Love

Love and Lostness

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The parable of the prodigal in Luke 15:11-32 is among the most famous Jesus told. Rembrandt did a famous painting of this story that has moved many. Yet to read the parable is always unsettling. I wonder why on earth a father would give half his estate to a son he knows is planning to squander it? That just does not seem like good parenting. It also doesn’t seem fair that this son receives such a lavish welcome on his return without even having to grovel! At least a part of me is with that older brother in pitching a fit and staying away from the party.

One of the insights from our pastor’s message this past Sunday that really helps me is to see how both of the sons are lost. What they share in common is that both are lost in selfishness. In different ways, each is a prisoner of his own self-absorption. They are different only in the way they express it, which might help explain why the older brother is upset. Down deep, I suspect the older brother was confronting the reality of his own selfishness in that of his brother, but didn’t want to see it.

Rembrandts-The-Return-of-the-Prodigal-Son1

Rembrandt: The Return of the Prodigal Son

Both brothers are absorbed in themselves to the exclusion of any concern for either their father or their other brother and for the future of their family. The younger brother essentially wishes his father dead and wants the present value of his inheritance now, not willing to share in his older brother’s labors that might have enhanced it. All he cares for it seems is maximizing his pleasure in the moment. Even his approach to his father, as repentant as it is, masks a shrewd appraisal that he might do better as a servant in his father’s home than he is feeding the pigs.

The older brother is lost in self absorption as well. He is absorbed in his personal rectitude and his resentment of the younger brother. Seeing his father’s distress, he makes no effort to find his younger brother. And when the younger brother finds his way home, he seethes in anger both against his brother and his father for not throwing him a feast, when he could have had this at any time!

There are so many ways I can be lost to the captivity of selfishness! There are so many ways I create a cosmos that revolves around closing myself off to God and others! In the end we dehumanize ourselves, whether in unrestrained hedonism or an ugly self-righteousness that is both angry and envious toward those who don’t match our personal rectitude. I vacillate between “I want what’s mine!” and cries of “It’s not fair!”

Rich pointed out that it is easy in this story to try to identify which brother we are most like. But identifying the kind of selfish we are can do little to liberate us from being lost in selfishness. The only thing left for us is to stop focusing on ourselves and rather on the Father who is truly extravagant in love. Both sons lived in a “zero sum game” world. By contrast, the Father is one who is extravagant in love, who always has enough to go around and who would much rather throw parties for those liberated from lostness than leave either son on the outside.

I’m struck that in Christmas, we celebrate this extravagant, prodigal love. The birth of Jesus reflects this collusion of Father and Son to rescue us in all the ways we are lost in self-absorption. Jesus becomes the truly loving and righteous Elder Brother and Father’s Son who rejoices not in condemning people in their failure but in finding lost people and restoring them to the Father.

Christmas is rightly a time of parties. It rightly reflects the parties of heaven over the lost who are found by the Savior whose birth we celebrate. The question for each of us is will we turn from our own forms of self-absorption to join the Father’s party or will we remain on the outside, a party of one in a cosmos centered around self?

[This post also appears on my church’s Going Deeper blog for this week.]

Review: Works of Love

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Works of Love
Works of Love by Søren Kierkegaard
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Works of Love is a searching exploration of the distinctive and demanding character of Christian love. It is not a “feel good” book but one that might leave you wondering whether you really have loved at all, or loved well.

Kierkegaard begins with the paradox of love’s character as both hidden and yet bearing fruit in works of love. He then explores the great command to love neighbor as oneself. He plumbs the challenges of loving a neighbor in all the ways we love ourselves, and the fact that it is the neighbor we are to love, literally anyone, and not just the friend or the lover.

He then considers how love is the fulfillment of the law, seen most fully in how Christ fulfilled the law. The law is always indeterminate–we can never know if we’ve met all its demands, but if we love as Christ, we can be sure of this. He also introduces here an idea also found in Bonhoeffer that God is the middle term between us and the person we love. We love others in God and to God. And so also, this is how we love with a clear conscience. We first are transparent with God, and so then with the neighbor we love.

Perhaps even more challenging is to love those we see. We are not to look for those who are lovable but to love those in our sight apart from anything “deserving in them”. But it doesn’t stop there. Kierkegaard’s chapter on the debt of love argues that this is a debt that is never discharged toward another person as long as we live. We can never say we have loved “enough”.

He turns to 1 Corinthians 13 and takes this phrase by phrase. He talks about love building up and, in this, love presupposes the love of the other, that is we upbuild others by presupposing the best in them. Love believes all things, that is it believes, and persists in believing the best of others. It isn’t self protective and thus never truly deceived. Similarly, love hopes all things, is always hopeful of the good in another. Love never seeks its own because there is no “mine” in love. Love hides a multiplicity of sins because this is not what it is looking for, and even when this is unavoidable responds in forgiveness. Love abides and never knows the breaking of a relationship because love keeps loving.

His concluding chapters explore the character of mercy, the nature of reconciliation, and something I’ve never seen before, an exploration of love in the remembering of the dead, a love that cannot be reciprocated and is therefore the freest love. His concluding chapter truly sums everything up in the idea of “like unto like”. We love and we believe we are loved, we forgive (or not) as we believe we are forgiven. We either live in a world of judgment where we judge others and live under the fearsome judgment of God, or we believe the God of love and forgiveness in Christ and live in that love and forgiveness toward others. Hence, the works of love really are an expression of faith.

If this summary of the book seems a bit ‘dense’ or even perplexing, this probably reflects the book’s character. Kierkegard leaves no stone unturned in his exploration of love. This is a book to be read slowly and perhaps repeatedly and only if one is willing to wrestle with the uncomfortable challenge of what it truly means to practice Christian love. Perhaps this is implicit in Kierkegaard but all this is fact an impossibility apart from Christ’s indwelling fullness. This isn’t simply a more demanding ethic, but one that leads us first to repentance of how poorly we have loved and casts us back onto the empowering presence of God’s Spirit. In every sense then, this is a hard book, but because of that, all the more worthwhile.

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Review: Called to Be Saints: An Invitation to Christian Maturity

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Called to Be Saints: An Invitation to Christian Maturity
Called to Be Saints: An Invitation to Christian Maturity by Gordon T. Smith
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

This book might change your thinking about “sainthood”. Sometimes, we conceive saints as these unworldly, serious, ascetic, and somewhat odd creatures. Gordon Smith would propose instead that being a saint is something to which all of us are called and what this means is growth into Christian maturity–a kind of perfection of holiness that isn’t perfectionism but rather a kind of completeness or wholeness of life.

This is especially important for many evangelicals, who may excel at seeing people come to faith but have little idea of how to direct them into becoming holy (or sanctified, a word drawn from the same root as saint–in other words, saintified). Most often, since we do the crisis experience of conversion so well, we simply propose additional crisis experiences. Smith proposes a different route.

Smith begins with what he sees as the essence of the Christian life, which is union with Christ. To be in Christ is to be united with Christ through his Spirit, which is a profoundly humbling thing that promotes our dependence upon Christ, our focus on the person and work of Christ, and our Spirit-enabled obedience of faith. In a later appendix, Smith applies this to the scholarly life, which is a life grounded in prayerful dependence upon Christ and illumined by Christ.

Smith then talks about four expressions of holiness that might surprise you. The first of these is wisdom, the practical understanding and knowledge of how to live well in the fear of the Lord. This can be expressed as having the mind of Christ, of seeing all of life through the lenses of creation, fall, and Christ’s redemptive work. Wisdom that understands the cross understands suffering in light of the cross.

The second expression of holiness is vocational holiness. By this, Smith means a life of good work that flows out of a sense of being called both into union with Christ, and into the world. Vocational holiness understands our agency in the world as fallen but redeemed image-bearers of God. It involves self-understanding of our temperament, skills, gifts and situation and lives in hopeful realism throughout the seasons of one’s life.

The third expression of holiness is social holiness expressed in our love for others in the communities to which we are called. This will find expression in radical hospitality where we welcome each other as we have been welcomed in Christ, forbearance, forgiveness and reconciliation, and in generous service to others. All of these are formed in the worship, teaching, and witness of our churches.

Finally, and surprisingly, Smith speaks of joyful holiness–the ordering of our emotional lives around our hope in Christ. He sees these particularly worked out in the practices of worship, friendship, and sabbath. This last is especially radical because in sabbath, we trust that while we must rest God doesn’t and his work is prior to and over ours.

The book concludes with two extended appendices, one addressed to applying these truths to the life of the church, and the other to the life of the academy, particularly, but not exclusively the Christian university and seminary.

I came away from this book with a different rubric for thinking about Christian maturity that is neither obsessed with sin nor activity, but rather in the kind of person we become in union with Christ–wise, called, loving, and joyful. That is a kind of “sainthood” that seems quite attractive, and one to which all, and not simply some “spiritual elite”, might aspire.

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Be Not Afraid — Seriously?

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Our pastor explored something in his sermon on Sunday that I think many of us struggle with and that is the clash between statements like “be anxious for nothing” or “be not afraid” and the worries, anxieties, and fear that dog our steps and often feel hard to shake off. Sometimes the words “be not afraid” sound a bit to us like “don’t think of pink elephants”. Once there, it is just not easy either to shake those visions of pink elephants dancing in our heads or those worries nipping at our heels.

One of the most striking things about most of the “be not afraids” of scripture is that they are spoken by God, or those speaking for God. And this gives me a clue to this thing of dealing with fear that has been of great help to me. “Be not afraid” is not an order to “think positively” or to “make a positive confession” but rather they are God’s invitation to a relationship of trust. God’s invitation is not to try to suppress our worries by our own efforts but to trust them to his care.

I think I first understood this deeply when I was worrying about money a number of years ago. Things were often tight when I was growing up and there was at least once instance where dad was between jobs. I actually think my parents handled this pretty well, but the fear of not having enough carried into my adulthood. Strange then that my chosen profession involved depending on donations of others to pay the salary for the work I do. We were going through a patch where those donations were down and I was facing possible salary reductions, and perhaps worse, not being able to meet our obligations. At least that was what I was afraid of

My strategy for dealing with fear was a combination of worrisome talk that had to be tiring for my wife (who was far more hopeful about things) and “doubling down”, particular in efforts to raise the requisite funds. I even asked God to help me as I met donors and to supply my needs. I did everything except to go to my heavenly Father and say, “Daddy, I’m really scared of not being able to provide for my family and to meet my debts.” I continued coping with these pressures like this until I was doing a Bible study written by Dave Ivaska, a colleague, titled Be Not Afraid. There was a question at one point that asked very simply, “what are you afraid of?” For the first time, I named this fear to God instead of trying to deal with it or even asking God to deal with the stuff that caused me to be afraid.

I can’t say that my fear magically disappeared. But in naming my fear to God and allowing God into that fearful space, the fear began shrinking and lost its hold in my life as I became aware that God didn’t just love me in an abstract sense–God loved me at the place of my fear. Rich talked about this idea that there is no fear in love because perfect love casts out fear (1 John 4:18).

I’m still on this journey. Other fears about loss are becoming real for the first time. There are the fears of significant loss of physical or mental abilities that come as I notice bodily changes or take longer to remember a name or grope for the right word. There is the kind of loss of recognizing you are far from indispensable and wondering as you hand off to rising leaders whether there is anything left that you can contribute, or what all you did meant when much of it is changed!

Rich talked about how we often experience the love of God that drives out these fears through people in community. I need that! It is still tempting for me to just put on my game face and double down. That strategy never worked very well and I have less energy or time for it now. Perhaps it is in becoming a safe place to name and shed our fears that we become “the beloved community.” That’s the safe place we have with the God who says, “be not afraid.”

This post also appears at my church’s Going Deeper blog.

Love That Lasts

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We celebrated Valentine’s Day over lunch today, since I’ll be working tonight. It included a stop at Half Price Books where my wife found a missing volume for a cook book series she collects. Made her day! (By the way, it is Booklovers Weekend and they are giving 20% discounts on everything if you receive or sign up for their emails).

This was our 36th Valentine’s Day, so I thought I might reflect on how we’ve made it this far in married life and can still say we are in love. Not that every moment has  been lovey-dovey. Ruth Graham, the now deceased wife of Billy Graham was once asked if she’d ever contemplated divorce. Her reply was something to the effect of: divorce never, murder frequently! My wife would probably be justified in similar thoughts! So how did love last for us?

Love image

1. We were blessed with good role models. Our parents on both sides had “until death do you part” marriages. They weren’t perfect and we watched them work, however imperfectly, through the tough spots. Between my siblings and me, we have over 100 years of marriage. Our parents must have done something right. At very least, they demonstrated what could happen when you decided that quitting wasn’t an option.

2. We kiss first thing every morning and try to go to bed every night without unresolved issues between us. The apostle Paul wrote, “be angry but do not sin, do not let the sun go down on your anger.” My wife says she is not passive-aggressive, but rather just aggressive! That’s been good for me–in my family we tended to keep things a bit more bottled up and then just exploded. So we do get angry sometimes, and have to work to hear each other out. I’ve spoken the words, “I’m sorry, I was wrong” on many occasions. We try to get to the place where the last thing we do is kiss (and mean it) at night.

3. We’ve sought to guard our hearts in the sense of not giving to another the affections that belong only to our spouse. We’ve seen love grow cold between spouses and also seen affairs spring up when an attraction becomes a flirtation then becomes an infatuation, and finally an affair. Speaking and showing love daily helps stir up the fires. Setting boundaries with the opposite gender and speaking often in positive terms of our spouses with them helps.

4. Looking back at some of the hard places we’ve gone through, I think of hardships as God’s forge that has made our love deeper and more enduring. Cancer, caring for parents and losing them, and our own experience of parenting from those early sleepless nights through the college years called us to listen, to pray, to serve each other, to recognize and put to death our inherent selfishness.

5. Perhaps at the bottom of all, our marriage has lasted by the grace of God. I think again and again as I witness young couples give their marriage vows of what audacious promises we are making to each other! Perhaps being loved by a God that will not let us go and that went to all lengths to woo us challenges us to cry out for and imitate that kind of love for each other. And perhaps because we know the love of such a God, we don’t look for each other to be “god-like” lovers. That relieves a good deal of pressure!

Last night, we heard an artist, Joe Anastasi, who has painted portraits of the homeless in our city (here is a YouTube where he talks about his work). What was amazing in viewing his paints was how he captured something of the depths and dignity and soul of people we often avert our eyes from. I was reminded again how there are depths and wonders in every human life that it takes a lifetime to discover. One of the wonders of marriage for life is that we have the time to truly explore the depths and wonder of another person, to cherish and nourish and celebrate that with each other through the various seasons of life. I’m so glad to be on that journey with the one I love, and for the grace and protection of God who has given us nearly 36 years so far. Happy Valentines Day, my love!

(For more thoughts on this thing called love, see my post from earlier this week, Love Stories.)

Love Stories

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For any of you who have followed me, you have probably figured out that you won’t see many reviews of love stories, and likely none of romance novels.  Between the ads that show up on my Kindle and posts this week (as Valentine’s Day approaches), in places like the New York Times Review of Books and Publishers Weekly, it has come to my awareness that I am definitely out of step with a certain segment of the reading public!

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I can readily hear the women who follow this blog shouting at this point, “it’s because you are a man!” All I can say to that is, “guilty as charged!” Personally, I’d like to think it is because I am living two of the greatest love stories I’ve known–one with my wife of 35 years and one as part of the church as Christ’s betrothed and beloved of God.

That said, on further reflection, I have to say that I enjoy love stories when they are part of bigger stories. Right now I am reading Glorious War, an account of George Custer’s Civil War adventures.  Interspersed with narratives of Custer’s boldness, strategic sense, and courage in battles, we have the adventure of his courtship and marriage of Libbie Bacon. The love story is a welcome respite from the battle scenes and helps me see Custer as more than a one dimensional figure.

Likewise, one of the things I’ve always loved about Wendell Berry’s Hannah Coulter is that it sets her marriage and deepening love for Nathan Coulter alongside the challenges of rural agriculture, the memories of war, and the obligations of extended family and community.

It was fascinating for me to read Caitlin Flanagan’s review of Daniel Jones Love Illuminated. Jones edits the “Modern Love” column for The New York Times. She expresses her surprise at her discovery of a central thread in Jones book:

“We were promised an exploration of life’s most mystifying subject, but instead what we keep coming back to is a study of life’s least mystifying subject: how it might come to pass that two like-minded graduate students in the same creative writing program might fall in love, get married, learn that marriage is not composed of an unfolding series of ever-heightened erotic pleasures, and yet still manage, year after year, to keep their leaky but serviceable vessel out of dry dock.”

Maybe this explains for me why I like the kinds of love narratives I’ve described above. They are situated in the much larger and yet less fantastic context of real lived, human experience. I like the phrase “leaky but serviceable vessel”. Real love wars with our personal selfishness and calls us into self-denying love. It struggles through raising children together, financial tensions, illness of parents or spouse, the tension of the siren call of career and the harder work of going deeper in the encounter with one other. Probably like others on this journey, I have to say it has been only in a small measure what I imagined, and looking back over 35 years, far better than I could ever have hoped.

As I write these words I’m conscious of my single or formerly married friends. I neither want to venture explanations of why one hasn’t yet found the love we’ve lived these many years nor why it hasn’t worked out for another. That would only be to add to the pain. What I would propose instead is that the love stories we read should not be the ones that are anodynes for our pain or fantasies of what we wish we had, but the narratives that set love in the larger context of life, that prepare us to be better lovers wherever God gives us the chance to love.