Intensity of Love

I remember a youth pastor from Nicaragua weeping through times of prayer and worship, tears streaming down his cheeks. This was over twenty years ago, when I was on a short trip to Costa Rica during college. A couple of us asked this man what he was so emotional about. “Mis jóvenes,” he said. “My youth.” He was separated from them for a while because someone needed medical treatment in Costa Rica. What intense love he had for those young people!

The Apostle Paul wrote openly about his love for a group of new Christians in the city of Thessalonike. He described his separation from them in the strongest language possible: “We were orphaned by being separated from you.” He felt like a child losing his parents, the most vulnerable state imaginable. But he also felt like the worried parent. Twice he writes that he “could stand it no longer.” They were facing opposition, harassment, persecution. So Paul was filled with “intense longing” to see them (1 Thessalonians 2:17), but was prevented from visiting, he says, because “Satan blocked our way.” Finally, he sent his coworker Timothy to check up on them in the midst of their intense suffering.

Paul’s well-being was bound up with the faith, hope, and love of these new Christians. When he got word that they continued strong despite the hostility they faced, he was filled with joy. Intense love leads to all sorts of emotions: worry, fear, longing, grief, but above all, joy.

Like Paul’s fears about the new Christians in Thessalonike, the youth pastor from Nicaragua had reasons to worry about his youth. I visited Central America on short mission trips every year of college, then lived in Honduras for a year after graduating. I observed up close the minimal education and bleak poverty that confronted everyone, but especially young people. Violence was a fact of life. We lived in a town of 8000 people. In one year, four people were kidnapped from our town and held for ransom. Two of them were killed. Everyone said it used to be worse, when one family dedicated to organized crime controlled the whole town. Stolen cars rolled down every street. Drugs and guns were everywhere.

It’s even worse in Honduras’ neighbor, El Salvador, where two rival gangs fight for dominance. Young men like those the Nicaraguan youth pastor loved so much are targeted as recruits by Mara Salvatrucha or Calle 18. These gangs have their nerve center in El Salvador, but they are international. We heard about them when we lived in Honduras, and they are active in the US as well. In some neighborhoods the control of the gangs in complete. Refusing recruitment is not really an option. To say no means poverty for certain, and probably death.

The violence committed by the gangs is appalling. People are frequently hacked to death with machetes. Sometimes the organs of murder victims are left in the shape of a pentagon, as literal offerings to the devil. Yes, Mara Salvatrucha has ties to Satanism. An article in the Washington Post quotes a gang member running from the scene of a murder in the Washington, D.C. area, “I told you, homeboy, that what I wanted was to feed the beast.” His fellow gang member explained in a court case that the beast was the devil. “When you [are involved in MS-13], you feel that the devil is helping you, and sometimes the devil asked you to do things for him.” Things like murder. Secular people find belief in the devil ridiculous. For these young men, of evil is very real and very powerful.

The youth pastor in Nicaragua had reason to be terrified that his youth would get sucked into a gang. It offers power, protection, money, and a sense of belonging. His intense love was expressed through tearful prayers.

There is a fascinating article from 2018 about the one way gang members are allowed to leave. Normally dropouts are targets for their own gang. The article says, “For the young men caught up in the vicious cycle of violence perpetrated by gangs like MS-13, the church is the only thing that can save them. Embracing Jesus Christ and becoming a born-again Christian is the one way that gang members will allow one of their own to leave and strike out for a better life.” And they are embracing Jesus indeed! The prison for gang members is now like one large church behind bars. They renounce demonic violence and dedicate their lives to loving God and people.

The author of the article asked the prison director to speak to “the most fearsome reformed gang member she could think of.” This former gangmember who had witnessed “infinite” murders described himself as a “recycled human.” Before becoming a Christian he was, in his words, “human garbage.” The pressure for him and other reformed gang members to maintain a pristine recycled state is large. One man said, “I’m a Christian. And the gang respects that. But if I fail as a Christian, they will kill me.” Life serving the devil was intense. It is no less intense serving God.

At this point we realize that these people live in a different world than we do. Life equals danger. Murder is like having a cup of coffee. Life is intense. Their devotion to God is intense. It must be. The cost of failure is death. The Apostle Paul wrote to people facing the temptations brought by persecution. The former gang members in El Salvador who are now following Christ face the temptations and pressures that come with living in territory ruled by their former gangs. Their spiritual fathers and mothers must agonize over them with tearful prayers.

And here in Belgium? A few years ago the murder rate in El Salvador was 105 per 100,000 population. In Belgium it’s under 2. Persecution of Christians? Unheard of, except the (significant) pressure felt by those who convert from Muslim backgrounds. Even those converts get accustomed to the busy, but affluent life of Western Europe. Churches in El Salvador worry about someone getting shot outside the building. We worry about whether song lyrics will be properly projected on our big screen. One of our family’s greater frustrations over the last couple weeks has been the speed of our wifi connection. Families in many parts of the world worry about feeding themselves.

An NPR story cites research showing that converted gang members pray and sing their hearts out at an average of 15 worship services per month. Practicing Christians throughout Europe and the United States keep their little flame burning by worshipping at a maximum of four services per month. Many make it far less often. When I preached on this theme last Sunday, I showed a picture of a prisoner in El Salvador kneeling in fervent prayer. Maybe the first thing you’d notice is that he’s on the concrete floor with bare knees. “That looks uncomfortable,” you think. Exactly. And when is the last time you were willing to be uncomfortable for the sake of seeking God?

In Belgium we live a life of comfort. America specializes in voracious greed and ambition. Comfort is sacrificed to growth. Work harder, work longer, grow the business, dominate the world. In Belgium people stop when their business is modestly successful. If it grew bigger it would cut into their annual holiday in the south of France. It’s normal for smaller businesses to close entirely for a month in the summer and on random days during the year. It seems healthier than America, but then someone with “only” 25 paid vacation days might complain about burnout. (To be fair, work + commute can be soul crushing, so maybe people really do need that holiday; I happen to love my work and I have zero commute). My assessment could be wrong, but it appears to me that ambitious greed is not the major temptation here. Comfort is everything.

Are the spiritual dangers of comfort any less than the dangers of persecution or violence? Poverty brings its temptations. Wealth brings temptations of another sort. An athlete pushing for a top performance faces the constant danger of injury. An athlete who doesn’t perform at all faces the danger of getting out of shape. Which danger is worse? Getting out of shape is more difficult to guard against because it happens so gradually you barely notice. And so in a context of comfort you barely notice that your hunger for God is slowly squeezed out. Improving the house, planning a trip to Lofoten, pursuing your hobby, perfecting your coffee preparation method, stocking up on wines. Life becomes filled, not with bad things, but with so many good things. Don’t I enjoy these things myself? Precisely. That’s just the danger. If I condemn enjoying the comforts of life in Belgium I condemn myself. I also feel the pull of the comfortable life and it takes effort to see the danger. In Central America, as in ancient Thessalonica, there are no lazy Christians. The context doesn’t allow it.

Jesus warned against both kinds of temptations in his parable about the farmer who threw seed generously into every corner of his property. Some fell on the path, some on the rocky ground, and some among the thorns. The seed on the rocky ground represents people who hear the word of God and receive it with joy, but “when trouble or persecution comes because of the word, they quickly fall away.” This is what the Apostle Paul was afraid of with the new Christians in Thessalonica. This is similar to the danger faced by gangmembers who begin to follow Christ in Central America.

Jesus’ parable continues with the seed that fell among the thorns, which represents the word of God that begins to grow, but “the worries of this life, the deceitfulness of wealth and the desires for other things come in and choke the word, making it unfruitful” (See Mark 4:1-20 for the full parable). Sound familiar?

As a pastor I don’t worry much about my people being murdered, or denying Christ because of persecution. But I do worry about “the desires for other things” that “come in and choke the word, making it unfruitful.” Those other things are not bad things. Food, vacations, recreation – comfort – these are good things. But they can suffocate THE good thing of knowing God and living a fruitful life. People in many places are beaten with iron rods of persecution (literally and figuratively). We just keep sinking deeper into a bed of pillows. We never encounter anything solid at all, and so we suffocate, choking on God’s good gifts but missing God himself.

Both of these sets of temptations are relevant. The Apostle Paul wrote, “I was afraid that in some way the tempter had tempted you and that our labors might have been in vain” (1 Thessalonians 3:5). Many people don’t believe there is a tempter, yet they are drowning in pornography, failing in marriage, growing more miserable even as they gain physical comforts. Loneliness and depression are frequently in the news as epidemics affecting Europe. Children are often medicated for anxiety disorders. If we lived in Central America none of us would deny the reality of evil. Here evil and its effects lie hidden just below the comfortable surface of life. Sometimes a tragedy forces real pain through the comfort, but usually people just attempt to throw more padding on those painful edges.

What should we do? Comfort is nice, but it is not a worthy life goal. God’s goal for us is expressed by Paul just after pouring out his expressions of love for the Thessalonians: “May he strengthen your hearts so that you will be blameless and holy in the presence of our God and Father when our Lord Jesus comes with all his holy ones” (1 Thessalonians 3:13). Jesus’ parable concludes with the seed that falls on good soil and produces a crop up to “a hundred times what was sown.” To be blameless, holy, and fruitful may mean great discomfort. It certainly means growing in the intensity of love we see expressed by Paul, and what I saw in the youth pastor from Nicaragua. Intense love leads to suffering.

In the late 1950s David Wilkerson was called to work with gang members in New York City. (His story is told in the well-known book The Cross and the Switchblade). One gang member, Nicky Cruz, stared down Wilkerson on the street and said, “You come near me and I’ll kill you.” Rather than retreating to the comfortable rural home where he had been spending hours each day watching TV, Wilkerson responded, “You could cut me up into a thousand pieces and lay them in the street, and every piece will still love you.” Nicky Cruz didn’t cut him up; pierced by such powerful love, he gave his life to Christ.

Where did Wilkerson find such intensity of love? It’s a small piece of the intense love that God has for us. “God so loved the world that he gave his one and only Son” (John 3:16). The willingness of Jesus to experience the ultimate discomfort – the agony of carrying the sins of the world on the cross – is the proof of the intensity of God’s love for humankind.