What Does Christian Love Look Like in Japan?

Winter of this year one of my friends of old lent me a book called The Irresistible Revolution: Living as an Ordinary Radical by Shane Claiborne, a founding member of The Simple Way. Here is a guy, and a community, desiring to live like Jesus in ways that our world (secular and religious) just doesn't get.

Winter of this year I began to see a hard truth: though I was well-versed in theology and had biting criticism for much of evangelical Christianity in America I was not intentionally living out my faith. I was really good at talking and thinking but maybe not so great at being love, which is what Jesus has asked of me. And so began my investment in living love, in focusing less on developing sharp criticism and more on developing ways to live my faith through love. I don't want to paint an inaccurate picture: I have plenty of harsh criticisms, just mention Sarah Palin I will be decidedly outed. However, I am becoming more and more convinced that poverty, racial inequality, and war (to name only a few) will not end if all we do is argue (regardless of how funny the argument may be).

Eight months later, I'm in Japan. And still the greatest commandments are loving God and loving people. (Matthew 22:36-40) But as I silently sat in the teachers' staffroom this summer, watching busy teachers bustle around doing busy things I became a bit dismayed. How do I love my neighbors in Japan? Since Jesus' call is not conditional but essential to my faith, how then do I live it? What does love look like when you're the one being served? If always receiving from others how do you give, and what? I am dependent on the other teachers to communicate important information to me, dependent on them to help me with daily living stuff like paying bills and mailing packages. I have nothing to give them, I am lost in a culture and a language different from my own. Yet, Jesus' words are clear. Love most be more than favors and words then, for I am to love my neighbors in Japan even though I have nothing to give them and can communicate little. What does that kind of love look like? For me, what does Christian love look like in Japan?

If I believe what I claim to believe, that God so loved the world and now I'm to love it, then love should cross borders and cultures. And that makes sense. But what does it look like?

I don't know, but I pray, tie my shoes, and keep walking on. In faith. In love.