Its part of pain and pleasure

“Love until it hurts” said the tumblr. 

A quaint sentiment spoken, I warrant, not during the hurt that loving entails. It’s always easier to speak platitudes and aphorisms that sound profound about situations when you’re not necessarily undergoing them. Much like how I tend to listen to a fellow graduate student-teacher explain a difficult situation involving one of their students, and my advice usually involves a degree of objectivity and detachment that I, were I in the same situation, would find it rather more difficult to express in such a blasé fashion. “Oh, just fail the paper,” I say easily after hearing of a student’s frustrating behavior, but it’s tougher when you’re the one giving the grade and the student shows up in your class every week, when you have to look in their eyes and teach knowing that they likely resent you or at the very least are upset by your actions.

“Love until it hurts.” Admirable, that. Though perhaps overly simplistic. The general idea, as I take it, means that one should love others or things to the point where they matter at a deep level and thus their removal or loss will elicit pain in you. But the way this sound bite comes across is that the object of love is to acquire pain, to stretch out until you feel tendons tearing, to contort your body to the point of injury, to give of yourself until it costs you. Which seems to me a fallacious sentiment to express. No where in God’s word does the injunction appear to love to the point of pain. 

I rather doubt that the writer meant to convey such a meaning. I’m fairly certain that the takeaway intended involves the exhortation to love with abandon, to unstintingly allow yourself to feel deep passion and to commit and express such passion to the object (again I assume this is directed toward a person). Whether it be a spouse or a beloved, a child or a parent, a friend or a coworker, the Christianized version capitalizes on the popular and non-controversial espousal of love as a divine attribute, one that is much less objectionable to unbelievers than God’s righteousness, justice, mercy, grace, and omnipotence. “God is love” offends far fewer casual people than “God is holy” or “God is truth,” so this expression simply takes it and invites the viewer to ponder ways in which s/he does not fully commit their love to their beloved. 

Thus, the more correct wording would probably be, “Don’t be afraid to love until it hurts.” The fallen nature of existence and humanity virtually ensures that harm and injury will come, whether from circumstances of nature or from the actions of other people, and the tendency, the temptation is to recoil, to keep one’s emotions removed and secured behind walls that limit the damage and access to one’s innermost being. But the object of loving someone isn’t oneself; the very nature of the act and attitude of love is directed away from the subject toward the object. Otherwise it’s not really love. If you truly love someone, you allow them access to the depths of your soul and spirit, to the point where they can injure and hurt you by their actions. But of course, their intention should never be to harm you, and those quasi-sadists who insist upon measuring and verifying the love of others for them by hurting them are not really loving the other person, and in all likelihood will lose the love they simultaneously desire and mistrust. 

“Love until it hurts.” I’m hurting right now. I loved a woman and I told her so. She did not feel the same way, and so I’m in pain. One of the questions (and there are many) swirling around my brain ponders, “Was it worth it? Was the love I felt for her worth the present pain I’m experiencing?” The events are still quite fresh, and thus quite raw in my heart, so this may not be the ideal time to explore them, but I’m sure my insight and understanding will wax with more distance. In the meantime it may be interesting to compare notes from my initial reaction to more thoughtful and less emotional ones in the future. 

But the question stands as to whether it was worth it. Note that I harbor no doubts as to whether I should have told her and risked rejection; different reasons drove this decision, but one of them coincided with the above maxim, or at least the modified one: “Don’t be afraid to love until it hurts.” And I have been afraid for a long time about being hurt. My willingness therefore to be vulnerable and to be hurt is a marker of growth for me, and I’m satisfied with that decision. But the question is not concerned with the decision, but rather the emotion and direction of will that compelled it to be made. And for this the answer is less translucent.

One school of thought that immediately occurs to me is the sports/fitness metaphor. To love someone is an emotional muscle that must be exercised in order to grow stronger and healthier. Therefore loving and experiencing loss or disappointed hopes is similar to lifting weights or running and the subsequent aches and pains that follow. Given my willingness to take a risk and chance the pain, I have given my loving mechanism a great workout which will make it heartier the next time, quicker and wiser in choosing an object of affection and tougher in the face of objection or rejection. And while this analogy has some merit, frankly, I regard that as an insufficient reason to expose oneself to risk of emotional injury. 

Another consolation may be forwarded in the guise of the argument, “Well, you put yourself out there, and even if you get rejected, if you were pretty sure such would be the case, you have a better chance of not being rejected than if you never put yourself out there to begin with.” This counter is more satisfying to me for several reason. First, the possibility of pain makes the avoidance of pain and reciprocation of love that much sweeter if it turns out that way. Just like the relief of a gamble increases the more money is riding on it, so the loss-potential can increase the success that occurs. To have your faith rewarded, to expose yourself to risk makes you appreciate it more when the risk pays off. Incidentally, it will also increase the affection one has for the object, seeing that they chose to embrace instead of reject the subject. 

Rich Mullins wrote some wonderful songs, the lyrics of which are the closest contemporary analogues to the old hymns that I’ve encountered. Among the most resonant lyrics for me comes in the song “The Love of God” in which the phrase “the reckless raging fury that they call the love of God” is repeated several times. The idea of the furious nature of God’s love always struck me as curious and not a little unnerving; after all, this God allowed His Son to be murdered by torturous means in order to offer salvation to those very people who murdered him and for whose sake he allowed himself to be murdered. The recklessness of God’s love stuns me whenever I really think about it, which is what Mullins was tapping into, and that same recklessness should permeate our lives and relationships among ourselves and between us and the Lord.

And lest you think that Mullins solely ascribed the ferocity and reckless nature of love to the Father, in his song “Calling Out Your Name” the third verse exclaims: “The Lord takes by its corners this whole world, and shakes us forward and shakes us free to run wild with the hope.” Here the operative word is “hope” but I feel safe in assuming Mullins would have easily transferred a similar ethic to love as well. Not only is God’s love reckless, but He has invited, encouraged, nay, perhaps even mandated that we “run wild” with the love, free from constraints of worry as to what could happen to us. The worst that could happen is to be rejected, emotionally or physically by death. If the second should happen, well, “to be absent from the body is to be present with the Lord.” If the first, we can rest and recover assured that no matter what earthly tumult and pain may assail us, we can hide and rest in His sheltering arms, secure in our unshakable confidence in His love for us. That is the true heart of the Gospel, that is the good news, and armed with that I will humbly approach each day confident in who I am and my beloved status in Christ before the throne of God.

I’m sure that these words, though spiritually and intellectually true and understood, will at times seem small comfort when the ghostly pain echoes through my soul. Like a splinter removed, the afterimage on one’s emotions of shattered will linger and recur like waves on the sand. But I trust and hope that the tide of affection and the pain of its refusal will, like the tide, recede into the ocean of God’s love and acceptance, immovable as He Himself. Even so, come quickly, Lord Jesus.

An Unpleasant Realization

I’ve had an unpleasant realization. My mind strayed to Her, as is frequently the case, and another voice said, You need to stop thinking about her so much. To which I responded, I care about her, so why shouldn’t I think about her? You don’t care about her, the other voice replied. You care about Diana and Shawn, Mom and Dad, Abigail, Caleb and Rebecca, and you don’t think about them very often during the course of the day. You care about Me/the Lord, and you don’t think about Him that often either. You want her; that’s why you think about her. Just like you want to lose weight and you want to win the lottery or have a pile of money. And what you desire, what you covet, that is what you think about continuously.

And I realize that I’ve made Her into an idol, just like I’ve made losing weight into an idol. I think about losing weight so much, with the focus on food and this new thing about calories, and exercise, and the ancillary preoccupation with my body and its various ailments. It’s always on my mind, always lurking in the background of my consciousness. I look at tumblrs that show people with sculpted physiques and wallow in envy and desire; not sexual, even with the women who look fantastic, but envy and jealousy to be in such good shape. And for what purpose? To attract women? Certainly. To be healthier and perhaps to be more active, play basketball or golf or tennis? Absolutely. To see the end of many, hopefully all, the various aches and pains I suffer, and to prevent long-term diseases like those which plague Dad’s side of the family? Yes. But ultimately the desire is to feel good about myself, to worship myself and my body, just like my desire for Her is to have someone desire me and love me, to affirm me and shower me with affection and attention. 

How utterly selfish I am. What a little rotter, an egocentric narcissist I turn out to be! After all this time, after all the spiritual nurturing and maturing the Lord has patiently shepherded me through, how abysmally removed I still am from Him, who has every right to be so egocentric and demanding, but who humbles Himself a thousand times a day to continue to endure me and my self-centeredness, to bear patiently with my waywardness.

I was just wondering whether or not the reason why the Lord has refused to answer my prayers about losing weight has been not due to my own failings but because He was purposefully preventing or abstaining from lending a hand in this undertaking. And it occurred to me that He is waiting for me to finally come to that place where I say not “I can’t do this and You must, Lord,” but to say, “It doesn’t matter. You matter, Lord. Only you.”

So, whether or not I ever lose the weight and get healthy, whether or not I ever attract Her or some other woman, whether or not I become successful and wealthy, whether or not I finish grad school and secure a professorship, all these things must become issues about which I am disinterested. I am interested in seeing how they play out, but I am not investing my sense of worth and my worship in these things. Because they are ephemeral and inconstant, and they do not satisfy. Only You satisfy, Jesus, Father, Holy One. Only You.

Why Pleasing God is a Fool's Errand

It always struck me as strange that God would declare that He was pleased with Jesus when John baptized him in the River Jordan. After all, Jesus hadn't really done anything to that point; he may have changed water into wine since that took place (seemingly) before the official start of his earthly ministry, but even that miracle was not necessarily glorifying to God in the same way his healings, preaching, and other miraculous deeds. And yet God declared Himself pleased with His beloved Son. This suggests several truths which I conceive may prove transformational if they take root in our hearts.

The first truth this suggests is that God based His approval of Jesus not on Jesus’ miraculous activities in promulgating the Kingdom of Heaven on earth, whether through preaching and healing or incarnating the life of the Father, thus fulfilling the role of Adam. True, Jesus did complete his earthly life to the utter satisfaction of the Father, not only in his sinless life, but in his obedient submission to the Father’s will to the point of the Cross. This is the way in which Jesus was “made perfect” on earth; that he, being perfect, offered his heart and life up to God and endured the absolute torment and unimaginable agony of shouldering the sins of humanity. He was always perfect in his nature; he had to prove his perfection in vocation and ministry. And in the same way, we share the perfection of Jesus’ nature, which took effect at the point of conversion, and we are becoming perfect in submission to God’s will, working out our salvation with much fear and trembling, but looking forward to the completion of that process which will culminate after we die or the Lord returns, whichever comes first.

All this is true and too glorious for our minds to fully comprehend or even to express in my inadequate words. But again God’s declaration of His approval of Jesus took place before the perfection of Jesus’ earthly ministry was complete. Disregarding the timelessness of God, which is a valid objection, I propose that God deliberately chose to locate this expression of approval at the stage in Jesus’ life for the purpose of undermining a common objection that some people, even believers who might know better, have about emulating or comparing themselves with Jesus. “Well, of course God loved Jesus,” they retort. “Jesus was perfect! No wonder he was able to do what he did, and to win God’s approval! Look at the miracles he performed. I’ll wager that if I walked on water and healed a man blind from birth God would thump me on the back too!” and if God’s declaration of being pleased with Jesus came after part or all of his earthly ministry, those people might have a leg to stand on, even if other passages would prove problematic for said leg. But for the purposes of unpacking this a bit more I turn to an exemplary book I just finished reading called The Normal Christian Life by Watchman Nee.

The final chapter of this book (which you really must read) discusses the concept of “wasting” for the Lord. When Mary broke the alabaster flask of oil and anointed Jesus in the house of the Pharisee, Judas Iscariot and others of the Twelve berated her for wasting an expensive item that could have been used to bless the poor in some manner. Nee discussed Jesus’ response and expanded upon the idea that whatever we do for God is never waste in the sense of being pointless or useless or too extravagant, for how can anything we ever sacrifice for the Lord even begin to approach recompensing Him for what He has lavished abundantly on us and for us and to us? Nee went on to cite examples from his own life, particularly a woman who seemed to be wasting her talents and extraordinary relationship with the Lord by staying in a remote village and not traveling around conducting seminars or writing books. The point was that God’s economy looks for different things than humanity’s priorities suggest are valuable and important. Giving money to the poor is a tangible way to demonstrate one’s devotion to principles or even to God and blesses others; “wasting” money to anoint Jesus’ body soon to be crucified and buried is far more opaque to the world’s eyes and moral paradigms. Yet Jesus pronounced himself pleased with her offering and halted his followers from disparaging her profligacy.

And in this principle God’s declaration of His approval of Jesus begins to make more sense. For we are not told of any great works that he did before his ministry on earth; the only snapshot of his childhood, adolescence and young adulthood is that episode in the temple where he teaches the experts about the Scriptures and scares his mother half to death. Yet what God values is the availability of Jesus to the Father, the waiting patiently upon God’s will and in God’s time, of trusting that God’s plans are good and will transpire where and when they must to bring about God’s glory and praise. God saw that Jesus was wasting his time waiting for God to direct his life, to start his ministry and initiate that inevitable death march towards Calvary and the empty tomb. After all, what was Jesus doing in his twenties? There’s a decade more of preaching and teaching, healing and ministering, just wasted, a thousand missed opportunities, innumerable people with broken bodies and broken hearts thirsty for truth and meaning and love that went without ever encountering Jesus. I imagine that if I were to travel back to meet Jesus at his 18^th birthday, I might exhort him to start his ministry much sooner than he did; why not bless and heal and nurture and teach as many people as possible? This is the worldly way of thinking.

But God was watching Jesus, and He knew His Son was completely devoted to the will of the Father. In other words, it was the orientation of Jesus’ heart in relation to God the Father that pleased Him, and not any works of righteousness or any sound doctrine or piety or miraculous signs.

Now, by this time you might be saying to yourself (or others), “Get on with it! Yes, Jesus was perfect and his very nature was pleasing to God. I know all this! What are you getting at? How is this anything new?” This brings me to the second truth, and the one that I pray will prove radically transformational in my life and hopefully in yours as the Lord reveals and imparts it to your heart throughout the year 2014. Here it is: God is pleased with me. Well pleased.

Just let that sink in for a moment. Marinate your heart and mind in that statement for a tick. God is well pleased with me. With me! And with you!

Because, as mentioned before, if God is well-pleased with Jesus because of his complete availability to the Father, because he was willing to be wasted for God’s good pleasure, to cool his heels and just be, and if by the indwelling Holy Spirit we share the life of Jesus, both his life and death and resurrection, then that means that God is well-pleased with us in the same way!

If you’re not jumping up and down and shouting your voice hoarse right now in astounded rejoicing, you may need to ruminate further on this truth. And bear in mind that God’s pleasure with you and me is not based again on our ability to measure up to His standards, because His pleasure with Jesus was not based on Jesus’ activity for God, his holiness and perfect accomplishment of Jesus’ earthly ministry. No, it was based in Jesus’ complete availability to be wasted for God, to be at His disposal and thus to be disposed of according to God’s will. And therefore God’s pleasure with us is completely independent upon our performance here on earth, even in our new lives as believers. I struggle with a myriad of fleshly desires and peccadillos; just yesterday I found myself in a funk and was tempted to declare myself utterly worthless. I actually rejoiced in the fact that no woman would ever be interested in me as a potential mate because I was such an unmitigated mess, and resigned myself to being God’s major rehabilitation project during my earthly sojourn. But I was reminded that God’s love for me and His pleasure in me is not based on my ability to control my appetites and abstain from indulging sinful desires or attitudes.

This is the truth that transforms, the knowledge that God’s love for me and His pleasure in me comes from His love for and approval of Jesus, and is completely independent from my ability to live in Christ-like manner. If I can live in that truth this year, I will not be the same. And neither will you.