Post by Patron Saint of Correctional OfficersChristians are to love each other as much as I love prison inmates and
correctional officers, that is, with a sincere and heart-felt love.
. Love's Labor Won
I have so far presented two essential components for meaning-the pursuit
of wonder and the knowledge of truth-and suggested that they are both
fulfilled in a person. I now suggest that the third component essential to
meaning is love. From the wonder of childhood to the search for truth in
adolescence, we come to the consummation of love in young adulthood.
Christopher Morley said, "If we all discovered that we had only five
minutes left to say all that we wanted to say, every telephone booth would
be occupied by people calling other people to stammer that we love
them."?8?
The greatest institution God gave to humanity is the institution of the family,
based on the need for unconditional love. On love and marriage, G. K.
Chesterton made this poignant observation: "They have invented a new
phrase that is a black-and-white contradiction in two words-'free love.'
As if a lover had been, or ever could be, free. It is the nature of love to bind
itself."?9? Those words seem totally foreign to our disposable society: "It is
the nature of love to bind itself." Realistically, what passes for love today
could be more aptly described as self-gratification or indulgence.
How strange that we call the sexual act "making love." In actuality, if that
act is without commitment, it is a literal and figurative denuding of love by
which the individual is degraded to an object. In short, love is not love when
it has been manufactured for the moment. Love is the posture of the soul,
and its entailments are binding. When love is shallow, the heart is empty, but
if the sacrifice of love is understood, one can drink deeply from its cup and
be completely fulfilled. The more one consumes love selfishly, the more
wretched and impoverished one becomes. But how do we know this?
Through the message of Christ.
At the heart of the gospel is a Savior who loves us and offered himself for
us. Once more, a unique truth emerges. Even Mahatma Gandhi, who was a
Hindu, stated that the cross of Jesus constantly showed itself as an
unparalleled expression of God's grace. Dr. E. Stanley Jones, a famed and
noted missionary to India, used to tell the story of a man, a devout Hindu
government official, to whom he was trying to explain the concept of the
cross. The man kept reiterating to Dr. Jones that he could not possibly
make sense of the crucifixion of Jesus Christ and the offer of salvation by
virtue of the cross. Their conversations on this subject were circular and
seemingly unsolvable to his satisfaction.
One day, through a series of circumstances, the man involved himself in an
extramarital affair that tormented his conscience. He could live with himself
no longer, and finally, looking into the eyes of his devoted wife, he told her
the heartrending story of his betrayal. The hours and days of anguish and
pain became weeks of heaviness in her heart. Yet, as she weathered the
early shock, she confessed to him not only her deep sense of hurt but also
the promise of her undying commitment and love.
Suddenly, almost like a flash of lightning illuminating the night sky, he found
himself muttering, "Now I know what it means to see love crucified by sin."
He bent his knee in repentance to the Christ who went to the cross for him,
binding his heart with a new commitment to his Lord and to his wife.
If there is one description that captures the purpose of the cross, it is this:
forgiveness that has been just and merciful at the same time. Christ did not
die just as an example or as a martyr. He died so that the very ones who
crucified him could have a way provided for their forgiveness. The cross
conveys a message that is unquestionably unique. It stands in stark contrast
to every other human power and human solution. This cross defines what
love's entailments are.
But there is something more, and here we get to the crux of meaning. In
Christian terms, love does not stand merely as an emotion or even as an
expression of being reconciled to God. In a relationship with God, it
ultimately flowers into worship. It is in worship alone that wonder and truth
coalesce and our expression prefigures the consummation of an eternal
communion. The enrichment that results from worship feeds all other
relationships and helps us to hold sacred all of life's needed commitments.
D. H. Lawrence was right when he said that the deepest hunger of the
human heart goes beyond love. And Thomas Wolfe was right-there is that
sense of cosmic loneliness apart from God. In Christ that loneliness is
conquered as the hungers of the human heart are met and the struggles of
the intellect are answered.
"How is that so?" one might ask. Archbishop William Temple defined
worship in these terms:
Worship is the submission of all of our nature to God. It is the quickening of
conscience by His holiness, nourishment of mind by His truth, purifying of
imagination by His beauty, opening of the heart to His love, and submission
of will to His purpose. All this gathered up in adoration is the greatest of all
expressions of which we are capable.?10?
Life is bereft of meaning because of the essential fragmentation that results
when life is viewed as nothing more than matter. But if our lives are in truth
designed for the supreme purpose of worship, then the sacred binds our
lives and fuses every activity with meaning, even as it enables us to resist
that which desacralizes life. Thomas Merton was right when he said that
man is not at peace with his fellow man because he is not at peace with
himself. And he is not at peace with himself because he is not at peace with
God. That inner fragmentation is corrected only by the integrity of worship.
It is not accidental that in one of the most notable of all Jesus'
conversations, with the woman at the well, the conversation began with her
disintegrated life, littered with five broken marriages, and ended with the
fulfillment of worship that sent her running back home to tell her people that
she had found the source of her mending. It is vital to know that this is not
worship that is just a "spiritual" act. This is worship that takes its cue from
truth that has been tested against reality. In that combination, wonder
blossoms into fullness.
Is there a difference between this worship and worship in other religions?
Indeed, yes. At its heart and in its goals Hinduism, for example, teaches us
that we are to seek union with the divine. Why union? Because the Hindu
claims that we are part and parcel of this divine universe. The goal of the
individual is, therefore, to discover that divinity and live it out. This is the
heart of philosophical Hinduism-self-deification. One of India's premier
philosophers stated forthrightly, "Man is God in a temporary state of self-
forgetfulness."
This is the reason the "you" disappears in Hinduism and the meditative
process is enjoined, so that we can, as individuals, merge with the one
impersonal absolute-the capital "I," because there is no significant other.
Union with the impersonal absolute defies language, reason, and existential
realities. It does not satisfy the longing for communion. However much one
may respect the intent of such teaching, we deceive ourselves if we believe
that it is philosophically coherent. It is not. That is why some of the most
respected Hindu philosophers and thinkers have brandished it as one of the
most contradictory systems of life's purpose ever espoused.?11? Not only
that, Hinduism could not survive the sterility of this kind of self-deification.
Personal deities are erupted by the millions, and the temples are crowded
with people seeking to worship. No, the suggestion of inward divinity is
psychologically imprisoning, and the individual breaks away to find another.
While Hinduism goes to one extreme-the deification of the self-Islam is
at the other extreme. In Islam, the distance between God and humanity is so
vast that the "I" never gets close to the "him" in God. And because this
distance between the two is impossible to cross, worship takes on an
incredible clutter of activity, designed to bring the worshiper close.
Repetition and submission take the place of the warmth of a relationship.
One only need glimpse a Muslim at worship to see the difference. Yet, with
all that he observes and all the rules he keeps, there is never a certainty of
heaven for the common person in Islam. It is all in the will of God, they say.
One's destiny is left at the mercy of an unknown will. When relationship is
swallowed up by rules, political power and enforcement become the means
of containment.
In the Christian message, the God who is distinct and distant came close so
that we who are weak may be made strong and may be drawn close in
communion with him, even while our identity is retained. The individual
retains his individuality while dwelling in community. The physical retains its
physicality but is transcended by the spiritual. Meaning finds its consummate
purpose.
[1]
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8 Christopher Morley, quoted in a column by Ruth Walker in Christian
Science Monitor, 20 November 1991.
9 G. K. Chesterton, As I Was Saying, ed. Robert Knille (Grand Rapids:
Eerdmans, 1985), 267.
10 William Temple, quoted in David Watson, I Believe in Evangelism
(Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1976), 157.
11 See Radhakrishnan in his Hindu View of Life (New Delhi, India: Indus,
1993); and Pandit Nehru on his comment on Hinduism, quoted in David
Brown, A Guide to Religions (London: S.P.C.K., 1975), 63.
[1]Geisler, N. L., & Hoffman, P. K. (2001). Why I am a Christian :
Leading thinkers explain why they believe (277). Grand Rapids, Mich.:
Baker Books.