Everybody, Always: Becoming Love in a World Full of Setbacks and Difficult People

“These amazing people spend their free time loving people in the housing projects near the restaurant. They give away love like they’re made of it. Like my friend, they do this because they have developed completely unrealistic ideas about what their faith can do in the world when it’s expressed in love. They decided to spend more time loving people than trying to game the system by just agreeing with Jesus. You see, they wanted to follow Jesus’ example; instead of telling people what Jesus meant, they just loved people the way He did. The housing projects are difficult places. They’re dark and scary and filled with beautiful, scary people. They are full of guns and violence and fights and theft. They are also full of love and compassion and generosity and hope.” 

This quotation from the Prologue introduces the tone and several of the literary devices Goff uses throughout the book. He writes in expansive generalities about unnamed individuals, describing perspectives and extreme experiences he assumes they share. Goff uses stark metaphorical contrasts in close proximity to startle readers: “beautiful, scary people.” He follows these descriptions with conclusions he asserts but does not logically connect to the observations he has made. He concludes the passage as a preacher would, using conjunctions rather than commas to intensify his argument.

“What I’ve come to realize, though, is that I was avoiding the people I didn’t understand and the ones who lived differently than me. Here’s why: some of them creeped me out. Sure, I was polite to them, but sadly, I’ve spent my whole life avoiding the people Jesus spent His whole life engaging. God’s idea isn’t that we would just give and receive love but that we could actually become love. People who are becoming love see the beauty in others even when their off-putting behavior makes for a pretty weird mask. What Jesus told His friends can be summed up in this way: He wants us to love everybody, always—and start with the people who creep us out. The truth is, we probably creep them out as much as they do us. […] There are people in my life and yours who are unsafe, toxic, and delight in sowing discord wherever they go.” 

This quote expresses major repeated themes. First, true followers of Jesus are literally becoming love. Second, to become love, one must love the unlovable; Goff stresses the difficulty of doing so repeatedly. This passage also reveals Goff’s tendency to use vague assertions to make sweeping statements. He does not, for example, define what “becoming love” means or what makes someone lovable.

“Her voice broke a little as she said, ‘Bob, I just got back from the doctor, and she gave me some bad news. I have cancer.’ […] I was sad for Carol and could tell she was terrified. I thought for a second, then said, ‘Carol, I’m coming over with something.’ No doubt, she was a little puzzled. I rushed to RadioShack and got us two walkie-talkies. I set up one next to Carol’s bed, and I set up the other one next to ours. Carol and I started talking exclusively on walkie-talkies […]. Something happens when you’re talking on walkie-talkies. You get the same feeling when you connect two peach cans together with a string—you’re both instantly transformed into nine-year-olds. No one has cancer, nobody is alone, and no one is terrified anymore.”

Goff’s impulsivity is clear in this passage. Throughout the book, Goff records numerous acts of impetuous behavior. He delights in these unpredictable actions that surprise, puzzle, and often dismay others. Here, Goff implies that his sudden decision to provide his ill neighbor with a walkie-talkie was an act of love that mediated her fear, although the reader cannot know for sure whether his actions really have their intended effect.