Giving to Get: Do Good for Goodness’s Sake
We love because He first loved us…
No one should seek their own good, but the good of others.
It was the end of the day and that meant the five and six year olds were pooped. My guy, Carter (not his actual name, obviously, but it’s a fine name), had a pretty decent day. Relatively nonviolent, a few disgruntled “I hate you’s!”, but nothing too outside of the norm. He was playing in the kitchen area; not a literal kitchen of course. But naturally, with his big personality, he was the “dad” of the three other five and six year olds around.
Another kid, Peter, was dismayed. He wanted to play in the kitchen. Twas a coveted position, and exclusive at that. Four spots and that’s it. No ifs, ands, or buts. Hard and fast rules are the only way to save yourself time, anguish, and a lot of angry kindergartners.
Peter had a good moment earlier in the day. Carter was fuming because another student, Jerry, was playing fickle and hard to get. One might say the childhood equivalent and parallel of the ghosting phenomenon amongst my peers (guys, please don’t. It’s literally the worst). Peter, having keen observation skills, approached Jerry and whispered something into his ear. After his little fireside chat with the other little guy, Carter and Jerry were able to play hassle free and ditching free.
I was proud of Peter in that moment. Later when we returned to the classroom I gave him an “eagle” ticket, in fact. He grinned from ear to ear after this moment. I went up to my colleague, my fellow para warrior, and gladly told her story. And then she herself grew a huge grin and distracted me from finishing my story.
“Peter just convinced Dennis in the kitchen to play with him at the building blocks. When Dennis left the kitchen to play with Peter at the blocks, Peter then went to the kitchen and stole his spot.”
Well played, Peter. You sly dog.
Adults are no less culpable of this. They do it much more subconsciously in fact. Under the guise of self-sacrifice, martyrdom, and, even more confusingly, for the sake of “God.”
And I”m calling it (as many others have done too) “giving to get.”
I’m psyched that Pete Scazzero’s emotionally healthy spirituality took over at my church. At a lot of other churches too. The way we had compartmentalized life so deeply, reinforced from the pulpit, always confused me, even as a young kid. I remember being radically confused that the kids at youth group who said they read their bibles everyday were often the meanest. Or, to be fair, the most obviously phony and most obviously nice in an inauthentic way.
I’m huge into being genuine, being authentic, being “true.” I think it’s partially due to my observing my brother’s own social experience in high school and not wanting to repeat his same mistakes. Now, what I mean by that is that he sort of changed during this period of time in his life. I say this not from a judgmental perspective one iota. It’s more something I noticed precisely because I knew who he really was so well. He dressed differently, talked differently, hung out with different people. He was giving away his true self to gain the approval, acceptance, and adoration that is afforded many who operate more from the false self. Thankfully, he snapped out of this place quickly and is his normal goofy, charming, and super super kind self again. Has been for years. He will always be one of my favorite people.
But we operate from a performative, false self far more often than we would dare to admit. What’s crazy about all this is I thought myself… removed from this problem. Not “above” it, because I do try my darndest to never be arrogant. Yet I have been fixated on this true self/false self dichotomy for quite awhile. Here’s a blog all about it. I thought to myself, “I am vulnerable. I am honest. I work hard to do better and to be a ‘good guy.’ I don’t perform, I don’t act, I don’t shy away from the truth. I always push toward it.”
Ha. Not true. Not true at all. My own brand of ignoring the truth, of acting, of giving to get is more subtle, at least to my own awareness, than I ever realized. But it is not less reality, it is no less than the experience of many people I’ve been close to and who I’ve pushed away through my strings-attached sort of love. And this sort of tainted love, this sort of manipulative goodness, this pre-existing condition kind of affection is no real love. No real goodness. No real affection.
It is the kind of false love the enemy promotes. It is not others-focused; it is self-satisfactory. It looks great externally, but is dreadful to experience internally. And is not the kind of altruism the New Testament teaches at all.
This is the most dagger to the heart piece I’ve ever written. I am the “bad guy” here. This is a particular brand of brokenness I am very frustrated to have to contend with. But, circling back to the youth group inauthentic thing, this is definitely something church culture highly promoted, front and center, on the stage, in the back, and on the streets.
At the surface, the mandates of Jesus, Paul, John, Peter, and the rest of the gang are remarkably emotionally unsafe. What I mean by that is the high bar of others-centered love they describe is no small feat. They do, in fact, demand all of who we are.
There have been many people told to forgive abusers and rapists due to a misunderstanding of scripturally mandated forgiveness. Many people have stayed in unhealthy situations because they were subtly or overtly convinced that they should “just be Christ” to the person exploiting them, whether it be emotional, spiritual, physical, or sexual. Further, I wrote before about how many have been incorrectly taught that Jesus’ turn the other cheek teaching is some sort of misguided “just absorb all evil into your person” without some level of resistance to it.
I could go on and on and on, illustrating how so many people have been misled into very soul and body compromising situations due to a surface and frankly foolish understanding of scripture. But this giving to get thing is far more hidden, far more confusing to even illustrate without a full fledged novella. Further, even amidst folks loving with more self-seeking motivations, God is still able to show some level of His love even in the less than legitimate strings-attached kind of love of His people.
But the very reason folks give to get, the very cause of this toxic, less than legitimate and entirely emotionally unsafe love, is that those giving to get don’t feel lovable enough to get. It is an overcompensation, it is a misstep, and, although being no less confusing and frustrating to those receiving the self-serving goodness, is not coming from a place of ill intent.
Rather, it is precisely the place where God must come and whisper:
“You are my Beloved. You are whom my soul delights in. My love for you knows no bounds, no barriers, no limits. All I have and all I am is yours.”
The tagline of my church is as follows: be with Jesus, become like Jesus, and do what He did. Succinct, on point, tweetable, etc. I very much vibe with it.
More than 50% of the importance of the Christian life is the first bullet point. In fact, rounding out all these percentages, I’d say 60% is trusting Jesus is always with you, 30% is becoming like Him (because you sense Him with you all the time) and a measly 10% is doing what He did.
Seems odd, but I’d argue that 10% done authentically, done genuinely, done trusting that Jesus is always with you and always loves you, enables you to be so much like Him that even a few simple acts of kindness are worth dozens acts of kindness done “giving to get.”
Do not misunderstand me; I am NOT saying we are not called to preach the gospel. I am NOT saying we aren’t called and mandated and even expected to love our neighbor as ourselves. I am NOT even saying that loving from a sometimes less than legitimate motive can’t be used to advance the kingdom of God.
I am, however, saying that our underlying motivation to give, to love, even to receive, has to be healed long before we expect to be a healer for others.
For my own life, it has taken a long time to give from a place of interior abundance rather than an interior lack. When I first worked with kids, the positive feedback I got fed my empty, aching, and long-suffering soul. I thought I was a piece of crap, but the smiles, the love, and the affection of children pointed to something different. And yet, looking at it from their perspective shows how their positivity, their kindness, their wholehearted, agenda-less purity set me on a path to learn how to do the same. Over time, over the years, and over a lot of mistakes, I became the Mr. Caleb I am today with the little ones. I give from a place of overflow, not deprivation. I am patient and understanding with their faults, their behaviors, their craziness, because I trust someone above is patient and understanding with my faults, my behaviors, my craziness.
I wrote at length about loving myself and how I am walking the path with daunting, terrifying path. Interestingly, though, I still don’t like a lot of self-love or help rhetoric. Not because it isn’t true, but because it has no anchor. Has no foundation. Has no root.
In order to love well and love without agenda, we have to trust we are loved well and without agenda by God. Again, this we all know in our heads. For crying out, a simple Google search of the mention of the love of God in the Bible is overwhelming. In a good way.
Yet in the west, we believe head knowledge constitutes soul transformation. This, I’m learning, is not true at all. We think that what we think about God is enough to change our life, change our habits, change our beliefs, change our wounds.
From someone who has done that for years (and will still relapse into it often), it flatly doesn’t work. Changing our thoughts is helpful, but is one piece of a much larger pie. We are whole beings: mind, heart, body, and soul. If we can’t introduce God into the dark spaces of our heart, into the fragile parts of our body, into our dashed and cynical souls, how in the world can we then introduce others to God through our misguided love? Thomas Merton says it like this:
If a man (or woman) is to live, he (she) must be all alive, body, soul, mind, heart, spirit.
God first loved us. Sit with that. Meditate on that. Dwell on it until it makes you uncomfortable. And when it’s uncomfortable, soak in it all the more. I’ll make a bold claim here and say that the scariest realization we will ever make in our life is that God loves us, skeletons and all, no matter what. Without condition, without any sort of merit or badge or “good deeds” proving we are worthy of his kindness. Brennan Manning said it like this:
God loves you as you are, and not as you should be… because you will never be as you should be.
Accepting this raw, reckless, absurd love from such a good God is the first step to gaining others-centered love for others. For so long, I loved out of a place of deficit. I did all the nice things, I was the quintessential nice guy. But it did not come from a place of Belovedness or God’s words over me of “you are the disciple whom I love.” It came from “you are only as lovable as the woman who loves you” or “you are only as likable as the cool and interesting people in your life who like you.”
This breeds strings-attached love, coats an otherwise pure and unfiltered heart of generosity and kindness into an impure, agenda’d heart of manipulative niceness and overwhelming goodness.
We have to believe we are loved by God. We have to ask and pray and plead and admit when we do not believe we are loved by God. Only by doing these things can we learn to be loved by God and then be loved by ourselves.
And then, and ONLY after then, can we do good. Only then can we feel good after doing good. Only then are we doing good for goodness’ sake. Only then do we follow Jesus for the sake of Jesus and not for ourselves or the affection of others.
We have Christ’s affection, we have His heart, we have His attention. As the Father tells the callous older son in the Two Lost Sons story, “all I have is yours.”
All God has is ours. This isn’t something we should think and work hard to keep thinking. This is something we have to train ourselves to trust with all our heart, all our body, all our soul. This, again, is why the two greatest commandments assume we love with all of our person, and not just our minds.
This is a tall, tall task. Frankly, I’m scared I don’t have what it takes to love even close to the way Christ does. And yet, this very same Christ is kind with me, patient with me, understanding of my skeletons, of my scars, of my bleeding heart. Healthy love is slow, and so my change into a man of love without strings attached will be slow too. Yet I believe someday I will be able to love fully and wholeheartedly, trusting that what I give to others I need not gain back so long as I have all of Christ with me.
If not, I will project my unlovability onto others, and I will never show just how lovable I can be and loving I can be when I know I am loved God and also by me.
Henri Nouwen summarizes it well:
The main question is “Do you own your pain?” As long as you do not own your pain—that is, integrate your pain into your way of being in the world—the danger exists that you will use the other to seek healing for yourself. When you speak to others about your pain without fully owning it, you expect something from them that they cannot give. As a result, you will feel frustrated, and those you wanted to help will feel confused, disappointed, or even further burdened.