What is REAL?

"What is REAL?" asked the Rabbit one day..."Does it mean having things that buzz inside you and a stick-out handle?"
"Real isn't how you are made," said the Skin Horse. "It's a thing that happens to you. When a child loves you for a long, long time, not just to play with, but REALLY loves you, then you become Real." - The Velveteen Rabbit

"and every man who really loves me will himself be loved by my Father, and I too will love him and make myself known to him." - John 14 (Phillips)

It seems to me that Boast and Swagger Christianity (BaSC) is all about having "things that buzz inside you and a stick-out handle." Maybe that's being a part of the next big thing or the next big buzz or being a part of a cutting-edge church plant or leading a group of the new monastics or having your books published by some underground, emergent group or being the leader of a huge denomination or being the up-and-coming voice for the new generation or doing apologetics in the worst sense of the word (using the Word as a sword, instead of a light) or having attended all the conferences put on by "whoever" and now "getting it" or doing house church and sharing common meals or being a liturgical-ancient-future person who loves candles and despises praise choruses or having fish decals on your car or ONLY listening to contemporary Christian radio or being a part of a 24/7 ministry or........the list goes on and on and on. The idea being that there's something about how I'm made or what I'm doing that makes me real, or valid, or Christian, or something.

The wisdom of Skin Horse surfaces here and reminds us that being REAL is a thing that happens to you; you don't make it happen. And this "thing" that happens to you is being loved by a child, or a parent, or a friend, or a spouse, or Jesus, for a long, long time...and then you become Real.

I believe that being REAL is letting Jesus love you for a long, long time. Not because of what you're doing for him, or what you're involved in, or for any other reason. And that, my two-or-three gathered-together readers, is why we prefer BaSc. To think that someone, especially Jesus for that matter, could or would love us just for being us is, well...unbelievable. What if it were true that the only thing Jesus wanted was to love you in this life and the next? What if he didn't want you to start churches, engage in door-to-door witnessing, write books, attend conferences, or go the church on Sundays (and Wednesday nights, for some of you)? All those things are fine and dandy and he wouldn't mind if you did them...but what if you didn't have to?
What if he just wants to love you?

Now let me throw a banana peel on the floor. What if Jesus just wants to love you and he wants to love you through other people? What if being REAL means letting other people love you for a long, long time? Do we really let our spouses love us? Do we really let our children love us? How about our friends? Parents? To really let flesh and blood love us is something we don't do very well...especially us biblely-types. John's gospel tells us that Jesus wants to make himself known to us. How does Jesus usually make himself known to you? So far, in my life, it's been by way of...people. You see, we do pretty well at loving others...but what about letting others love us? That means opening ourselves up, letting people in, allowing them to get close, sharing our hearts with them. Everyone talks about wanting that these days, but that is a narrow way...and few find it.