the 2nd greatest commandment

Francis Chan (from Simi Valley, CA) talked about the challenge of living out the 2nd great commandment and the journey he and his church are taking trying to wrestle with it.
Simply: Love your neighbor as yourself.
I am staggered by that statement if I try to really play that out in my life. What would that look like? How would that reshape my life, my priorities, my spending, and my time? Yet this isn’t a request.
Jesus sums up God’s plan for us in these few words: “Love the Lord your God with all your heart, and love your neighbor as yourself.”
It demands my attention, and frankly it scares the hell out of me.
Chan’s church is taking a revolutionary approach to playing this out. Their stance is this: If we are called to love our neighbors as ourselves, wouldn’t it make sense to spend as much money on their neighbor (community) as we did on ourselves. So they are implementing a 50/50 budget. Half is invested back in the church, and half is set aside to meet community and global needs. Despite that church budgets are by nature constrained, this church is committed to making whatever cuts needed to live this out. So instead of building a huge new complex as originally planned, they are skimming down and building an outdoor venue….so they can give more money away.
This haunts me…because I think most of us, if we were honest, would admit that we are inherently selfish. That most of our day, time, and resources are centered around our own petty (in the grand scheme of things) wants and desires.

What if we started taking the Bible literally?
What if we started loving our neighbors as ourselves?