Scriptorium Daily
Love does not change and in humans love is, as it always has been, birthed in need . . . a deep poverty in humanity that draws us toward a fount of deeper desire. This deeper desire springs from perfect fulfillment and a desire to see that perfection made universal.
Humans desire God, because we need His goodness. God desires us, not out of any need, but because He longs to see us whole.
We must acknowledge our poverty, but not cling to it.
Some foolishly view the deep longing as the highest possible pleasure. There is pleasure in it, as there is in hunger before a good meal, but it is foolish to reject the food in order to prolong the need. Some moderns want Lent but no Easter.
Do not make a fetish of your particular desires . . . since often our felt needs are not our real needs.
We must also not be satisfied with any initial encounter with the Infinite Love of God. Humans want to build altars where God was . . . and so often miss where God would take us. When our initial encounter with God grows stale, we act as if the problem is with religion or with God, but the problem is with our lack of true passion for the Divine.
Any given “religious experience” is not the answer . . . because the answer is a Person who refuses to be placed in a box or tamed. Like Aslan, He bounds into our lives and upsets our assumptions at every turn.
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God is a person and not merely an experience. He is not merely an object for our manipulation, religious or otherwise. The good news of God’s total sovereignty is that He sets boundaries and acts for our good. He will not be manipulated, used, or ignored.
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God is the End of our heart’s true longings. We are persons and no ideology that does not account for the whole person can be good for us.
Christianity is the great revelation of God to humankind of Himself.
Against this great truth, this noble myth, is arrayed all the lies of the world, the flesh, and the devil.
Materialism says that we are things and that things can meet our needs. This failure of love ends in ugliness.
Secularism says there is nothing in heaven and earth that is not dreamed of in Richard Dawkins’ philosophy. This failure of imagination cannot sustain a culture.
Hedonism denies the need for pain in this life and destroys the possibility of immortal pleasures. It ends with all joys spoilt and all pleasures stale.
Intellectualism argues that the head can make demands without accounting for the heart. It dies like all Gradgrind ideas in cruelty.
Anti-intellectualism pretends that we can follow our heart without accounting for the demands of reason. Our irrational passion too often destroys the very things we love.
These ideologies come between us and God and so are idols. God hates idols not because of some bizarre insecurity on His part, but because we are corrupting some good thing He made by misusing them, missing our real needs, and failing to give appropriate honor to Him.
Instead of these ideologies, we must confront God as seen in the person of Jesus Christ, most perfectly revealed in the pages of inerrant Sacred Scripture. The sign post of Scriptures, miracles, and the witness of Church history can point to Christ, but they too are not Christ.
We must find Him in these good things . . . or these good, holy, and great things will also become idols. We love the physical world, because God made it. We even see it as holy, because God became flesh.
The sacred things are sacred, however, because He exists. We must honor family, country, and church, but we can worship God alone. Love is always urging excess. This is wise, because there is a person for whom extravagance is appropriate.
God alone is where love can never become excessive, but only defective.
We love others out of the superabundance of our love for God. His image in them calls forth love . . . even in our enemies.
When we are children, we cannot understand any of this, though we often feel the truth of it better than we can express. Appropriately, we are in a position of receiving love and rarely of giving it. We need so much and we have so little.
This never changes relative to God. We are children to Him.
But as we mature in Faith, our love for Him should grow to the point where it overflows around us. We serve as slaves to those around us voluntarily . . . because there is so much love within us that we must discharge it or perish.
Childish love wants to own or possess the thing it sees. It makes the mistake of the American tourist who sees the David and wishes to take it home. The absurdity of this Florentine masterpiece bursting through the roof of his thirteen hundred foot tract home never occurs to the childish. Unlike the true lover he can even be satisfied with a cheap copy . . . “better” because he can own it.
The childish think that all beauty exists so they can buy it.
Having found Love- when we keep in relationship with Him- we can only act with virtue in imitation of what we love. (more)
