Going first

Wanting to go first is a selfish habit, with one exception---when you go first in loving someone. But nobody wants to go first in that way.

I heard about two little boys whose mother was making pancakes. They were arguing about who would get the first serving, and the mother suggested they should pretend they were Jesus, who would surely have let his brother go first. One of the tykes turned to his sibling and said, "OK. You be Jesus."

"Going first" to love somebody is not commonly done, and there are reasons for that. One is that in order to get yourself positioned to do that, you need to do a lot of spade work in your heart. It is likely that the other person has wronged you (or at least that you imagine he has). Therefore you are in some pain and want relief. The relief you envision would come out of the hide of the offender---your pound of flesh. A major transaction must transpire in your heart before you can launch out in a preemptive love offensive. Namely, you must agree in your heart to make his payment yourself; you must "eat the debt." Moreover, this negotiation goes on internally, unseen to anyone, so you don't even get any glory for your voluntary death.

A second obstacle against going first is that there is a good chance your overture will be rejected, rejection being one of the least pleasurable of all human experiences. It is a perverse truism of human nature that when people are apologized to, or detect weakness of any kind, they now feel they've got "hand." The Apostle Paul saw what "loving first" got him (See 2 Corinthians 11).

On the other hand, my own personal experience of being loved unilaterally is that it is completely disarming. Love can break a bone better than meanness. When somebody "goes first" to love me after I've been boorish, coals from heaven and hell are heaped on my head. I could even envy the one who goes first; I know that a person like that is free. He is not controlled by other people's issues, or other people's sins. They may hurt him but they can never destroy him. He is sure of the love of God in his life, and he does all he does from a position of strength.

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