I had more than my fair share of crushes in high school. When you have a crush on someone you become fixated on the person at various levels of intensity and the object of your crush becomes larger than life. They can do no wrong, they seem much more beautiful than they really are, and they find their way into your entire life even creeping into your thoughts and dreams. Even though my crushes faded (some faster than others) and even though they had varying degrees of intensity, they all had the same basic effects and seemed to somehow override my normal sense of perception.

My wife will verify that I am a very critical person. Im very perceptive when it comes to finding flaws in others to the point that it can become a roadblock for my relationships. Ive always been fascinated by psychology and I think I let that fascination go a bit to far at times by picking people apart and finding their flaws. Their flaws seem to stick out like a sore thumb and I often cant have a conversation with some people without seeing their sins written across their face. I say all that because every so often I meet someone special and I am able to overlook his or her flaws. I can still see the flaws and often they are pretty ugly flaws, but for these people the flaws dont seem to rub me the wrong way. Instead, I see their flaws more like added character the way you would appreciate a singer that has a quirky unpolished voice that becomes their trademark like Neil Young or Kurt Cobain. The more quirky their personality the more I seem to be drawn to them. It is almost like I have a non-sexual or spiritual crush on them that allows me see past their flaws and brings out their inner beauty. Im sure this must have been the way Jesus felt about the people he met. He didnt go around looking for people that he could click with, but instead as he met people he looked inside them deeper and deeper until he found something he liked.

I never realized this until we were having dinner with another couple recently and as I was listening to them talk I thought to myself that I didnt agree with some things they said but somehow it really didnt bother me. They even said things about politics and theology that would normally send me spinning out of control, but I just sat there hanging on every word and wanting nothing more than to please them and thinking of an excuse to somehow see them again. It really felt good to be around them. When I got home and began thinking about this I realized that there had been dozens of people during my life that had somehow snuck under my critical radar to touch my life. As a matter of fact, the people that have affected my life the most are people that for all practical purposes I should not have even liked. My critical flaw detector must have a critical flaw because some of these people should have never been allowed pass the baggage claim area. I soon realized there was no rational explanation for this phenomenon and it must have been God at work in my life. God was definitely overriding my security system. He was periodically sending an assassin past customs, through security checks and right into the cockpit of my life with their baggage in hand.

Now I wonder if this is something I can control and if I should be letting more people underneath the radar and maybe I should totally disable my emotional security system. Would it be possible to will a spiritual crush on every relationship I have? Or is this just something that will continue to happen once or twice a year as God sees fit. In my journey to become more like Christ will I begin to have a crush on everyone I meet?