Loving His Fans

Loving His Fans

The car in front of mine on the freeway bore this jarring message on its bumper: “I love God. It’s his fans I can’t stand.” Ouch. I actually sped up and pulled alongside the self-professed God lover who couldn’t stand other God lovers, curious about what such a person might look like. What I saw (on a Sunday morning, no less) was a well-dressed, middle-aged woman who appeared to be on her way to church too. I guessed there were some “God fans” in her very near future. I hoped they were ready to be deplored.

I pondered that bumper sticker for the better part of the day. It mystified me. Because often, God’s people compel me to love him more. Maybe because they’re not just “fans” who can decide to like God one day and then unlike him with a keystroke the next. They’re more committed than that. Their bond is the permanent kind, not a fleeting whim. They identify completely with the one they love, and he with them.

The God fans I’m thinking of act in ways that he has and does and would—and their loving actions bring him glory. They remind me of him. They coach and counsel and pray and encourage. God’s people are flesh and blood carriers of God’s love. He doesn’t call them fans. He calls them friends. Sons. Daughters. And they look a lot like their Father to me.

I know folks who have been on the hurting end of Christianity. They’ve suffered unpleasant business in the context of the church. They’ve encountered hypocrisy where they had hoped for authenticity. God lovers don’t always get it right. We mess up just like everyone else. But it’s impossible, really, to love God and to loathe his people. He is his people. He dwells in them. And his Spirit quickens their hearts and moves their hands and feet.

So for the record, I love God. And his people—his true followers, not here-today, gone-tomorrow fans—only cause me to love him more and more.

God is love, and the man whose life is lived in love does, in fact, live in God, and God does, in fact, live in him.

1 John 4:16,PHILLIPS