The more open we become, the closer to Christ we get

Some people are open. Others are closed.

Which are you?

The question occurred to me over breakfast at a local restaurant recently. My friend and I had just been served when a patron at the next tabled quipped about my friend’s meal. Half-joking, he gladly offered to share.

This exchange blossomed rapidly: Another patron at yet another table chimed in that she, too, wanted in on the sharing. In less than a moment, laughter and a sense of community had erupted in what had been a dining room full of private, closed customers.

That refreshing sense of community lasted through the meal. And all it took was a couple of open people.

Open people create community. Closed people kill it. Which are you?

To desire community – relationship with others – is an attribute of God and, by extension, those who believe in him. Christians, then, ought to be open people. A relationally closed Christian is a contradiction in terms.

God has opened himself to relationship with us through faith in his son, Jesus Christ. God, in the person of Jesus Christ, is saying, “I want you to know me and enjoy community with me. Do you want that, too?”

To be sure, openness to others is not natural … not to all of us, myself included. Some of us are by nature introverted, withdrawn. Others are by nature extroverted, more social.

Christian love, however, transcends mere personality types. The love of God within believers spills out, whether we’re introverted or extroverted, shy or gregarious.

Jesus once put it this way: “Just as I have loved you, you should love each other. Your love for one another will prove to the world that you are My disciples,” John 13:34-35 (New Living Translation).

The command to love is not only a challenge among Christians, but an invitation to the watching world. God gives an unbelieving world the right to judge whether we are Christ’s followers on the basis of our observable, expressed, love. Our openness.

John the Apostle puts it more bluntly: “Anyone who does not love does not know God, for God is love,” 1 John 4:8.

I know from experience that an attitude of openness to others is easily stifled by natural, sinful inclinations: self-centeredness, busyness, anxiety, fear and, perhaps worst of all, indifference. It’s only possible to love, to remain open to others, by trusting God to help us set aside those base instincts.

In other words, the more we become like Christ, the more open we become to others.

What’s striking about the life of Jesus described in Scripture is his keen interest in people. He is not repulsed by sin, overwhelmed by need, turned away by harshness, nor distracted by an agenda. His agenda is people.

Read the Gospels and see for yourself. Jesus initiates relationship. He makes the first move, and is not easily turned away.

And Jesus still is open to people, through his church, we who are his followers.

Scripture cautions us that love, when genuine, is not merely a feeling, nor a concept with which to agree. “Don’t just pretend to love others,” says Romans 12:9. “Really love them.”

True love speaks, acts, serves, cares … it’s expressed tangibly, not merely studied, or thought. We’re not open people by merely thinking that we are, but by actually being so in the lives of others.

I’m grateful for a Christian friend who reminded me of something so very basic over breakfast. Some people are open. Others are closed.

Which are you?