Love Claims and Larry Crabb

(Some of this is my paraphrase of notes from a friend who attended Larry Crabb's School of Spiritual Direction.)
Love does not label people. Labeling leads to writing-off some. Love sees other people as people, as image-bearers of the Creator, before it sees them as Americans or Japanese, as Hindus or Muslims, as engineers or prostitutes. As Christopher Wright says in The Mission of God: "(W)e do not see the label but the image of God. We see someone created by God, addressed by God, accountable to God, loved by God, valued and evaluated by God. So while we affirm the validity of reaching out...to all people everywhere, we must also think critically about the methods, attitudes and assumptions with which we do so....To love your neighbor as yourself is not just the second great commandment in the law; it is an esential implication of our common createdness..."

Whether they act like it or not, whether they express it or not, everyone needs to love and be loved.

I found the use of the concepts of "detachment" and "attachment" interesting and helpful.
The Spirit of God works to detach our souls from our attempts at self-fulfillment by giving us a deep awareness of emptiness apart from God, thus promoting brokenness and repentance. The Spirit also works to attach our souls to God. This attachment to what is ultimately real encourages greater detachment from that which cannot truly satisfy. It fosters confidence and release. We are enabled to give to others expecting less and less in return.

One of the reasons we who live and work among Hindu people often shy away from God-talk which involves the word love is because of that famous sign hanging from the rear of trucks in India, artistically printed on the backs of autorickshaws, graffitied on many a boundary wall: Love is God. But certainly we in the West get the definition of love wrong as much as those in the East.