Tag Archives: Love

Defending Myself

24 Saturday Sep 2022

Posted by in All, Humankind

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What Our Savior Saw From the Cross
—James (Jacques Joseph) Tissot

With the stories of anger and violence in the world, this question has been on my mind: “How far am I willing to go to defend myself?”

Let me set side the question of facing a life-threatening self-defense. Rather, I’d like to focus on self-threatening (ego-threatening) scenarios that arise for us every day in any of many ways: An impatient driver curses another driver who was doing nothing wrong; a woman in a checkout line fumbles with her credit card while trying to manage three unruly kids as the man behind her grumbles loudly about her poor parenting; a man sends an email to a coworker who badly misconstrues its intent and responds with angry accusations. You get the idea.

I think it is a human tendency to want to respond when falsely accused; at least it is my strong tendency. It seems to be my “natural” impulse to get my feelings hurt and want to set the record straight when wronged. And, most sadly, I often want to respond in such a way that hurts the feelings of the offender just as they hurt me (an eye for an eye). Aristotle thought this way, too. He went so far as to make the resenting of someone who offends us a measure of our “manhood.” From his work The Nichomachean Ethics, Aristotle writes: “Not to resent offenses is the mark of a base and slavish man.” And there can be an upside to responding publicly: having a witty social media response to an affront can gain one followers and boost one’s own ego.

But then there is Jesus:

The chief priests accused [Jesus] of many things. So again Pilate asked him, “Aren’t you going to answer? See how many things they are accusing you of.” But Jesus still made no reply, and Pilate was amazed. (Mark 15:3-5)

Jesus was on trial for His life and made no effort to refute the false accusations against Him. Given our “natural” impulses to right the wrong offenses against us, Jesus’ silence is most extraordinary. But, I find it remarkable for still another reason. Jesus was about to be the victim of a horrible injustice, perhaps the worst of injustices: to be tortured and executed for something of which He was innocent. It’s not only that Jesus was an innocent victim, He was the only “pure victim” who ever existed. That is to say, not only was Jesus innocent of what He was being accused, Jesus had never committed any wrongful act that added to the overall sinfulness in the world.

Let’s talk about this.

When unjustly wronged or offended, I am quick to pronounce my innocence, even if only to myself. However, in truth I am never a pure victim. An example: Out of my impatience I cut off another driver in traffic. That driver takes home his anger at me and is critical of an action of his wife. In her hurt, she fails to recognize her daughter has had a bad day at school. On it goes. My sinful thoughts and actions radiate outward from me into the world. I bear some responsibility for all the evil that happens because my sin contributes to the overall condition of the world.

There is a story about the writer/theologian G.K. Chesterton (1874-1936). It is said that he was asked to contribute to an article explaining what was wrong with the world of his day. He responded with two words on a postcard: “I am.”

This is not to say that I deserve whatever bad things might befall me; I am only asserting that I am never a pure victim in my own circumstances. Consequently, because of my sinfulness I must take some responsibility for all sin in the world.

So, how should I live in this world and bear some responsibility for the evil around me? Accept the responsibility. Below are radically counter-cultural approaches by two saints:

If a murderer somewhere murders, it is my fault for not being a saint and not having prayed effectually for his repentance, the murderer’s “nature/nurture” background makes him blameless, and mine actually makes me blameworthy.
—St Paisios the Athonite

For all the history of mankind from Adam to me, a sinner, I repent; for all history is in my blood. For I am in Adam and Adam is in me.
— St Nikolai Velimirovic

In his classic novel, The Brothers Karamazov, Dostoevsky’s Father Zossima says,

There is only one salvation for you: take yourself up, and make yourself responsible for all the sins of men. For indeed it is so, my friend, and the moment you make yourself sincerely responsible for everything and everyone, you will see at once that it is really so, that it is you who are guilty on behalf of all and for all.

I don’t do any of this very well. Here is an ancient “test” I came across (based on St John Climacus’ Ladder of Divine Ascent):1

What is your reaction when you are insulted?
1) I restrain my heart not to answer back, then I have put my feet on the first rung of the ladder;
2) I restrain my heart and I pray for the one who has offended me; then I am on the second step of divine ascent;
3) I not only pray for, but I feel sorry that my offender has suffered harm to his soul by insulting me and I feel compassion toward him. My feet are on the third rung;
4) I rejoice that I have been humiliated for the Lord’s sake. this is the fourth rung of the ladder.

Applying this test to myself, I admit that my feet are usually firmly anchored to the ground; I feel unable to lift even one foot to the lowest rung.

To again quote St Paul, “Who will save me from my wretchedness?” Jesus, of course.2

In an often quoted passage from the Bible, Jesus said, “I am the Way, the Truth, and the Life; no one comes to the Father except through me.”3 We Christians often use this as proof that the gate into Heaven is belief in Jesus. However, it is easy to overlook the first part: “I am the Way.”

As mentioned above, the Way of Jesus was silence before His accusers. It was facing (with joy!) the shame of the humiliation of executioner’s cross; it was descending into Hades to draw everyone who had already died to Him; only then did He ascend into Heaven.

His way must be our way: to go down into Hell with Jesus before we go up with Him into Heaven. To go down is to strive for the humility of Jesus Who could stand silent before His accusers. To voluntarily go down into Hell with Jesus is to become immune to the accusations of Satan who wants us full of pride.

In other words, I must work at becoming humble. I must strive to literally put myself in the Way of Jesus (think of being in the way of someone on a narrow mountain trail). Of course my attempts at finding humility will be puny, but I must try. Being in Jesus’ Way attracts the Grace of God, which is my only hope for true, transformative humility.4

Here is a concrete example of stepping in Jesus’ Way:

St Paul claimed to be the chief of all sinners. It is a statement repeated by each Orthodox Christian during the Divine Liturgy during the communal pre-communion prayer of St John Chrysostom. Only by repeating this prayer and through by the Grace of God can we begin to actually see ourselves as the chief of all sinners. We begin to recognize that others are as wounded as we are, and, as such, it slowly becomes possible for us to begin to truly love our neighbor and our enemy as commanded by Jesus.

Defending myself against offense comes from my pride; I want to be right, or to be acceptable, or to have my way…the list of consequences of my pride is long. Our pride, however, is in direct opposition to the humility of God Who willingly gave up His “rights” as God to become man and live among us and to be killed by us, His creation, so that He might offer us the Way to eternal life with Him.

On the night Jesus was betrayed, his disciple Peter tried to defend Jesus from the mob sent to capture Him. With a sword, Peter sliced off the ear of a servant. Jesus rebuked Peter for his violent resistance and miraculously restored the ear of the servant. In the words of one commentator, our resistance to an offense simply makes our “enemy” deaf to the message of Jesus. When I defend myself, I am cutting off the ear of my offender; in my angry reaction they cannot hear the love of Jesus.

So, what is the proper response to an unfounded accusation or insult against me? Here is what St Isaac the Syrian (7th century) says:

Let yourself be persecuted, but do not persecute others. Be crucified, but do not crucify others. Be slandered, but do not slander others. Rejoice with those who rejoice, and weep with those who weep: such is the sign of purity. Suffer with the sick. Be afflicted with sinners. Rebuke no one, revile no one, not even those who live very wickedly. Spread your cloak over those who fall into sin, each and every one, and shield them. And if you cannot take the fault on yourself and accept punishment in their place, do not destroy their character.

Christians often recall Jesus’ words as, “Love your neighbor as you love yourself” (in Leviticus). However, Fr Thomas Hopko relates that it cannot possibly be translated this way. Rather, it says, “You shall love your neighbor as being your own self.” In other words, your neighbor is your true self. You have no self in yourself.5

On the cross, Jesus prayed for the forgiveness of all. May we, too, be able to forgive everyone for everything. We will fail, but we try again. This is how we are saved.

It is the Way of Jesus.

____________________________________________________________________

  1. Paraphrased from Archimandrite Zacharias.  The Enlargement of the Heart.  p150.
  2. Romans 7:21-25.
  3. John 14:6.
  4. Following the commandments of Jesus do not earn us anything; rather, following them also puts in the Way of Christ.  Living a life as described by His commandments is sharing in the life Jesus lives.
  5. From an interview with Fr Thomas Hopko:  https://www.pravmir.com/living-in-communion-an-interview-with-father-thomas-hopko/ 

Liking God

05 Thursday May 2022

Posted by in All, Healing, Journey

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Pascha 2022

I write this blog anonymously. It is time to reveal my identity. I am actually quite famous. Perhaps you have heard of me.  Many have written about me.  Rembrandt painted me.  Jesus Himself described my journey.  I am the Prodigal Son.

If you know the story, then you know that when I was old enough, I grabbed all that was due me and left, leaving both my real home and my real Father.  I went to a far-off land seeking fun and adventure.

I spent many years in that far-away place living what felt like the good life, reaching for and mostly finding the “American dream.”  By all common metrics, I was at least moderately successful; certainly I was above average in my accomplishments.  I left all that I was behind.  I never called my Father.  I never even texted Him.

Rembrandt’s Prodigal Son

As the years went by, something in my life began to seem amiss.  I was beginning to experience a deep sense that there was something more to life than my American, upper middle-class existence.  The foreign land in which I was living was beginning to feel very foreign indeed.  I was mostly empty inside.  The stuff of life, accomplishments and material things began to lose their interest for me.  The banquet that the world was throwing began to taste like “food given to swine.”  Looking back, I was “coming to myself.”  That is the way Jesus tells it.

As the sparkle of the foreign land was diminishing, the thought of returning home began to increase.  I had begun to realize what I was missing by being away all these years.  Increasingly, I felt drawn back to my home and my Father.  One day, I simply knew I had to go back.  With the decision made, I didn’t hesitate; I started out for home.  I was both eager and afraid.  How would my Father respond?  Along the way I planned what I would say when I got there.  I would stand up straight and look Him in the eye as he had taught me to do.  “Father,” I would say, “I have sinned against heaven, and in Your sight;I am no longer worthy to be called Your son; treat me as one of Your hired laborers.”  Certainly that would soften Him toward me.  All I knew is that I would do anything to be home again.

As I drew close to home so much looked familiar; it felt comfortable…and not.  I had spent my youth here, but I had been gone for a long time.  And, you know what they say about never being able to go home again.

I could see my house in the distance.  And then I saw something else: I saw a figure running toward me.  I couldn’t make out who it was.  Was it someone sent to warn me to stay away?  After all, I was an ungrateful son.  Was it someone sent by my Father to test my motives for returning, to make sure I was properly humiliated by my actions?  The figure drew closer.  No!  It couldn’t be!  It was my Father!  I had never seen Him run before!  I stood frozen; He was on me in an instant.  And then…He embraced me and kissed me!  I stammered out my practiced lines, “Father, I…I…I have sinned against heaven, and in your sight;I am no longer worthy…”  He wasn’t listening; rather, He was calling to have me fitted with His finest clothes; He put His ring on my finger; then, He started planning a welcome-home banquet.  I could only stand there, dumbfounded.  There was no hint of anger in Him; He did not say, “I knew you would be a failure.  I tried to tell you this would happen.”  He did not tell me I had to earn my place back into His good graces.  There was none of that.  Only His tears of joy.

It was as though He had been waiting for me all these many years, each day standing at the window hoping that this would be the day I returned.  What kind of love is that?  It is unworldly love, the kind I had never known.  Had He always loved me like that?  I couldn’t recall…

Slowly, my life began to settle down again.  I had time to reflect on this most remarkable turn of events.  Rather than suffering through the humiliation and toil to earn my right to be called the son of my Father, I had been joyously welcomed back into the family with full privileges, no questions asked.  It was as though I had never left.  And I realized that before leaving home I had never thought much about my Father; I had certainly taken Him for granted.

Coming back, I wanted to get to know Him, to really know Him.  The accepted way for a son to know His Father was through sermons, reading, study, podcasts, and conversation (prayer).  What I learned was not so much about my Father.  I learned instead that Jesus loves me and that I needed to work on my personal relationship with Him.  After all, I was told, it is only because of Jesus that my Father welcomed me home.  I was told that through the love of Jesus and His blood shed upon the cross, I was now shielded from the wrath of God, my Father.  God-my-Father had welcomed me as a worthy son only because Jesus paid the price I cannot pay for my sins of leaving home.  When I walked out, I was told, I had offended the honor of my Father and only Jesus’ punishing death on the cross could restore the honor of my Father.  Another image was given to me: I’m in a courtroom.  My Father sits in judgment of me.  He sentences me to eternal torment for my offense to Him.  Jesus steps up to take my punishment.  Then, my Father-the-judge steps down from the Bench and hugs me.  Welcome home, son.

So I worked at my relationship with Jesus.  Hard.  After all, I was so thankful to be back home.  I didn’t want to ever again disappoint my Father.

I have to admit, though, that as the days, months, and years passed, I began to experience stress and worry at being home again.  You see, in Church I was told to love God: the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit.  It had become easy for me to be attracted to Jesus.  He died for me.  The Holy Spirit was also attractive, who doesn’t appreciate and grow to love a “helper.”  But, my Father…

Ever so slowly I began to realize that I didn’t know how to feel about my Father.   Almost everything in Church was centered on Jesus and His love for me, and on the Holy Spirit, Who was sent to help me.  Mostly, mention of my Father was limited to a prayer to “Our Father” as Jesus had taught.

Our Father, Who art in Heaven…

Anything else that was said about my Father was usually about His anger and wrath directed toward people like I had been: one of those other Prodigal people who had left their homes.  I began to notice that whenever I thought of my Father my only real concern was with keeping Jesus between Him and me.

It has dawned on me that during that time I loved my Father but I didn’t really like Him.  Truthfully, I had learned to be afraid of my Father’s wrath.  To me, He had become very much like the “Angry God” of preacher Jonathan Edwards; a Father Who, according to Edwards, views the other Prodigal children as “objects”of His wrath; objects, not persons.  Edwards says:

[Prodigal children] are now the objects of that very same anger and wrath of God, that is expressed in the torments of hell.

I was always afraid of again failing my Father.  I was afraid that my Father, in His anger and wrath toward me in a moment of my weakness, would say to me, “Enough!” and kick me out of the house.  And I was afraid for others.  Many of those “lost” people—other Prodigals—about which I was hearing had been my friends when I lived in the foreign land; many remain my friends even after I returned home.  Had my Father felt that anger toward me when I was away?  I had always thought He had been daily watching at the window for my return.

So, I began to wonder, who really welcomed me home?  Who was it that every day watched for me and then, when finally seeing me, ran out to greet me?  Who was it who clothed me in His finest garments, put His ring on my finger, and threw me a barbecue of His fatted calf, inviting all of the neighbors to welcome me home?  That just didn’t sound like the wrathful Father of whom I was now afraid.

Just before Jesus died on the cross He said, “The one who has seen Me has seen the Father.”  He went on to say, as He had said earlier, that He and His Father were one.  How could it be, then, that there is a wrathful God (Father) and a loving Son (Jesus)?  After all, it is foundational Christian theology that here is only one God.  It sounded more and more that I was being taught that God was bifurcated God, not One, that there was one wrathful God (Father) of the Old Testament and then a second, loving God (Jesus) of the New Testament.  The Father demands obedience; the Son freely gives love.

I began to dig deeper as the question burned within.  Which God was it Who welcomed me home?

I found that the early Church had a viewpoint of God that differed from that which was formulated by Augustine, refined by Anselm, and through the influential preaching of men like Edwards, had become accepted in much of Western Christianity.  It is a viewpoint that was common in the Church in the early years following Jesus’ death and is still widely accepted in Eastern Christianity.  Rather than a wrathful Father appeased by the sacrifice of His Son on our behalf, God the Father is a loving God who longs for our salvation.  Jesus died to defeat death, humankind’s great enemy, not to appease an angry God or to ransom us from Satan.

One of the greatest preachers the Church has known, Saint John Chrysostom (c. AD 347-407) said this:

Enter into the Church and wash away your sins. For there is a hospital for sinners and not a court of law.

This was a very different Father than I had been taught about upon my return.  But, it was the Father whom I had experienced, the Father I was coming to know.  This is my Father, the one who watched and waited for me, who ran out to greet me and rejoiced upon my return.  This Father of the early Church is not a wrathful Father; rather, God the Father, like His Son, is the great physician who desires to “bring good news to the poor…to proclaim release to captives, and recovery of sight to the blind, to set free those who are oppressed, to proclaim the favorable year of the Lord.” (Luke 4:14-21)  This is not a Father who demands my punishment and the punishment of the other Prodigals so that His honor might be restored.  Rather, this is the Father to all, whether His sons and daughters or whether the Prodigals.  This Father, and His Son, Jesus, want nothing more than for all of us to return and remain home and share in their lives, just as you would expect of a Father.  (Ez 18:23, 2Peter 3:9)

Father Michael Pomazansky captures well our Father’s love for us:

God is concerned more for our salvation than even for His own glory. A testimony to this is the fact that He sent His only-begotten Son into the world for suffering and death, solely to reveal to us the path of salvation and eternal life.

Setting aside His own glory…Interested more in my salvation than in His own honor.  That is indeed perfect, sacrificial, other-worldly love.  It is the only love worthy of a God Who “so loved the world…”  This is my Father who ran to welcome me home.  It is our Father who daily waits and watches for the return of all Prodigals.  Father and Son both give love, freely, fully, and unconditionally.

Epilogue

I’ve been back at home for many years now.  In many ways, I’m still that young kid looking over the fence at the grass that looks greener; there’s still a lot of Prodigal Son in me.  I remain much too inattentive to my Father Who loves me unconditionally.  All too often I put myself above Him and my neighbor.  I remain much too full of pride and self love.  I still feel the pull back to the foreign land and the taste of the food of pigs.  I tell myself that I wish I could stop longing for that place, so full of grays and blacks, but the pull is strong and I too often justify a quick trip back.  Sometimes it is a very quick trip manifested in something like a burst of anger.  Other times, it is a longer trip if, for example, I get caught in the despair of the news of the world.  However long my excursion, when once again I “come to myself” I once again tell myself this is my last trip to this place.  Then, once again I turn to home.  Once again my Father runs to greet me.  Once again, with a contrite heart, I say, “Father, I have sinned against heaven and in your sight; I am no longer worthy to be called your son.”  And, once again, the barbecue is laid out.  Each “welcome home” is like the first. 

“Forgive me, Father” is, after all, the only thing I have to offer back to my Father; after all, He owns everything else.  So, it is here in the fire of my struggle against the pull of the foreign land where my Father is forging in me a new heart, a humble and contrite heart with the help of His spirit, His angels, and a “cloud of witnesses” who have gone before me.  A contrite heart, it is all He has ever wanted from me.  And it is everything I have to give.  I long to love God and neighbor much because I have been forgiven much. (Luke 7:36-7:50)

So, finally, all these many years later, I finally have the answer to my question, “Who ran out to meet me?”  God did.  All of God: the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit.  All of God loves me and has welcomed me home, and all of Heaven rejoices over my return.  I love my Father, in His perfect love there is no room for fear…and I really like Him. 

But, to know Him, to really know Him, will take me all of eternity.

If you don’t know this Father, come and meet Him.  You might find you like Him, too.

Additional reading:
1) “Saint Athanasius and the ‘Penal Substitutionary’ Atonement Doctrine.” 
2) Bailey, Father Spyridon. The Ancient Path.

Love and Trust

14 Friday Jan 2022

Posted by in Journey, Trust

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A number of years ago, my wife and I had cause to be at an orphanage in Kenya, just outside of Nairobi.  While there, we had become friends with the pastor of the local Anglican church, and, being a Protestant pastor myself at the time, he asked me to deliver the sermon at the upcoming Sunday service.

Oh my.

A number of years ago, my wife and I had cause to be at an orphanage in Kenya, just outside of Nairobi.  While there, we had become friends with the pastor of the local Anglican church, and, being a Protestant pastor myself at the time, he asked me to deliver the sermon at the upcoming Sunday service.

Oh my.

At my home church, I knew the people and their struggles.  I knew the culture of our country and our local community.  Because of that comfort with my “audience,” it seemed easier to believe that the Holy Spirit would speak through me whenever I delivered a sermon.  To deliver a sermon to an unfamiliar church in an unfamiliar culture is daunting.  Sure, fundamentally we are all humans with the same basic problems and hopes.  My greatest worry was to come across as an out of touch or arrogant American.  “What could I say to them?” I wondered.  

The Kenyans I knew believed that America was a Christian country (“It’s on your money!”) and wanted desperately to imitate us.  They watched our TV reruns.  They were a materially poor people and wanted the opportunities available to the average American.  They seemed eager to hear from me.

After a lot of prayer and contemplation, and a few restless nights, that Sunday I did the only thing I knew to do: I asked them to pray for us in America.

Our experience in this small village was of a people that moved more slowly and more in concert with the rhythm of nature.  Few people had cars or even electricity.  When night fell, it was time for bed.  When the sun arose, it was time to get up.  They were far more relational as a village. My pastor friend used to introduce me by saying, “This is my friend; we walk together.”  We walk together…what a remarkable phrase to describe a relationship.

From the locals we heard a few stories of people being raised from the dead in answer to prayer.  There were other stories of remarkable healings.  I watched the repeated “miracle” of Samuel who each day picked a bunch of bananas, walked a few miles to the market, sold them for just enough to buy what he needed for that day.  Not all of our Kenyan friends prayers were answered, but they continued on in life, relying on God for what they needed.  It was like watching the Psalms played out in real life: sometimes joy, sometimes wailing, sometimes pleading…but always in relationship with God.  It seemed like their lives said about God, “This is my God; we walk together.”

So, in my sermon I asked the Kenyans to pray for us.

I remember saying to them that in our American abundance, we have come to believe that we didn’t really need God.  The words, “Give us this day our daily bread,” are often just that, words.  After all, my refrigerator is full and so are the grocery store shelves.  Through my hard work or government programs, I have access to the necessities of food, healthcare, transportation, and housing.  A great many of us Americans spend lavishly, at least by our Kenyan friends’ standards, on travel, entertainment, clothes, hobbies, etc.Rarely do we (me, most of all) in America have to really trust God for our very survival.  I told them we needed their prayers to realize just how much we are reliant on God—for everything, actually.  And pray that once we realize that, we learn to actually trust Him to provide what we need each day (again, me, most of all).  Then we returned to America and over the course of a few months I had returned to my American lifestyle.

Fast forward to last year.  We had a major deep freeze for which the state-wide utility system was woefully unprepared.  Many thousands lost power and water.  Nearly three hundred died from hypothermia.  Afterward, when life was returning to normal, I heard someone comment that they had been blessed by God because they had not lost power during the storm.  We had been similarly “blessed”; however, the word troubled me.  I noticed that I didn’t hear anyone who lost power say they were blessed by God.  I thought of my Kenyan friends and I wondered whether had we lost power and water I would have been able to say, and mean, “We were blessed by God.”

I used to say easily, too easily, that I love and trust God.  I had the fearlessness of youth.  Now that I am older, I have seen and experienced much more of the suffering of life.  Why is it this way?  It is a question that still haunts me.  I remain convinced that I love God, but I have begun to examine whether I really trust Him.

God created humankind to be in relationship with Him, to share in His life.  Jesus tells us that eternal life is to know God (not just know about Him), to have the deepest sort of relationship with God that is possible between two beings. (John 17:3)

It is my sinfulness that separates me from God.  Thankfully, the Church provides me with tools to help me battle the sins that separate me from experiencing a fuller relationship with God.  Prayer, fasting and giving are the classic three methods of ascesis, the self-disciplined “training” to help me control and overcome the broken passions that run amok in my life.  And in my effort, God (the Holy Spirit) is with me helping in each step.  However, as necessary as these are, they are voluntary forms of ascesis.  In other words, I can control them: sometimes I do them and other times not.

Trust in God, real trust, begins when I turn my life over to Him, when I let go of all control.  I is actually nothing but accepting the real reality: that little of my life is under my control.  But it is more: real trust begins when I can believe that everything in my life—especially those things outside of my control like loss of power and water during a dangerous ice storm—offers the opportunity for healing my broken passions and drawing me closer to God.  Can I actually trust God like that?

I came across this quote the other day from a Christian Orthodox monk.  I find it sobering:

Are we patient during…trials and difficulties? Do we consider these things necessary on account of our sins? This is referred to as involuntary ascesis. We can say to God, “My God, I didn’t do any voluntary ascesis; however, I patiently endured the involuntary ascesis that You sent me in Your wisdom. I was ill, I became widowed, I was ridiculed, I was wronged, and I endured everything for Your love.” Then Christ will respond, “Very well. What did I do for you? Look at My hands and feet: they have holes. Look at My side: it is pierced. Look at My head: it is full of blood from the thorns. Look at My forehead: it is covered in sweat. Look at My back: it is full of scourges and lashes. My entire body and soul suffered for you. I also accept what you did for Me.”
—Elder Ephraim. The Art of Salvation. Saint Nektarios Greek Orthodox Monastery. Kindle Edition. Location 2589.

Involuntary ascesis, I had never thought of the “trials and difficulties” of life in quite this way.  Does God really love me so much that everything in my life—everything, both joyful and sorrowful—comes from Him, directly or indirectly, with the sole potential of healing me and drawing me to Him?

And not just for me, but for all of us?  Does God so love the world that everything that happens in the world is a manifestation of His love for us and is an invitation to healing and relationship with God  Death entering the world through Adam and Eve; God kicking them out of the Garden; the plagues upon Egypt; the beauty of a sunset; the wonder of a bird singing; the death of thousands from a tsunami; Jesus’ birth death, and resurrection; the COVID pandemic; the love of another person, the magnificence of music, literature, and art; the death of a beloved neighbor, the smell of a flower, the suffering of a child, the trumpets and bowls of the end times…everything, everything, EVERYTHING!!

Can I trust in Him in His love for me and all of us without knowing why He created this world, this reality, with the beauty and the pain and the suffering as He has?

If I answer, “Yes,” then my joy and suffering has meaning in this world.  It is all redeemed by God as I heal and draw deeper into relationship with Him.  If I answer, “No,” then for me the suffering becomes meaningless and I slowly lose myself in fear, anger, and despair, living a life seeking both control and distraction from reality.

It is our choice, yours and mine, to walk with God in complete trust.  It is a choice to be made every moment of every day of our lives.

It is not easy.

Love God with all of your heart, soul, mind and strength…
—Luke 10:27

AND

Trust in the Lord with all your heart,
And lean not on your own understanding;
In all your ways acknowledge Him, And He shall direct your paths.
—Proverbs 3:5-6

Humanity and Humans

10 Tuesday Aug 2021

Posted by in All, Culture, Humankind, Social Justice, Uncategorized

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 In 2001, Al-Qaeda operatives hijacked four US commercial airliners.  Thousands died that day and later, as a result of the attack.  In October of that same year, the US staged a retaliatory invasion of Afghanistan.  In 2003, the “war on terrorism” was expanded to include Iraq.  As a result, uncounted more combatants have died.  And then there are the “unintended consequences”: the individual Afghani’s and Iraqi’s who were killed or otherwise had their lives upended.

One writer, tracing the history of the United States, says the US has been at war for all but 21 years of her existence.  The US has been warring for 224 out of 245 years.  That’s 91%.  Oh my.

Over the course of human history, there have been civil wars, religious wars, wars of liberation, cultural wars, territorial wars, and now cyber wars.  The list is long.  And, even when not in an actual war with another country, we use the language of war; the US continues to wage the war on drugs and the war on poverty.

And, it is not just actual shooting wars in which we engage.

Last week in Texas there was a 4-day march to the capital called the “Moral March.”  The main focus of the march was to emphasize the need to protect our democracy by ensuring voting rights for all (against what is seen by some as the Texas legislature’s move to restrict voting rights).  Famed civil rights advocate Jesse Jackson was involved as was someone from the “Poor People’s Campaign: A National Call for Moral Revival” and an organization called “Repairers of the Breach.”  The name of God was invoked to justify the march.  The organizers also used powerful imagery from the US  Civil Rights movement of the 1960s and even the biblical Old Testament story of Moses and the Red Sea.  They use the language of war: “choose a side”; “stop attacks on democracy.”  I’m sure their opponents use similar war language.

Wars, marches, programs, movements…many seem well intentioned to stamp out some real or perceived injustice in the world; they all have one thing in common: humans are involved.  Sadly, it seems, we are the cause of the very injustice we seek to eradicate.

Soviet dissident Alexander Solzhenitsyn, while addressing the 1978 graduating class at Harvard, said this:

This tilt of freedom toward evil has come about gradually, but it evidently stems from a humanistic and benevolent concept according to which man—the master of the world—does not bear any evil within himself, and all the defects of life are caused by misguided social systems, which must therefore be corrected.

In his book, The Brothers Karamazov, Dostoyevsky’s Father Zossima says:

[T]hrowing your own indolence and impotence on others you will end by sharing the pride of Satan and murmuring against God.  Of the pride of Satan what I think is this: it is hard for us on earth to comprehend it, and therefore it is so easy to fall into error and to share it, even imagining that we are doing something grand and fine.

What if the entire so-called “modern project,” which tells us that the evil is not in us, but that we must make social programs or governments better to improve all areas of our humanity is one of simply joining in the “pride of Satan.”  What if Satan is simply encouraging us toward doing “grand and fine” things to fix humanity by such ways as wars of liberation, marches for morality, nationwide programs for the poor and afflicted, renewing urban areas, and on and on.

Perhaps there is a different way, a different sort of progress available to us.

Again, Father Zossima:

There is only one means of salvation, take yourself and make yourself responsible for all men’s sins, that is the truth, you know, friends, for as soon as you sincerely make yourself responsible for everything and for all men, you will see at once that it is really so, and that you are to blame for every one and for all things.

There is a popular story told of theologian G.K. Chesterton.  According to the story, in the early 1900s, the London times asked Chesterton to contribute to a series of articles explaining what is wrong with the world.  Chesterton is said to have replied on a post card with the words, “What is wrong with the world today: I am.”

Chesterton was not being contrite.  The Christian Apostle James, writes:

Where do wars and fights come from among you?  Do they not come from your desires for pleasure that war in your members?  You lust and do not have. You murder and covet and cannot obtain. You fight and war. Yet you do not have because you do not ask.  You ask and do not receive, because you ask amiss, that you may spend it on your pleasures. (James 4:1-3)

I am the problem with the world.

That is a profoundly counter-cultural statement in a world that blames the ills of humanity on political and social systems (and their proponents).  It is a statement that runs counter to my deeply-held belief that the world would be a better place if everyone were just more like me.

I am the problem with the world.

Returning to Solzhenitsyn, who said elsewhere:

Gradually it was disclosed to me that the line separating good and evil passes not through states, nor between classes, nor between political parties either—but right through every human heart—and through all human hearts.

If the “modern project” is indeed really just a shell game and that the real need is not for better social programs or political systems, what can I do?  If I am the world’s problem, then how now shall I live?

Imagine spending less time anxious over “causes for humanity” and more time trying to acquire the fullness of the Holy Spirt of the Christian God so that I might better love God and my neighbor.  What if I were to primarily focus on doing the next good thing that confronts me, not for “humanity,” but for the human being standing before me.  For my neighbor.  One Orthodox saint said that we love God only as well as we love our neighbor.  Another says that a good Christian life consists of helping 5 or 6 people you encounter.  Neither of these saints, nor does Jesus, speak to helping “humanity”; rather, they talk about helping and loving humans.  Loving formless, faceless “humanity” is easy; loving a single human being is very hard work.

This kind of life and love is only truly possible with help from God.  Acquiring this help, the help of the Holy Spirit, is the main goal of our lives.  In his book, On Acquisition of the Holy Spirit, Orthodox St. Seraphim of Sarov says:

Acquiring the Spirit of God is the true aim of our Christian life, while prayer, fasting, almsgiving and other good works done for Christ’s sake are merely means for acquiring the Spirit of God.

Working to acquire the Holy Spirit is a way to begin to quiet the passions raging within my own soul, the passions that cause so much trouble for me, for those around me, and for the world; it is the way toward gaining that peace that passes understanding that the Apostle Paul writes about.

Returning to the 9/11 attacks back in 2001.  Rather than starting another war, the “war on terrorism,” I have often wondered what would have happened had the US simply turned the other cheek.

If you want to join a war, a movement, or a cause, here is the place to start: fight the battle within, the one we each face against our own disordered passions.  Ask God to help.  He is faithful.

A final work from St Seraphim:

Aquire the peace of the Holy Spirit and a thousand souls around you will be saved.

Beauty

10 Tuesday Nov 2020

Posted by in All, Healing, Life, Uncategorized

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Brethren, whatever things are true, whatever things are noble, whatever things are just, whatever things are pure, whatever things are lovely, whatever things are of good report, if there is any virtue and if there is anything praiseworthy—meditate on these things.
—St Paul, Philippians 4:8

The concept of beauty has been on my mind for quite awhile. Beauty is of one of the three classical virtues, the others being Goodness and Truth. Dr. Timothy G. Patitsas, in his new book, The Ethics of Beauty, advocates that we must first look to Beauty (rather than Goodness or Truth) to fill us with life. Beauty is life-giving.

Patitsas argues from “St Dionysius the Areopagite and the Fathers that followed him” that as “the beautiful appearing of God” hovered over the deep (Genesis 1:1-2), non-being became inflamed with love of God’s beauty and willingly left its non-being, becoming “gloriously alive.” (Pg 45) Patitsas goes on to argue that if we first get caught up in the intellectual pursuit of Goodness and Truth without first allowing ourselves to fall in love with God’s Beauty, we will become “imprisoned in the self.”

My thinking on Beauty has intersected with my thinking about Luck, Life, and God (my previous post). In that post, I said I have come to believe that while God does not cause the tragic events in our lives, He does permit them and He meets us in them. If being in love with beauty draws us toward life and away from non-being, then how can I learn to not just see the tragedy and become cynical about life and God? How can I learn to see beyond the ugly and find Beauty—God—in the midst of tragedy?

Certainly I can find beauty in nature. Recall a sunset that has been like a fire setting the sky ablaze. We know the physics: nuclear fission combines hydrogen atoms into helium; the Earth’s atmosphere filters out the blue spectrum; the Earth orbits the sun and turns on its axis. However, knowing these rational things about the sunset are not what stops our breath and fill us with wonder and awe; rather, the beauty of the sunset transcends the natural and reveals to us something more, something unseen.

The same thing can occur in art. Here is a photograph of Michelangelo’s masterpiece, “Pieta.” It depicts the dead Jesus laying across the lap of His mother, Mary. Regardless of your beliefs, the sight of a dead child in the arms of the mother is as a tragic a sight as there can be. As a man, I cannot grasp the depth of the pain that a mother would experience.

The same thing can occur in art. Here is a photograph of Michelangelo’s masterpiece, “Pieta.” It depicts the dead Jesus laying across the lap of His mother, Mary. Regardless of your beliefs, the sight of a dead child in the arms of the mother is as a tragic a sight as there can be. As a man, I cannot grasp the depth of the pain that a mother would experience.

Michelangelo’s “Pieta”

And yet, this work is considered to be one of the great works of art. Through it, we witness a great tragedy while at the same time experiencing its overwhelming beauty. How can this be?

The tragedy of the scene is manifold. For the Christian, we see God dead at our hands. All of us, Christian or not, see a man in his early 30s, dead, a life cut short. We also see the grieving mother. While we may not have experienced the loss of a child, likely each of us knows the pain of a life cut short; or, we have experienced loss due to death. Most know what is like to feel the pain and emptiness when someone we love dies: the extraordinary pain of grief that feels as though it is crushing the very life out of us as we struggle simply to take our next breath. Viewing this statue, we relive our own pain as memories flood in; we are filled with empathy for Mary.

And, we see more. In the tragedy of Jesus’ death and Mary’s loss we also see the very essence of what makes us human: love. Without love there is no grief. Mother Mary’s pain is a window into the depth of love. Too, without love, there is no self-sacrifice. Jesus willingly gave up His life for us, that we might be saved from death. Mary would have willingly traded places with her Son. “There is no greater love than to give your life for another,” said Jesus.

Michelangelo speaks to us in the universal language of life, pain, joy, suffering, and death. In this work he shows us the beauty of love is its rawest form. It is as though his work is a portal through which we can see through the tragedy and glimpse true reality beyond this world. And isn’t that the function of true art, whether sculpture, painting, literature, poetry, music…? True art has the power to transform both the tragic and the ordinary into the extraordinary, to give us a glimpse into true reality; it lifts the veil separating the natural from the rest of reality. When art does this, when it succeeds in opening the portal to reveal all of true reality, then it is truly beautiful.

All art is not created equal. Contrast Michelangelo’s work with this photograph of Salvador Dali’s painting of Jesus’ crucifixion (“Corpus Hypercubus”). That is Dali’s wife looking on. Francis Schaefer (Art and the Bible) argues that modern artists no longer use a language common to us all; therefore, he says, without help we cannot know what the artist is trying to say to us. I find this to be true of Dali’s work. I view it and I experience a sense of “wow” at the artwork itself, but I do not experience awe in the depths of my soul that I feel when seeing Michelangelo’s statue.

Dali’s “Corpus Hypercubus”

And this is the problem with art that “wows” us. So much of modern art, for me, either speaks a language I don’t understand without explanation, or seeks to shock me with the tragedy and absurdity of life. “Wow” is like a drug; we constantly need more. It seems like so much of modern art is left to try become increasingly abstract or shocking to satisfy our desire for more “wow.” Too often it is meant to inspire in the viewer anger, cynicism, or despair. Rarely does modern art inspire awe by revealing the beauty often hidden in reality.

For 2000 years the Christian Church has been filled with icons. These icons are not intended to be photo realistic depictions of people or historical events. Icons are a way we can see through the portal and experience God’s Kingdom now. In worship, surrounded by icons, we enter into the reality of the Kingdom of God with Jesus, the angels, and all the saints praying for us and awaiting us. We know we are worshiping God with all of creation. Icons are always beautiful.

What about our day-to-day life?

We each know that life is difficult and it is relentless. Life is too often filled with seemingly senseless tragedy, ours or that of others. I began this blog with Patitsas’ (The Ethics of Beauty) claim that we must find transformative beauty to endure tragedy around us or heal from tragedy that has happened to us. Recall too, above, that St Dionysius said creation willingly left its non-being for being when encountering the love of God, the ultimate Beauty.

For us, we can find beauty in nature and in true art. And, perhaps most importantly we can find it in another place.

Jesus said that the Kingdom of God is within us. Each human, is made in the image of God; therefore, each of us has the potential to be an icon of Jesus, the God-man. When you weep with me in my suffering, laugh with me in my happiness, rejoice with me in my joy, smile at me, offer a kind word, help me when I need help…when you do these things for me, in you I see the Beauty of Christ; in your beauty I see beyond the natural, survival-of-the-fittest world and experience through you the Beauty of Christ’s selflessness toward all of humanity. Through you I experience the Kingdom of God. If I am able to do these things for you, then you, too, can experience God’s Beauty and Kingdom in this life.

The gift of Christ’s Beauty is our greatest gift to each other; this is why we are to told by God to love our neighbor. Through our giving and receiving love we each offer the other the opportunity to gaze upon the Beauty of God and to experience His Kingdom; we remind each other of our moment-by-moment choice to willingly move away from the non-being of our self-centeredness and toward the healing of our soul and body and have fullness of life in the love of God.

St Paul exhorts us to always strive toward Beauty:

I consider [the things I have obtained as] garbage, that I may gain Christ and be found in Him…Not that I have already obtained all this, or have already arrived at my goal, but I press on to take hold of that for which Christ Jesus took hold of me. Brothers and sisters, I do not consider myself yet to have taken hold of it. But one thing I do: Forgetting what is behind and straining toward what is ahead, I press on toward the goal to win the prize for which God has called me heavenward in Christ Jesus.
—Philippian’s 3:8-9, 12-14

Let’s choose Beauty. Choose love. Choose life.

______________________________________________________________________

The Ethics of Beauty—Timothy Patitsas

“Why Beauty Matters”—Roger Scruton

Naturally—Rick Mylander’s reflections on creation and Christian spirituality

Choose Life

13 Thursday Mar 2014

Posted by in All, Life

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I call heaven and earth as witnesses today against you, that I have set before you life and death, blessing and cursing; therefore choose life, that both you and your descendants may live; that you may love the Lord your God, that you may obey His voice, and that you may cling to Him, for He is your life and the length of your days…

—Moses (Deuteronomy 30:19-20)

The debate over homosexuality is a hot-button issue about many things: moral right and wrong, human rights, love, happiness, natural law, the definition of marriage…

As important as these issues are, I don’t believe they should be the focus, at least not for Christians.  The debate over homosexuality should be a discussion about one thing and only one thing: what brings us life.

And this focus should apply not just to homosexuality but to all behavior, sexual and otherwise.

Here’s a question: Why did Jesus die for us?  If you have ever been to Sunday school or watched a sporting event you know about John 3:16—

For God so loved the world that He gave His only begotten Son [Jesus], that whoever believes in Him should not perish but have everlasting life.

Life.

Jesus said later in the same book of the Bible that He came so that we might “have life and life more abundantly.”  Sadly, that is not often the message of Christians.  Too often we reduce Christianity to a list of moral rights and wrongs rather than an invitation into abundant life with God.    We wag our fingers at Christians and non-Christians alike when we see what we believe is unbiblical behavior; we judge and scoff at and scold people for not being “good.”

When we reduce Christianity to a list of rights and wrongs we say that Jesus’ birth, life, death, and resurrection were God’s way of making bad people good.  Sadly, we turn God into some kind of supernatural Santa Clause who keeps a list of who has been naughty and nice and doles out eternal presents or lumps of coal.

Like many of you, I don’t want to worship that kind of god either.

But…what if Jesus’ death was not about making bad people good?  What if it was only about offering life to dead people?  If the latter is the case, then the Bible can be no longer viewed as Basic Instructions Before Leaving Earth; rather, through its stories God tells us and shows us the way that people fully alive with Him normally live, and Jesus’ life is the exemplar.  Further, the Bible shows us of God’s eagerness to be with us and the lengths He will go to help us to participate in His life.

Jesus didn’t come to make bad people good, Jesus came to offer life to dead people.

I know a little something about living without God—living as a dead person with my dead-person behaviors.  I wanted to be the master of my own universe, to fulfill all of my own desires.

I know from my own experience that dead people act out because they don’t know any better, it is simply “natural” for them to act this way.  You Christians sometimes got mad at me, but I didn’t know any better.  Rarely was I invited into life; rather, it was pointed out to me that I was acting badly.

It doesn’t matter whether the dead-person behavior born out of greed, pride, gluttony, power-mongering, anger, or lust (homosexuality or premarital heterosexual sex)—and the list goes on and on—dead people will naturally do the things of dead people.  Sure, dead people can perform good and great acts, too, but even those acts come from the vestiges of God’s morality since we are all made in His image and will not in and of themselves bring life to the dead.

Sin is not the things we do that are wrong, where “wrong” is defined as acting against biblical rules.  No.  Sin is our state of being separated from God.  When God calls us to turn to Him and  then to obey Him, He does so only because wants to unite us to Himself, He wants to bring us into a relationship with Him where we will find the abundant life He has for us; therefore, following His way for us to live is simply the way people fully alive in relationship with Him try to live their lives.

God is inviting us into the fullness of abundant life; He is not an all-powerful Killjoy…

God is inviting us into the fullness of abundant life; He is not an all-powerful Killjoy trying to ruin our fun and quench our desires.  Obeying God does not prevent us from enjoying life.  Quite the contrary!  Obeying God frees us to live the abundant life He wants for us.  We are oppressed only when we allow ourselves to be held captive by our attempts to satiate our own unbridled passions and desires.

This is the heart of the Bible message: God only wants for us to be our best, to be fully alive, to become the person He created us to be, which only occurs when we are in relationship with Him.  This is real Love, His for us.

But, participating in God’s life takes effort, just like any relationship worth having.  I must put forth effort into changing my old, dead-person habits for the sake of our relationship, relying on the power of God’s Holy Spirit within me to increasingly transform me over my lifetime into a person fully and abundantly alive and participating in His life.

Yes, I still battle many of my old, dead-person habits.  And lately, it seems, God has been unfailing in pointing out to me just how much I still act like a dead person.  Curiously, His pointing this out gives me hope because it reminds me of His love for me and that I can only find abundant life with Him.  And it helps me to have compassion for the still dead people and for other dead-acting Christians and makes me want to offer them the same hope I am finding with Him.

God is calling each one of us out of dead-person life and into a life fully alive with Him.  God is love and can only act toward us out of love; however, His love for us precludes Him from accepting something less for us that He has intended.

So, the choices in our lives, Christian and non-Christian alike, are not about right and wrong and who has the moral high-ground.  All of our daily choices of behavior really boil down to a single choice that we repeat every moment of every day: it is the choice between behaving as a human being alive with God or behaving as one dead and apart from God.

Respond to God’s invitation.  Choose life.

I call heaven and earth as witnesses today against you, that I have set before you life and death, blessing and cursing; therefore choose life, that both you and your descendants may live; that you may love the Lord your God, that you may obey His voice, and that you may cling to Him, for He is your life and the length of your days…

—Moses (Deuteronomy 30:19-20)

Hot Coals—The Antithesis of a Reward

19 Tuesday Nov 2013

Posted by in All, Heaven and Hell

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A true story:

A long time ago, a very powerful king built a 90 foot tall statue of himself.  Upon its completion, he demanded that everyone in the land bow down and worship this statue thereby proclaiming the his godliness.  Three brave young men refused and were brought before the king.  He thundered at them and threatened them, but they would not worship him. He was not their God, they said.  So, the king ordered them to be burned in a furnace heated to seven times its normal operating temperature.  With hands and feet bound, they were thrown in; so hot was the fire that it killed the king’s men who dropped the young men over the side.

Last time I wrote I was thinking through a different view of the rewards promised to a Christian in the life beyond this life.

Lately, as a consequence of that view, I’ve been wondering about Hell as a place of eternal torment.  Specifically, I’ve been troubled by the common idea that the Christian God, who is love, would send people to eternal torment.

And I am wondering about the nature of this place called Hell, the place from which many Christians say God is absent.

Just to be clear, I think there is such a “place” as Hell, maybe more a state of existence, really.  Jesus refers to it by analogy to Gehenna, which in His time was “a deep, narrow glen to the south of Jerusalem…[it] became the common receptacle for all the refuse of the city. Here the dead bodies of animals and of criminals, and all kinds of filth, were cast and consumed by fire kept always burning” (Easton’s Bible Dictionary).

Neither am I questioning that there are consequences for one who steadfastly maintains that she or he has no use for God and His offer of forgiveness for our rejection of Him (Christians call this “sin”).  Our repentance and His forgiveness are both necessary because even God cannot respect our free will and unilaterally repair a broken relationship.

So, to my wondering.  First off, the common image of a wrathful God-the-Father and the loving God-the-Son would seem to somehow set God against Himself. Of course this cannot be; there is only one God.  While there are good theological answers to this seeming paradox, I find the theology arguing for a wrathful God increasingly troubling.  After all, the Apostle John says that God is love.

Second, there is no place God is not.  He is everywhere, that’s one thing that makes Him God.  Theologically, this is known as God’s omnipresence.  King David, ancient Israel’s greatest king, as he writes this of God:

Where can I go from Your Spirit? Or where can I flee from Your presence? If I ascend to heaven, You are there; if I make my bed in Sheol [Hades], behold, You are there.  If I take the wings of the dawn, if I dwell in the remotest part of the sea, even there Your hand will lead me, and Your right hand will lay hold of me.

So, if God is not bifurcated into love and wrath and if the omnipresent God is everywhere, then what sort of place must Hell be? Without going into an exhaustive review of theological arguments and word studies to make my case, let me say that Christians for centuries have thought differently about Hell than what so commonly comes to our minds today, which is the notion that a wrathful God sends people who reject Him to a place of eternal torture where He is absent.

As for Hell itself, I don’t think God set out to create a place of torment for unrepentant  humans.  As I said above, I think such a place exist, but the Bible says it was originally created for “Satan and his angels,” not for humans.  To be a human in Hell is to be in a place God did not intend for us.  After all, He wishes that none of us would live in Hell; however, He does respect our free will.

As for Hell being a place of eternal torment, I think it is, but maybe not for the reason so often assumed.  Consider this quote:

…if your enemy is hungry, feed him; if he is thirsty, give him something to drink; for by so doing you will heap burning coals on his head.  —Apostle Paul, biblical book of Romans, c12, v20

I’ve been wondering whether the Paul offers a clue here as he quotes King David’s son, Solomon, reported by the Bible to be the wisest man who ever lived.  These words are not an exhortation to be nice to an “enemy” to spite them; rather, they acknowledge the very real human experience that being nice to an enemy will be miserable for them.  Certainly we have all had the experience of receiving something nice from an other at whom we are angry.  We simply don’t like to be the recipient of such kindness; perhaps this is one reason why humanitarian aid workers are sometimes killed when trying to help.  The killers hate the religion/organization/country represented by these aid workers to the point of killing them for their kindness, which they can’t bear to receive.

I think there is something helpful in this for our view of God and Hell.  There is an ancient view still held today in large segments of the Christian Church: God’s love is experienced as wrath and torment by those who have chosen to live their lives apart from Him.  In other words, the same “consuming fire” of God that warms and comforts those who love Him also torments those who do not.

Consider the story of the three young men with which I began.  Here is the rest of the story:

The king saw four men in the furnace, and they were dancing!  God had joined the three in the fire!  The three emerged from the fire completely unharmed, skin, hair, and clothes all unburned.  Only their ropes had burned away.

For the three young men who followed God, the fire was protection and safety.  For the king’s men it was death.  Similarly, when God freed the Hebrews from Egyptian slavery more than 3000 years ago, to aid their escape He came between them and the army of Pharaoh:

The Cloud [of God] enshrouded one camp in darkness and flooded the other with light. The two camps didn’t come near each other all night.

In both these cases followers of God experienced God as life and those rejecting God experienced Him as death.  Perhaps this is the difference between Heaven and Hell: Heaven is to eternally experience God’s love as warmth and beauty while Hell is to experience His love as eternal torment and pain—the same God who is love experienced radically different.

As I said above, the Bible is clear that Hell was not created for us in advance.  Rather, it is a place created by the existence of our own free will and will be populated by those who have freely rejected God’s love.  It must exist as an experience of God’s rejected love just as Heaven must exist as an experience of God’s accepted love.

We will all live eternally, we have no other options. God puts a choice before us for how we will experience Him through that eternity: as life or as death.  Choose life.  Choose Him, it is what God wants for each of us.

 

Rewards in Heaven

31 Thursday Oct 2013

Posted by in Heaven and Hell

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…anyone who comes to God must believe that He exists and that He rewards those who earnestly seek Him. (Biblical book of Hebrews, c11, v6)

 Rewards in heaven.  The Bible is clear that there will be rewards in heaven.  Since the rewards are in heaven, then it seems clear that the reward is more than making it to heaven itself.  So, should we make of these rewards?

Some believe the rewards will be tangible, material things.  For example, read the following verse:

In My Father’s house are many dwelling places; if it were not so, I would have told you; for I go to prepare a place for you. (Jesus, The Gospel of John, c14, v2)

Some Christians, using this verse, imagine the rewards in heaven will be a house, sometimes we use the word “mansion” found in some biblical translations.  To demonstrate our humility, we say something like, “I don’t care if I live in an outhouse as long as I am in heaven.”  We say it as a joke; however, in my conversations with Christians it seems clear that many are expecting some sort of tangible gift from God as a reward.

I think that this is dangerous thinking for at least three reasons.  First of all, we can turn God into Santa Clause.  ”God knows,” according to this thinking, “who has been naughty or nice.”  He will check his list twice and give me a present corresponding to my degree of goodness.  Therefore, if I am particularly saintly (usually as defined by the individual) I will find a big mansion waiting for me when I get to heaven.

Second, we turn following Jesus into a competition.  Talk of mansions or other tangible rewards invites a response of our competitive nature.  While we would never say it outright, we easily imagine ourselves living in a mansion larger or smaller than an other.

Third, recall a Christmas morning as a child.  You have been anticipating a particular present for perhaps months.  Finally, the morning arrives and you rip open the package to find the very gift for which you have longed.  For the next hours, days, or perhaps weeks, it is the center of your life.  Yet, eventually you set aside the gift for increasingly longer periods until one day you discover it in the attic, now only a fond reminder of a happy past.

I suspect that a material reward in heaven would be the same.  How far along the long corridor of eternal time will I travel before my mansion becomes passé?  I know myself to well.  It will not take long.

If our rewards are not material in nature, then what are they?  What should we expect when we get to heaven?  Jesus tells us.  He says that eternal life is knowing the true God (Father) and Jesus Himself.  The “knowing” spoken of by Jesus is the deepest, most intimate knowing possible between two beings…a mysterious union.  It is not “knowing about”; rather, it is the knowing that comes from living life with an other.  This level of intimacy does not come from a casual life together; rather, it is the result of a life of intention together through all the good times and the messy times, wanting the best for the other.

If this idea of spending an eternity to get to know God seems foreign to you, you are not alone.  In our consumerist Western culture we measure success in terms of material things, including money; perhaps you remember the old bumper sticker, “He who dies with the most toys wins.”  Also, in our world of social media, our idea of knowing people has become more about “friending” an other than expending the time and energy and commitment it takes to really know the other.

Let me propose something to you with a question.  What if our rewards in heaven is based on relationship and not materialism?  What if my reward is to finally come face-to-face with the God I love?

Certainly even in this there are “levels” of reward.  Imaging running into an acquaintance after some years.  It will likely be a nice reunion.  Contrast that with two lovers reunited after a similar period of separation.  The latter brings a sense of happiness and feeling of fulfillment, a greater “reward” than the former.

I believe it will be similar with God.  Once I am able to see His face will it be as an acquaintance or as a lover?  Don’t hear me speaking disparagingly of only being acquainted with God.  This may be as far as we have progressed in our journey with Him.  However, it would be sad if I had the chance for a deeper relationship with God and didn’t want more.

I believe that this is what God wants for us and with us.  Our Trinitarian viewpoint provides us with an image of a God of three persons—Father, Son, Spirit—who are eternally outward focused and other centered.  God is love, after all.  We were created to be in loving union with Him.  Our union with Him is a reward for Him, too, as He joins with us, His beloved daughters and sons.

If I’m right and if eternal life is to be in a loving relationship with God, to know Him in the most intimate sense, then why wait?  Why not start now so that when you get to heaven you will run into the arms of the one you most love.  What better reward could there be?

Why Us?

19 Wednesday Dec 2012

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Jesus turned and saw Andrew and another following, and said to them, “What do you seek?” They said to Him, “Rabbi (which translated means Teacher), where are You staying?” He said to them, “Come, and you will see.” So they came and saw where He was staying; and they stayed with Him that day…later, Andrew went and found his brother Simon and said to him, “We have found the Christ.”
–The Gospel of John, Chapter 1, verses 38-41, paraphrased

Have you ever wondered why God created us? After all, we seem to be a lot of trouble for Him, so much so that He once destroyed “every living thing” that He had made, except Noah and his family and at least representative pairs of all animals and birds.

But, why would God create us? Some point to Isaiah’s words that say God created us for His glory. Surely this is true. The Westminster Shorter Catechism tells us that “the chief end of man” is “to glorify God and enjoy Him forever.” Again, surely this is true. Still, somehow all of this seems a little sterile to me. Using a human relationship, I can glorify a human king by being an upright, obedient subject and by showing proper respect to the king. But beyond that I might never have any relationship with the king.

God moved me beyond my early notion of bringing Him glory when I began to understand Jesus when He said that eternal life is to “know the only true God [the Father] and Jesus Christ whom He sent.” Here, the Greek work for “know” means the most intimate relationship we can imagine. So, to combine the Scriptures, somehow my intimate relationship with God glorifies Him.

But, again, why? What is it about God that wants a relationship with me and yearns for me to have a relationship with Him…a relationship He wants so badly that He, in the person of Jesus, died to have it?

I think have found the answer; and of course I’m not the first to come to this. Here is how I am currently thinking about this question of the creation of mankind. Have you ever had an experience that you found so joy-filled that you couldn’t wait to share it? An experience you just couldn’t wait to invite another into hoping they, too, would share your joy? As a kid I was always inviting other kids to play football or baseball in the park; it was so much fun for me and I wanted us all to have fun. As an adult I encourage friends to go to a particular restaurant or to go see a movie…all things that have brought me joy. Even better are the events in which I share the joy with them, such as shared meals or movies. I really enjoy golf. I find great joy in being outside and walking the course. The (very) occasional good shot I hit is also joyful. My pleasure from golf was actually enhanced when my wife began to play and we could share the joy of the game. It seems natural to us to invite others into that which we have found joyful and in that act find our own joy enhanced; so natural is it that I believe it is part of who we are, part of being made “in the image and likeness” of God.

So, now I imagine the Trinity: God the Father, God the Son, and God the Holy Spirit; I imagine the perfect love that exists in the relationship, so perfect that the three are distinct and yet one, unified in love. I imagine the joyous love that must always be present within the Trinity, so present that the Apostle John says that God is love. I find it easy to imagine that God, immersed in perfect love and the resulting joy would want to share that experience; not just by showering others with love but by inviting others in to that experience of love. With whom did God choose to share His experience? Us…He created us to share the experience of love with Him, to enter into the same relationship with God that Jesus has with His Father.

With whom did God choose to share His experience? Us…He created us to share the experience of love with Him, to enter into the same relationship with God that Jesus has with His Father.

Can there be any truth more profound? I think not. When Jesus walked the earth He continually invited others along. “Follow Me” was His urging. Some followed; most didn’t. This inviting is, I believe, at the heart of what Jesus means when as His last words to His followers before being crucified He prays for us to be relationally “one” with He and our Father (John 17:22-26).

I have had a few deeply mystical encounters with God in which I have experienced the briefest taste of His love for me. Its power is incapacitating in the moment. The result of each encounter has always been the deepening of my love for Him. And I have the great fortune of experiencing perhaps the best possible human expression of God’s love in my marriage and also with a small, deeply loving community of committed Jesus followers. These experiences have been important events that have moved me along the path of being transformed into the likeness of Jesus. Here is something I’ve discovered along the way: the more I become like Christ, the more I experience the kind of love that exists within the Trinity, and the more I respond to His invitation to join in His love, the more I long for others to experience it…I long to share with you the experience God is sharing with me.

So, I say to you, whoever you are reading this, I have found the Christ…come, and you too will see.

Eros–Self Love

13 Tuesday Nov 2012

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[Jesus,] who for the joy set before Him endured the cross, despising the shame, and has sat down at the right hand of the throne of God.
—Hebrews 12:2

Self-love. Eros love, to use the Greek. I love myself and I want happiness for me. Is that wrong? Some would say so; they would say that it is wrong for me to want anything for myself. Real love, they might continue, is selfless and total unconcerned for self. This line of thinking has already caused me no little consternation in my own life as I think of my motives in a loving relationship. It is a common way to think within Christianity, but is this true?

Apparently, Jesus believe I should love myself. After all, He explicitly endorses self-love:

You shall love your neighbor as you love yourself. Apparently, if I do not love myself then what hope has my neighbor of receiving my love? What hope do I have of obeying Jesus if I don’t love myself?

Bernard of Clairvaux, the 12th century monk, offers a progression of four “degrees” of love that help me think through this (see his work, On Loving God). From lowest to highest, they are:

1) Love self for the sake of self. This is selfish, self-centered love. He refers to this as “carnal” love. This “first degree of love” is where we all start.

2) Love God for the sake of self. This is where I begin being “in love” when another is involved. I remember saying, “I can’t live without you.” It is loving another because of the happiness it brought me. I began my Christianity this way; I loved God for what He could do for me. Whether it was keeping me out of hell or keeping me healthy…I loved God for what I got out of the relationship.

3) Love God for solely because He is God. As I persisted in my relationship with God and begin to know Him, I found myself coming to love Him for whom He is. He is God and I love Him for that alone. And, as a consequence, I found that as He drew me closer to Him I began to see myself in the intense light of His perfect holiness. There was nowhere to hide; in every act I saw my sin. I loathed myself for the stink of my own sinfulness.

4) Love self only for the sake of God. God never loathes me. Jesus died for me; there is no greater expression of one’s love for another than this. A reporter once commented to Mother Teresa how much she loved the poor. She replied, “I don’t love the poor; Jesus loves the poor and I loves Jesus.” She loved the poor for the sake of Jesus. So it is with me: Jesus loves me; therefore, I love myself for the sake of Jesus. This is Bernard’s “fourth degree of love.” Given what I know about myself, what goes on within me, I have no other basis for proper self-love than this. Any other basis of self-love would be delusional and be the selfish love of Bernard’s first degree: self-love for my own sake.

If I love myself for God’s sake, then I say to myself, it is very good that I exist. In fact, philosopher Josef Pieper (Faith, Hope, Love) asserts that self-love is the love “on which all other [types of love] are founded and makes all others possible.” If I cannot apply the test, “it is very good that one exists” to myself, then to whom else can I really apply it? If the deepest form of love is union with another, then whom else am I more one with than with myself? As Pieper says, “unity is closer to the source than union.” With Jesus and with my wife I am becoming united; only with myself am I in unity.

Self-love is a consequence of my creation, of believing in my deepest self that it is good that I exist, then it must be good to seek my own happiness. I am, it seems, created to be a hedonist…a hedonist according to Bernard of Clairvaux. What does it mean to be a Christian hedonist?

If eros is self-love, then look at the other extreme, agapē love, the love God has for us. It is often described as selfless love, sacrificial love, a love free of self-interest, self-protection, or self-gratification. We say that Jesus died for us out of His agapē love for us…but then what do we make out of the joy He felt as He went to the cross? He was joyful because He loved His Father and out of love for Him and for us was crucified. Doing something for the One He loved and for us, who He also loved, gave Him joy. How, then, can we say that Jesus’ love was selfless and free of self-interest? Was it purely agapē love as we like to define it? Is there such a thing as love that is absolutely selfless?

Let’s try the philosophical technique of reductio ad absurdum, taking this idea of selfless love to its logical conclusion. If selfless love is best, then what about painful love? If it is good that I get nothing out of love, then wouldn’t it be better if it hurt? No.

This selfless characterization of agapē love sounds to me like a very antiseptic love, and I think it is a wrong characterization. I love my wife and my love gives me great pleasure. Should I not want that for myself? I love myself, shouldn’t I want happiness for me? Frankly, I cannot conceive of loving my wife without the accompanying joy and happiness it brings me. I cannot conceive of loving God joylessly. The feeling seems mutual; the old prophet Zechariah tells us that God sings over us (Zephaniah 3:17).

Eros, self-love, and agapē, selfless love. If self-love is that upon which every other love exists, then where does self-less love fit? Does eros end where agapē begins? I don’t think so. Consider the paradox of hedonism: it is the concept that one cannot find happiness by seeking it; rather, one finds happiness by living a virtuous life. However, one does not deny the received happiness as the reward of virtue. Bernard says the same thing about love:

Love is an affection of the soul, not a contract: it cannot rise from a mere agreement, nor is it so to be gained. It is spontaneous in its origin and impulse; and true love is its own satisfaction. It has its reward; but that reward is the object beloved. For whatever you seem to love, if it is on account of something else, what you do really love is that something else, not the apparent object of desire.

Tricky stuff. It seems that if I love serving God or love making Him happy, then those are the objects of my love and not God Himself. My joy, then, would be based on service to Him (likely as I define it) or His happiness (also likely as I define it) rather than God alone. My love for Jesus must be based on my affirmation that it is very good that He exists and my desire (out of self-love) to be united with Him. I am choosing to reorder my life to be in loving relationship with Him. It that because of self-less love or self-love?

I love God and I love my wife. I hope I would find it true were it ever put to the test that I would do anything for them, even giving my life. It is self-less in the sense that I desire nothing more than them. It is selfish in that out of their joy of being loved I receive the very pleasant reward of joy, the desire for which is born out of my self love, my eros.

So, unconditional love between lovers would be each wanting only the other, and out of the joy of the other experiencing joy. In this light, to even talk of “sacrificial love” seems foreign; for the lover there is no sacrifice, there are only acts of love for one’s beloved. For the joy set before Jesus, he endured the humiliation of the cross…my, what love.