So here I sit at my desk, thinking on rather large ideas - love, joy and God. Reading John Piper scarcely helps me, confounding my reason and experience. I have to sit back and rethink my own life and attempt a new paradigm of existence. It is no small thing to do, and I've been sitting here for a while now.
John Piper defines love as thus: "the overflow of joy in God that meets the needs of others." (page 139, of Desiring God, Meditations of a Christian Hedonist." John Piper thus takes an idea, joy, and finds it in all things and in all people. As an epitome, Piper describes how the Creator's feeling of joy is transformed into an action that cascades down and assists those in want, those who are incomplete. Love is born out of joy. The action begins with a feeling.
Man, this is a difficult concept indeed. To be blunt, reading John Piper is like trying to eat a banana underwater. Every bite I take my mouth fills with things that I do not wish to swallow, and I end up most times with a watery banana mash in my mouth that I cannot choke down for fear of drowning. I've spent more time fighting with the water than tasting the banana. Not a good way to eat, not if you are hungry. If I were John Piper's editor, I would cry out, "John! I like my banana without the water! Get rid of the water!"
I think the problem lies in part in our (or my) brand of thinking. It lies in the way we have been trained to think on things. We have been trained in the art of conflict. Now, conflict has but two sides - the side you are on, and the other side is everything and everyone else that is not on your side. The binary is easy to understand, and we are trained thus since the beginning. When a child is given a toy, the child thinks, "this toy is mine." And when the parent takes it away, the child then understands, "that toy is no longer mine." The toy then represents the totality of what the child knows - what is his, and what isn't his. Trying to squeeze joy into our idea of the relationship between and among ourselves, and between ourselves and God, is difficult when we see things in binary.
So too is it with our conception of sin. We define God as sinless, the embodiment of being Perfect. And everything that is not with God, then, is sinful. For if it were not of sin, it would be with God and it would be part of God.
So what then are we? Are we with God or are we without? Can we be part of God and part not? I do not think this is possible, for God cannot co-exist with Sin. In our existence, we are either part of God or we are not. And in this perception, so we are separated from God by our own actions and thoughts. We are Sinful, and Fallen. We are without God. It is the height of the depths of Existentialism - that we are alone and without help. And joy falls aside, for where is joy when we are alone? Joy merely is a pleasure concept designed to numb us from the reality of abandonment that screams in our ears.
Then, how is it possible to Love? Again, we turn to the Bible and the words of the Son. And Jesus said unto the Pharisees, who asked him what the Greatest Commandment is, "And he said to him, 'You shall love the Lord Your God with all of your heart, and with all of your soul, and with all of your mind.' This is the Greatest Commandment. The second is like it, 'You shall love your neighbor as yourself.' On these two commandments depend the whole Law and the Prophets.'" (Matthew 22:37-40, NASB). Now, there's a concept we can grasp in our binary mind. We understand love, because it pulls us like gravity toward each other. And yet we fail to see how all this is possible.
And yet we remain steadfast in our perceptions. The love that we have inside of us, is the foundation for all of the Commandments; it is the foundation for all of the structure of how we should live, for all of the things that God's Chosen has said to us. And yet, still, we are apart from God. And yet again, we are still embodied with the ability to Love. As sinful as we are, as fallen though we might be, we still have the most critical element to bring us closer to God. Again, how is this possible?
So, again, we turn to the Bible. Paul writes in 1Corinthians 13, "But now faith, hope and love, abide these three; but the greatest of these is love." Faith, we need for redemption. Hope, we need to live another day. And love? What is love that puts the other two on a lower rung?
I'll repeat now, John Piper's definition of love: "the overflow of joy in God that meets the needs of others." Love starts as a feeling that God has within Him. But God's feeling IS God. God's joy is God, because it is a part of Him. Another way to say what Piper states, then, is "the overflow of God is what meets the needs of others, and this is what we call love." We can simplify this, by saying "God, in a state of joy, meets our needs, and this is love." The reason why love is the greatest Commandment of all, the foundation for all things, is because the foundation for all things is God.
And then the truism reveals itself. We are not alone in this world; we are not helpless in this world; we are made part of God by the thing that is within us that has always been a part of God. We are with God when we love, and we feel the thing that God feels, and that is joy. We are not alone then! We are connected FIRST by joy!
This is the rebuttal to those who do not believe, or who do not know - all human beings are connected to God, and to each other, through joy. And through joy, we are able to love. And through love, God meets our needs. This is why love outstrips faith, without which we fail at redemption. This is why love outreaches hope, without which we may not live out the day. Love is what makes us a part of God, what turns us away from Sin.
It is a rather telling commentary that we as believers need a book written, for Christians to understand joy, to jostle us into awareness at how things really are. What Piper wants us to understand what we already have inside of us waiting to for us to see. Joy is what connects us together, what brings us closer to God. Love is the action that comes from joy, and what makes us be with God.
We are not alone, and we are not helpless in this world. If we must see things in binary, then, let us see things as thus - Man is given the ability to feel, to experience joy, because it is the prerequisite for the action of love, for what brings us back to God. To be a Christian Hedonist is really just to be a Christian with your eyes open. We should seek joy, we should, in the words of Cathy who quoted Robert, we should fight for it. We are really fighting for us to be with God.
Finally, let me say this. Paul wrote in 1Cor. 13:2, "if I have a faith that can move mountains, but do not have love, I am nothing." The connection between God and ourselves does not come through faith. It comes through love. And it is love that drives us to be a part of Him. But love that comes without joy is also nothing, because Joy is what is a part of God, and it is this feeling that we should feel, to make us to love not only each other, but God. This banana tastes good, trust me.
-David
Saturday, January 13, 2007
Thursday, January 11, 2007
In Memoriam
When a person passes from this life into the next, the family and the friends of the one who leaves them bereft of all but memories struggle to understand.
Joy turns into a hollow, empty space, and reason flees in the face of overwhelming sorrow, confusion and anger. What is left but to grieve, to hold the memory of the departed closer to our bosom than we had before the departure? How weak are those feelings that bubble forth from deep tragedy, impotent against the reality of life and death.
Comfort does not appear in the Bible, at least not to me. No, it is not the Bible that holds the faith that we will see the departed again. That faith must lie within us, and we cling to such faith because without it, all sense and logic turn to ashes just like the warming fire that must burn out when the fuel run outs. Comfort does not come in the masses of people that come to the door to offer condolences, again, not to me. Words of soothing and care will not bring back those we have lost, nor can they assuage the feelings hidden deep in the heart, feelings that cannot be expressed without also acknowledging the guilt of the guilty. We are always responsible for those we lose, and it is always our fault. Only God can forgive us for our sins, and only on Judgment Day will be freed from the chains of our own responsibility. Jesus Christ may save us from our mortal sinful selves, but responsibility remains until we face God and those who have already passed.
How then, really, can I restore my friend's life, my brother's life when he and his family have lost the bedrock of their lives? What can I do, but grieve silently and pray that God might bring blessing instead of pain to him who I love? Everything that I know, everything that I hold close to canon, all sound hollow coming from my lips. No lessons from the Book of Job, no comfort in words of Paul or in the songs of David. I refuse to engage in the knowledge of the mind when the pain lies in the heart.
We live in the darkest of times, when life moves so quickly that we are young and innocent one day, and old men and women the next. And in between such days, there is nothing but clutter and noise, need and want. In the blink of an eye, we find ourselves missing out on a lifetime of our families, the bonds of blood and friendship that we have taken for granted up until the moment we realize how fragile our mortal bodies really are.
Why does it take the passing of a life of one close to us, to realize the preciousness of God's gift? Every day, hundreds and thousands of random people around the world are brought to finality, and we do not notice or spend a second moment to reflect. Does it really have to take the ripping out of pieces of our hearts, to heed God's warning to us all?
And so, I sit here and write. Nearby, my friend and brother sits grieving with his family for a father departed before so much life that could have been. And nothing that I can do will take away the pain, the torment, the guilt and the fear that must be. I am broken, and yet I can only pray that God would first take care of my brother before me.
-David
Joy turns into a hollow, empty space, and reason flees in the face of overwhelming sorrow, confusion and anger. What is left but to grieve, to hold the memory of the departed closer to our bosom than we had before the departure? How weak are those feelings that bubble forth from deep tragedy, impotent against the reality of life and death.
Comfort does not appear in the Bible, at least not to me. No, it is not the Bible that holds the faith that we will see the departed again. That faith must lie within us, and we cling to such faith because without it, all sense and logic turn to ashes just like the warming fire that must burn out when the fuel run outs. Comfort does not come in the masses of people that come to the door to offer condolences, again, not to me. Words of soothing and care will not bring back those we have lost, nor can they assuage the feelings hidden deep in the heart, feelings that cannot be expressed without also acknowledging the guilt of the guilty. We are always responsible for those we lose, and it is always our fault. Only God can forgive us for our sins, and only on Judgment Day will be freed from the chains of our own responsibility. Jesus Christ may save us from our mortal sinful selves, but responsibility remains until we face God and those who have already passed.
How then, really, can I restore my friend's life, my brother's life when he and his family have lost the bedrock of their lives? What can I do, but grieve silently and pray that God might bring blessing instead of pain to him who I love? Everything that I know, everything that I hold close to canon, all sound hollow coming from my lips. No lessons from the Book of Job, no comfort in words of Paul or in the songs of David. I refuse to engage in the knowledge of the mind when the pain lies in the heart.
We live in the darkest of times, when life moves so quickly that we are young and innocent one day, and old men and women the next. And in between such days, there is nothing but clutter and noise, need and want. In the blink of an eye, we find ourselves missing out on a lifetime of our families, the bonds of blood and friendship that we have taken for granted up until the moment we realize how fragile our mortal bodies really are.
Why does it take the passing of a life of one close to us, to realize the preciousness of God's gift? Every day, hundreds and thousands of random people around the world are brought to finality, and we do not notice or spend a second moment to reflect. Does it really have to take the ripping out of pieces of our hearts, to heed God's warning to us all?
And so, I sit here and write. Nearby, my friend and brother sits grieving with his family for a father departed before so much life that could have been. And nothing that I can do will take away the pain, the torment, the guilt and the fear that must be. I am broken, and yet I can only pray that God would first take care of my brother before me.
-David
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