53 pages • 1 hour read
Everybody, Always: Becoming Love in a World Full of Setbacks and Difficult People
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Chapters 15-18Chapter Summaries & Analyses
Chapter 15 Summary: “A Welcome from Walter”
Chapters 15 through 18 use different types of mission outreach as springboards for the lessons Goff shares: welcoming immigrants, benevolence to inmates, ministering to other Christians, and feeding the needy. Walter, the individual for whom Chapter 15 is titled, is a war refugee who has found purpose in making new immigrants who come to the United States with nothing feel welcome. He allowed Goff to accompany him to an airport on one occasion to welcome an incoming group. Goff asserts that the greeting Walter gives refugees is akin to the greeting we will receive when we get to heaven (141-42). He writes that we will get to meet Jesus and the experience “will involve a tremendous unlearning of many of the things we thought we were certain of” (142). According to Goff, Jesus was referring to us when he described the separation of the sheep and the goats (143). He expresses that Walter recognizes Jesus in every needy person he meets because Walter is becoming love (145). Goff says everyone belongs to the group of people whom we are called to love as if they are Jesus (146). He concludes the chapter with a list of imperatives intended to fulfill Jesus’s command: Welcome strangers, give water to the thirsty, visit sick people in the hospital. In sum, he says, “Here’s the point: don’t just agree with Jesus” (146-47).
Chapter 16 Summary: “What Grace Costs”
Goff begins the chapter with an extended discussion of how he accepts all phone calls and never sends anyone to voicemail. Since he lists his phone number in his best-selling books, he gets many calls. He describes receiving several wrong number calls from a California penitentiary, the upshot being he ended up paying for an expensive ankle bracelet so an inmate could be released. Goff uses this illustration as an introduction to the topic Jesus broached in Matthew 6:3-4 about not allowing your left hand to know what your right hand is doing when you give alms (149-53). Goff asserts that Jesus doesn’t need our help to care for the needy. Jesus only allows us to help, he writes, “so we’ll learn more about how He feels about us and how He feels about the people we may have been avoiding” (155-56). He ends the chapter by making his first reference to a Christian writer beyond himself, Dietrich Bonhoeffer, specifically referring to the German theologian’s dictum that Christians “make grace cost too little” (157). Another friend of his, Goff reports, says Christians “make grace cost too much […] someday I’ll get to talk to Jesus about it […]” (157).
Chapter 17 Summary: “My Bucket”
Goff describes himself as being chronically in a hurry. He writes, “When I’m not in a hurry, I spend my time being impatient. It’s so extreme, sometimes I think I make coffee nervous” (160). When he asked those around him how they felt about his lifestyle, they reported that his “impatience was driving them nuts” (160). Goff recounts reading an unnamed children’s book that convinced him that he should fill the “bucket” of his life with patience. He literally started carrying a bucket to remind himself to be patient (160). He describes the experience of reminding himself to be patient with a slow-motion car rental employee who made him miss a flight. It turned out that the agent had heard Goff preach earlier in the day and was very appreciative (163-64).
Goff critiques those who “make following Jesus feel like it’s a homework assignment to be completed during weekend detention rather than a banquet with Him” (167). He concludes by saying, “[…] I hear the gentle and kind voice of Jesus reminding me once again to stop laying sod where he’s planting seed in my life” (168).
Chapter 18 Summary: “Croc Drop”
Goff relates the story of a small Alabama church inviting him to a “crop drop”: an event in which crops are harvested by a benevolent group and shared with the needy. Goff says he misunderstood the invitation. He thought the event was going to be a “croc drop,” as in dropping crocodiles (169-70). Goff gives a clear, concise one-paragraph description of the difference between “unity” and “sameness” (171). He writes, “He [Jesus] knew the gospel wasn’t a bunch of rules to be obeyed; it was a Person to follow and be one with” (171). This chapter features Goff’s most extended, elaborate mediation on “church.” He scarcely ever uses the word throughout the book. Goff quips that human beings built buildings as a way to honor God, but God doesn’t dwell in buildings; “[…] instead, we can find Him in the people He made who want their lives to look like His” (172).
The author relates the story of a pastor friend whose son was diagnosed with leukemia before a gathering at which Goff was supposed to preach. At the end of his remarks, Goff asked the congregation to “crowd surf” his friend so everyone could lay hands on him. Goff describes his friend: “He was a guy wrapped in agony and enveloped in love. This is who we are and what we were made to do as a community. That’s our church” (174). Goff implies a distinction between “your church,” being the individual congregations to which Christians belong, and “our church,” being what has traditionally been referred to as “the church universal” (175).
Chapters 15-18 Analysis
In Chapter 15, Goff segues into a new subject using another personal anecdote that reveals more of his nature: In describing his trip to the airport with Walter to welcome refugees, he relates deciding to bring along many helium balloons (142). Goff perceives the raw, naïve state of new immigrants coming to the United States to be symbolic of our entry into heaven after our deaths. Goff then returns to the casual tone he has used several times before to describe those things he intends to discuss with God (143). Goff is so casual in his description of heaven and interacting with God that it is difficult to discern if he intends for readers to take him seriously. When he begins to speak on Jesus’s behalf, however, it is clear he is serious.
Goff’s extended reflection on the separation of humanity into two groups, the sheep and the goats, is based upon the biblical passage called “The Judgment of the Nations” found in the Gospel of Matthew 25:31-46. Goff returns to a key idea when he criticizes people who are waiting on “a plan” from God. When Goff talks about those awaiting a plan, he is castigating those Christians who are not regularly, actively involved in benevolent outreach of some kind. He writes that the only plan we need is to treat others as if they were Jesus. He includes the groups Jesus named—the hungry, the thirsty, strangers, the sick, the naked, and prisoners—but true to the message of his book, he also includes two groups he has named before as the difficult to love: people who “creep us out or are our enemies” (145).
After a five-page introduction to Chapter 16, leading to his revelation that he paid for an ankle bracelet so a California state prisoner could be freed from jail, Goff discusses how we should not brag about the good things we do for others. Given the anecdote that precedes this point, an argument could be made that the entire book is an exercise in just this type of bragging. His statement about not letting one hand know what the other is doing comes from the Sermon on the Mount, Matthew 6:3-4. When Goff says he’s not sure why Jesus wants us to visit prisoners (156), he may be writing ironically; he records multiple trips to visit maximum-security prisoners in the last three chapters of the book. Goff’s opening statement in the chapter, that he never uses voicemail and answers every phone call he receives, may strain credulity for some readers. It is worth noting that Goff is never specific in describing the number of individuals his non-profits serve and tends to speak in sweeping terms, seldom quantifying claims. In this chapter, for example, he states repeatedly that the ankle bracelet he purchased for the inmate was expensive without ever giving a ballpark figure of the cost. This tendency may simply be hyperbole, or it may be because he believes specifically listing details would put him in the same camp as those who want to quantify their religious service.
Chapter 17 is the most self-revelatory in the entire book. In this Chapter, Goff admits to being a driven, impatient person, qualities that his stories exude throughout the book. In his most self-revelatory paragraph, Goff writes, “People will figure out what we really believe by seeing what we actually do” (165). Goff likens himself to the Apostle Paul, referring to the statement in the Letter to the Romans, 7:19: “For I do not do the good I want, but the evil I do not want is what I do” (Revised Standard Version). Throughout the chapter, Goff sincerely discusses the varieties of his self-perceived shortcomings.
Goff’s proclamation at the beginning of Chapter 18, that he believed the church that invited him to come from San Diego to Alabama was going to drop crocodiles amid the congregation, beggars the imagination. This is a play upon the practice of certain rural Appalachian churches to handle poisonous snakes as a test of faith. Given his assumptions about Southerners and Southern churches, it is not surprising to see how surprised and delighted Goff is at the wonderfully benevolent outreach of the host church members (172).
The most poignant passage in the book deals with Goff speaking at another religious event at which a pastor has just learned his eight-year-old son has leukemia. This is an occasion in which, as always, Goff departs from the intended script. In this case, he ends his remarks by asking the congregation to lift the pastor and pass him above them, inviting everyone to lay hands on him. This spontaneous act signifies into a heart-rending expression of compassionate love.
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