prove wrong, without saying, “Yes, but…”

It’s the kind of love that can stand in anger. Can just stand beside and say, “I hear you.”  It’s the kind of love that can recognize its own brokenness, the brokenness of others, and how possibly all those pieces might come together to make a beautiful work of art. But it also senses that in order to do so, there’s going to be a mess. There’s going to be a lot of hard work. There’s going to be maybe a few paper cuts, or worse — some shards of glass under the skin. Barbed wire cuts.

Thorny crowns.

My Facebook feed and the comments on some of my posts here on this blog are filled with people — people I’m sure who have good intentions — who desperately want love to prevail. And in wanting love to prevail so much, they claim that the Black Lives Matter movement is doing more harm than good. They insist All Lives Matter (yes, all lives do!) and that Blue Lives Matter (of course they do!) without realizing how unloving it is to the Black community to say that.

I’m not talking about the truly racist bigots who are out there. They’re just assholes.

I’m talking about people who really and truly desire peace, and want to love people of all races. To those people, I’m saying: do the hard work of love. Go out and get some damn paper cuts. Run out into the streets and do your best impression of Jesus and his crazy kind of love.

Here are some ideas I have of how we white people can actively love our black neighbors and friends. Links are included for further reading for those who are willing to do the work.  Then, at the end, I want to share a special song that a friend of mine wrote, which I hope will take on an even deeper meaning for you in light of this post.