Pro Bono Love in a Quid Pro Quo World #438

On October 18, 2019, in love, by bishopbenhase

Love has no mind. It can’t spell unkind
– The Legendary John Prine from his song, Aimless Love

The Latin term quid pro quo is much in the news these days. It seems to involve, among other things, alleged shady dealings in Ukraine by, at least in one case, a man who owns a Black Sea resort called “Mafia Rave.” As I read the news about Ukraine it seems like I’ve stepped into an Elmore Leonard novel. His books always seem to have less-than-ethical men in warm-up suits with gold chains around their necks. But I digress. Quid pro quo in Latin literally means “this for that.”

There’s nothing inherently wrong with a quid pro quo. For example, we have a quid pro quo every time we purchase something. We give money (quid) for the thing (quo) we purchase. It’s an expected transaction. But quid pro quo works ethically only when there are clear rules and laws preventing abuse by coercion, fraud, or misrepresentation. That’s why the Ukraine story is so problematic. Pro bono is the opposite of quid pro quo. Pro bono literally means “for good.” It means something one does with no expectation for reward or reciprocity. It’s done simply because the doer wants to do something good for goodness’s sake. In the legal world, it often refers to attorneys who don’t charge any fee for their services.

So, life is full of quid pro quo and, because we’re not always generous humans, a bit less full of pro bono. Quid pro quo assumes that the quid is roughly worth the quo, so to speak. If it isn’t, then we’ll feel victimized in some way. We’re very good at this sort of victimized score keeping. We learn it at an early age. Just try giving two small children each a different number of cookies as a reward after they’ve put away their toys and wait for the reaction. Adults (AKA, grown-up children?) get all worked up over quid pro quo as well, especially at Christmas time. What happens when we get an unexpected gift from someone for whom we didn’t get a gift, and worse-case scenario, we really like the gift they gave us? Well, we’re absolutely horrified that we didn’t get them something of equal or greater value. We didn’t quo their quid and we feel obligated to buy them something to even things out. Heaven forbid, we ever be in their debt!

Many assume God operates in relation to us on a quid pro quo basis. They assume that because they believe God is just like us. We all in our own way want to create God in our own image. But God will have none of that. God isn’t like us (thank God), at least the God we meet in the person of Jesus Christ. Parenthetically, Jesus probably wouldn’t own a resort called “Mafia Rove,” but he’d love the guys who did even though they’re probably not all that lovable. You see, on the cross, Jesus doesn’t keep score. He doesn’t demand our quid for his quo. Jesus loves us pro bono with no expectations that when we get our act together then we’ll reciprocate. His love has “no mind” (thanks, Mr. Prine) in the sense that it’s not calculated to go just to the deserving. His love is so kind (“it can’t spell unkind”) that it’s scattered indiscriminately (the Parable of the Sower) even among the thorny characters of the Ukraine scandal.

+Scott

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Brian Williams, St Augustine, & Me (eCrozier #250)

On February 13, 2015, in grace, love, news, sin, St. Augustine, by bishopbenhase

When I was about 14 years old, a group of guys I desperately wanted to hang out with invited me to an overnight party where the boy’s parents would be out of town. I made up some lie to my parents assuring them that there’d be adult supervision. So, I went hoping to fit in with this group. The party turned out to be boring. We played cards and listened to music. Someone brought beer. As so often happens when teenage boys mix beer and togetherness, someone had a “bright” idea: “Let’s go steal some road signs!” We went into the garage, found some tools, and set off to steal. I don’t recall how many road signs we took that night. Who knows what kind of danger we put motorists in during the weeks that followed? Why did I steal those road signs? I wanted acceptance. I wanted to be part of the cool kid’s group. I’m ashamed of my behavior even to this day.

In his Confessions, St Augustine tells about a time as a teenager when he and some friends scaled the wall of a neighbor’s pear orchard. While there, they picked a pear tree clean of its fruit. St Augustine says his group did this “not to eat the fruit ourselves, but simply to destroy it.” Why did he and his friends engage in such pointless destruction? Were there “double dares” declared? For St Augustine, the answer for why he did such a thing was clear: our inherent human sinfulness. OK. But I also wonder, was the pear tree incident about him wanting acceptance by the other boys? Did he just want to fit in with the cool kid’s group? He, too, was ashamed of his behavior.

And that brings us to Brian Williams, the NBC News Anchor, who is currently being pilloried in the media for his lies about his record as a TV journalist in Iraq during the war and in New Orleans after Hurricane Katrina. He apparently embellished his record citing deprivations and dangers that were simply false. We don’t know how he really feels about these embellishments. So far, his response to being exposed hasn’t been quite “confessional.” He hasn’t said why he felt he needed purposely to misrepresent his resume. Why would someone who has achieved all he has feel a need to lie about his record? My hunch is there’s something inside telling him that what he’s achieved isn’t good enough; that embellishing his resume would make him more loved and accepted; that the lies he told would assure him of a seat at the cool kid’s table. He didn’t steal road signs or destroy pears, but I hope on some level he’s ashamed of his behavior.

There’s something profoundly human about the need we have to be loved and accepted by others. We all long for others to love us. We desire their acceptance. But such longing and desire can become consuming and twisted because it can never be fully satisfied this side of heaven. Just how much love and acceptance do we need? We may get plenty of both, but we may never feel that’s enough. That’s the power sin exercises in our lives. That’s why we shouldn’t be so snarky about Brian Williams’ situation. He’s just struggling with the same issues with which we all struggle, that is, if we’re honest with ourselves. Even accepting God’s grace-filled acceptance of us through the mediation of Jesus on the cross doesn’t keep us from longing to sit at the cool kid’s table. My prayer is that Brian Williams and all of us finally realize how truly unimportant that is. God’s grace is more than sufficient for all of us.

+Scott

 
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When a Goat becomes a Sheep: Staying Off the Throne of Judgment (eCrozier #241)

On November 21, 2014, in Christ the King, Community, faith, grace, love, by bishopbenhase

Our Gospel for this Sunday’s Feast of Christ the King is the Parable of the Sheep and the Goats. The parable presents us with a compelling vision of God’s final judgment on the creation. Jesus tells us there’ll be sheep and there’ll be goats. And that presents us with the challenge for how we’ll live with this truth in our lives until God’s final judgment. It’s tempting, of course, to get into the judgment business now by deciding on God’s behalf who the sheep are and who the goats are. The problem is that sheep and goats aren’t always easy to name clearly and without a doubt. Sometimes they are. We can all come up with examples of sheep-like or goat-like behavior in the extreme. But it’s those areas in between where we have difficulty clearly sorting them out.

Years ago I met a real goat, or so I thought. Most people looking at this man’s life would have quickly surmised he was just no good. He was in prison for multiple aggravated assaults and for selling illegal drugs. No one would’ve mistaken him for being in the Good Shepherd’s flock. In the great judgment, he’d be a sure bet to be with the goats. Yet, some of us believed in God’s power of redemption. We gathered at the prison where I baptized him in the name of the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. After he was released from prison, I lost track of him. Many years later, I ran into him. To be honest, I was a bit anxious. But my anxiety quickly went away. He smiled, hugged me, and told me his life had changed. He was now a deacon in his Church, married, and working full time as an addiction recovery specialist. Was he a goat who became a sheep? Or, was he a sheep all along and no one saw that but God? Do you see how difficult it is when we get into the judgment business? It can lead us to behaviors that should rightly make us pause. It’s clear to me that our moral confusion around, for example, the torture of terrorism suspects comes from our readiness to judge all such suspects as goats before God.

A check on this temptation to be in the judgment business is found embedded in this parable. One of the least noticed aspects of the parable is also one of its most impor­tant. In the final judgment the sheep don’t even know they are sheep. When Jesus places them at his right hand and ushers them into eternal life, they are clueless as to why. They ask, “Lord, when did we do all these compassionate things to you?” Jesus responds to them, “When you did it to the least of these, then you did it to me.” That alone should make us think again when we’re tempted to place ourselves on the throne of judgment.

This parable then is about God’s faithfulness and love. Like with the parable of the Laborers in the Vineyard, it’s not the hard work of the la­borers that’s rewarded. Rather, it’s the faithfulness of the landowner who keeps his promise to all the labor­ers. Or, in the parable of the Prodigal Son, it isn’t the spiritual insight of the son that’s crucial. He just wanted to get out of the pig slop and back to life on his father’s farm. Rather, it’s his father’s gracious love that makes it possible for his son to be welcomed home, no strings attached. In this Parable of the Sheep and the Goats we find God’s faithfulness and God’s love combined in the King who is the Good Shepherd of our souls. Because of God’s faithfulness, God honors our human freedom to choose even to eter­nity. But also because of God’s love, God redeems us, and indeed the entire creation, through Jesus.

+Scott

 
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Seeing Others as Neighbors Instead of Competitors (eCrozier #234)

On October 3, 2014, in culture, gospel, grace, love, by bishopbenhase

Whether we enjoy it or not, technological and economic abundance surrounds those of us living in the U.S.  Our culture has many ways to stimulate our appetites for the many things we didn’t even know we needed. And it’s not just that we have an appetite for all this abundance, many people feel it’s their right to have it. Those who want lower taxes still demand their communities have high quality education, services, and cultural amenities. They just don’t want it to pay for it. In such a world, it’s a small step from claims to certain rights to the violent rhetoric of some groups, who claim, with a certain twisted logic, that in our materialistic society only the language of violence speaks loud enough to get the attention of those bent on the gratification of their desires as a “right.”

The vineyard tenants in Jesus’ parable this Sunday aren’t all that remote from us. Their acts of violence first against the owner’s servants and then the owner’s son are simply extreme examples of a demand that weaves its way through our society: “What’s mine?” The judgment proclaimed in the parable is easy for us to serve on others. We can say that their claims are too extreme, illogical, or greedy, while our claims are legitimate, reasonable, and just. We ask only our due, while they demand too much! It’s easy to see where such colliding claims lead. They lead to some form of mutual degradation. A current example of this is our broken national political culture.

So, the temptation is to choose the tenant’s solution, which is the choice for violence in some form, even if it’s not actual physical violence. The logic of oppression, which the rich and powerful use to denigrate the claims of the poor and powerless, and the logic of violence, which uses fear to gets its way, are really two sides of the same coin. Each believes that the only way to protect its claim is by denying the claim of the other.

The Gospel of Jesus is a clear alternative to this cycle of claim and counterclaim. At the heart of our lives, God has given us all we truly need. This doesn’t mean we all begin life equally or that there’s no need to mitigate the extremes of wealth and poverty, but it does mean that we’re freed from the blind claim of demanding rights or what we see as our due. We’re freed from this desire because God has given us all we truly need by his grace. If we see God as the source of all that we have and all that we are, then we can begin to see others as neighbors to love instead of opponents to overcome. We’ll begin to see them as people, like us, for whom Jesus died on the cross instead of only seeing them as competitors blocking us from getting more of what we desire.

The Gospel of Jesus confronts our sinful desires that get in the way of our ability to attend to each other in love. The Gospel is the necessary antidote for us so we’ll have the ability to see the world with the eyes of a love that doesn’t demand our rights and desires at the expense of others. The real abundance surrounding us isn’t the abundance of things that we blindly believe will fill the gaping void in our hearts. What actually surrounds us is God’s abundant grace, incarnate in Jesus, which heals our hearts and makes us whole. The Gospel of Jesus enables us to see first ourselves and then the world around us with a clearer vision and less grasping hands.

+Scott

 
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Loving our Enemies without Needing our Enemies (eCrozier #230)

On September 5, 2014, in grace, love, by bishopbenhase

Love your enemies – Jesus
Defeat your enemies – Most of Us

The reason Jesus commands us to love our enemies is because he presumes we’ll have them. Having enemies is an unavoidable part of human life. And it’s naive simply to assume that our enemies will become our friends. I’ve had that happen. It’s glorious when it does. But, more often than not, our enemies will remain our enemies. So, the question becomes not “how can I make friends out of my enemies?” But rather, “how can I love my enemies when they still remain my enemies?”

To get at that answer, I believe we have to focus on the “love” part of the command rather than “the enemies” part of it. Focusing on our enemies will only create a spiral of self-justification and claimed victimhood that leads us away from love. This spirals unabated as each offense by our enemy gets reacted to and internalized. It also leads us to define ourselves by who our enemy is rather than by who we are as Jesus’ disciples. When that happens, we create a symbiotic relationship with our enemy where our identity gets defined more by who we oppose rather than by Jesus’ command to love.

A vivid example that bears this out is the long-standing conflict between Israelis and Palestinians. Both have come to define themselves symbiotically by who their enemy is. Those in power on both sides have come to literally need the other to be their enemy because that provides self-justification for their own behavior. So Israeli leaders need Palestinians to continue to fire rockets at their cities and bomb crowded buses to justify their own actions, all the while providing cover for their continued settler expansion in the West Bank. And Palestinian leaders need Israelis to bomb civilians in Gaza and to keep the borders closed to commerce in order justify their indiscriminate attacks on Israeli civilians. Both sides can then point to their enemy as the one responsible for all the death and destruction. They’ve come to symbiotically need their enemies.

But what if they both chose to define themselves, not by who their enemy is, but by who they are when they are their best selves? Both peoples have long histories of compassion and generosity. I know. I’ve seen them first-hand when they are their best selves. Such movement would require both to let go of their claim to be solely in the right (self-justification) and the only true sufferers (claimed victimhood). Like in all cases, “love” can’t be lived out as a sentimental feeling toward the other. Such feelings may never be present. Rather, it must be an act of will to let go of self-justification and claimed victimhood and to embrace a visceral humility and an empathetic love for the other.

And this is true for you and me in our relationships to the enemies who are nigh to us (maybe in the next pew?). The act of love should never only be about our feelings. It must be grounded in our own humility and our empathy for the other, whoever that other is. After all, our actions are the only actions over which we have control. As Jesus stresses it: This is about his command for us to love. It’s not about our enemies.

+Scott

 
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Special Valentine’s Day Edition (eCrozier #208)

On February 14, 2014, in culture, love, by bishopbenhase

We use the word “love” to describe our relationship to many things – everything from ice cream to a car to another human being. But can we really love a thing? Does love require another living being as the subject of our love? These are the questions that Spike Jonze explores in his recent movie, Her, where a man falls in love with a Siri-like computer intelligence. There’s a pathetic quality to this where the filmgoer has to wonder whether the character is at all capable of having a loving, human relationship, or can he only love that which is programmed to cater to his proclivities, whims, and desires?

Love has often been defined as something we fall into. Once cupid’s arrow gets us, we’re goners. And since love is something we fall into, we assume that there’s nothing we can do about it. After all, the image of falling is an image of being out of control. There’s some truth in this. Love isn’t simply a matter of rational will that can be reduced to a rational choice. Love is full of emotion with wildly dancing neurons in our subconscious. In order for it to be powerful and true, love has to have an irrational quality to it. Few would actually choose to love if it were reduced to only a rational choice. But if love is going to last, it has to be more than the falling variety, because if love is only something we fall into, then we just as easily can fall out of love. No effort needed. All we have to do is fall. Lasting love is holistic. It requires our emotions and passions, but it also necessitates our intellects and wills.

The way our culture has come to define love shortchanges the Gospel definition embodied by Jesus, the kind that can’t be summed up by a cute verse on a Hallmark card or incarnated in a box of chocolates. Jesus shows us that while love does involve our passions, it also has to be an act of will on our part. We must decide that come what may, cost what it will, we’re going to love the other. When we reduce love to only our sentiments and feelings, then it will only be superficial and fleeting. Such fleeting superficiality does often generate passion, but it can never generate lasting love.

Love becomes the kind of love embodied by Jesus only when it’s put it into action. As long as we accept the cultural definition of love that limits it to falling, then we won’t see any reason to make love tangible in the sharing and sacrificial way Jesus has shown us. So much of human love is wrapped up in our misguided need for dominating power and total control as well as our selfish desire for complete affection and undivided attention. Of course, love can be much more healthy and whole than that, and thus truer to the heart of Christ, but so often it isn’t, sin being what sin is with our messy humanity.

In looking at Jesus for a definition of love, we must be careful not to put our own definition of love on his lips or try to define love apart from Jesus’ cross; for it’s the cross that defines love for Christians. Jesus says: “Just as I have loved you, you also should love one another” (John 13:34b). He doesn’t say: “Do as I say, not as I do,” rather he completes the circle by saying that we are to love as he loves us. That leads St Paul to say: “Love does not insist on its own way…It bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things” (1 Corinthians 13)

+Scott

 
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Superman vs. Loving with a Motherly Tenacity (eCrozier #140)

On June 22, 2012, in gospel, love, mission, by Diocesan Staff

We all have things we are sheepish about, particularly those things we know are sort of silly, but we like them anyway. Some call them “guilty pleasures.” I, like you, have them. So, I have a confession about my guilty pleasure: I like Superman – the comic books, the TV shows, the movies – all of them. I like Superman because, whatever trouble Lois Lane or Jimmy Olson ever got into, Superman could get them out. Whether they were in a car heading for a cliff or in a plane crashing to the ground, he would always rescue them “faster than a speeding bullet.”

I used to see Jesus as a Superman, only it wasn’t Lois and Jimmy in trouble, it was the disciples. In Mark’s Gospel, Jesus and his disciples are in a boat crossing the Sea of Galilee. A raging storm comes upon the sea, so Jesus steps up and says: “Peace! Be still!” and the storm calms and everyone is safe. But in the Book of Job, God isn’t described as Superman, but rather as a mother who gave birth to the sea and who wrapped the clouds in diapers. This calls to mind that old Gospel: “Jesus, Savior, Pilot me,” where it says “as a mother stills her child thou canst hush the ocean wild.” So, maybe Jesus, rather than shouting at the storm, is actually singing a lullaby to it? “Peace, be still.”

I know from experience that you can’t calm a crying child playing Superman. I’ve tried it. I’ve thrown out my chest and yelled: “Hush!” It doesn’t work. Superman would be as helpless as I was with a crying child. He could force the child into silence by his strength, but a mother who calms a crying child does so using a different kind of power: the power of love. When a mother hears her child cry, she goes to the child and holds it securely. It’s not superhuman strength that calms the child, but rather it’s the loving arms of the mother and her closeness that gives her the power to calm her child.

I believe Jesus stills the storm like a mother calms her crying child. That means we should take the Gospel to others in lullabies, not shouts. We should hold others in the arms of love the way a mother holds a child. We should share the Good News the way a mother pleads with her child and not in the way that Superman dispatches evil ones. The Superman way isn’t the way of the cross. We need less high-testosterone evangelism and more maternal evangelism. I’m not suggesting some weak proclamation of the Gospel. We should never associate maternal love with weakness. I don’t know about your momma, but there’s nothing weak about my momma. She’s always been a force to be reckoned with.

No one will truly come to Jesus through high-powered force. And, even if they did, it wouldn’t be true to the mind of Christ. God’s love for us is more powerful than anything we could ever imagine, but it’s conveyed to us in a way that’s the exact opposite from how the world defines power. We live in a world that is crying out for God’s love, but does not know it. Our families and communities need it. The bitter partisanship we see across our nation should tell us that our nation needs it. Being true to heart of God, can we give up the “Muscular Christianity” we see being so ham-handedly displayed these days and simply learn to love one another with a motherly tenacity?

+Scott

 
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eCrozier #126

On March 9, 2012, in culture, gospel, love, sin, by bishopbenhase

St Paul writes in Romans: “God proves his love for us in that while we still were sinners Christ died for us.” Even though we sin against God and defy God, God still loves us. But why? People who don’t think about that question probably haven’t given much attention to their sinfulness. If we think that we’re basically OK, that we’ve done nothing to draw us away from God, then it wouldn’t make any sense to wonder why God loves us. We’d conclude that God should love us because we deserve nothing less – we’re that lovable.

So, our question wouldn’t be “why?” but rather “why not?” For this question to gnaw at us, we must know ourselves to be separated from God by our sin. I fall into this category. Like the writer, Frederick Buechner, I see the Gospel of Jesus as bad news before I see it as Good News. Buechner writes: “The Gospel is the bad news that we are sinners; that we are evil in the imagination of our hearts; that when I look in the mirror each morning what I see, at least in part, is a chicken, a phony, and a slob. That’s the bad news.”

I don’t share this so some people might have the satisfaction of saying: “I just knew bishops were like that.” No, I share it because it’s the truth. But I also share it with some concern because we live in a culture where people have lost the capacity to hear such truth. People love to hear celebrities talk about how awful they were, how addicted they were, etc. There’s a certain voyeurism in our obsession with other people’s sin. But that’s not the real problem. The real problem is that there’s no repentance in such talk. It’s merely a way for people to say: “Isn’t that just awful.”

So, when I agree with Frederick Buechner that I too am “a chicken, a phony, and a slob” you might be tempted to say: “Isn’t that nice, I saw someone like that on Oprah once.” But it’s not the same. That’s why I’m concerned with letting you know what I see when I look in the mirror. Not because you’d discover I was a sinner – good Lord, that’s not news – but because I run the risk of placing my bad news (and yours) in the wrong context, namely Oprah and not the Bible.

We must place our bad news in the proper context: The Gospel of Jesus and not our culture. The Gospel can only be good news after we first face the bad news. As Buechner writes: “The Gospel of Jesus Christ is the news that we are loved anyway, in spite of our sin – that we’re cherished by God, forgiven, bleeding to be sure, but also bled for.”

But why does God love us anyway? The Bible never says why. It’s as if that’s a ridiculous question even to ask. The Bible assumes that it’s simply God’s very nature to love us.

In the middle of the 20th century, the great theologian, Karl Barth, was taking questions from a group of seminarians in Chicago. One seminarian wanting to show off asked Barth to tell them the greatest truth of the Christian faith. Barth smiled and said, “Jesus loves me this I know, cause the Bible tells me so.”

+Scott

 
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The Execution of Troy Davis and Our Dwelling with Evil (eCrozier #105)

On September 23, 2011, in evil, love, by bishopbenhase

The state of Georgia executed Troy Davis Wednesday night. Mr. Davis was convicted of a horrible murder (most murders are) of Savannah police officer, Mark MacPhail. At the trial 20 years ago, however, the testimony contained many inconsistencies. Also, there was never any physical evidence linking Mr. Davis to the crime. After his conviction, all but two of the witnesses from the trial recanted or contradicted their testimony. Nine individuals have signed affidavits stating they witnessed another man committing this awful murder.

At a recent presidential debate the audience uproariously cheered when Texan Rick Perry proclaimed that he has presided over a record 234 executions as governor. If those who support the death penalty really, as they claim, base it on a high sense of morality, then we should expect them to view it as a somber necessity and not with such apparent cheerfulness.

Such cheering reminds me of another crowd at another time and place; a crowd exhibiting a similar lust for blood. But in that place, at that time, the cry was “crucify him!” When he died, the whole earth shook. In that death, an amazing thing occurred. Death itself died as Jesus offered up new life in the midst of the evil of the cross.

When faced with evil, we can choose to respond with those who desire to return evil for evil. Or we can choose to respond with Jesus who, acknowledging the evil around him, responded with such a demonstration of God’s merciful love that not even the cross and grave could contain him.

The cross of Jesus teaches us we must learn to respond to the savagery of evil with the mercy of God’s love. We who receive the mercy of Jesus by his cross and precious blood have no other choice but to practice such merciful love with others. This isn’t a minor point of the Gospel. Jesus tells us that if we wish for God to forgive us, then we must forgive others.  The amount of mercy we show will be the mercy we ourselves receive.

Please do not misunderstand me. This crime was horrific and my heart grieves for Officer MacPhail’s family. Our common sense of justice demands that those who are guilty of such crimes be punished. But in our own frustration in dealing with the evil around us, we can allow ourselves to give way to the violent impulses that reside in each of us. When evil begins to overwhelm us and we find ourselves reaching down in desperation to the evil within ourselves, then we have chosen to dwell with the very evil we claim we want to overcome when we execute a person.

I have serious doubts as to Troy Davis’ guilt in this case. I believe we have executed an innocent man. But even if he were guilty of this brutal murder, the faith on which we stake our lives calls us to stand with life and not death. Any other stance is not worthy for those of us who take up the Cross of Jesus and follow him.

+Scott

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eCrozier #92

On June 3, 2011, in love, politics, by bishopbenhase

Former Senator John Edwards is now back in the news because there is some question as to whether he broke the law by using campaign funds to keep quiet the fact that he fathered a child with a mistress while he ran for the presidency and his wife battled a recurrence of the cancer that would claim her life. I am less interested in the legal question as I am in his behavior. What was he thinking? Or what was Newt Gingrich thinking when he acted out in similar ways? This stuff happens so regularly these days we are hardly shocked anymore. Have we lost the capacity to blush?

What I see happening is this: we are steadily subordinating lifelong commitments, be they between persons covenanted in marriage, between persons in friendships, or between fellow disciples in the Church, to the utility of satisfying the present desire of the self. So, persons walk away from marriage because they have developed in different ways. They end friendships because that friend no longer meets their present needs. And, they break off relationships from their fellow disciples in the Church because those persons become disagreeable or difficult to live with.

This desire to satisfy the self, of course, is not limited to physical desires (what the Greeks called eros), but it sure does suck in a lot of the cultural air. Take our Greek philosophical sensibilities, sprinkle in a heavy dose of the French Enlightenment, and voila!, we have our current McGnostic culture, the fast food-like mass marketing that separates what goes on in our heads from what we do with our bodies. So, we can have all sorts of high and noble thoughts in our heads (both Edwards and Gingrich have them) while using our bodies like amusement parks or production units each week.

No one with ounce of Christian sense could conclude that this is anything less than destructive to the image of God found in every human being. But the destruction is far more than the misuse of sex. That is merely a presenting symptom of the larger disease of our rebellion against God, which many in our culture are pursuing with avid enthusiasm, and not always consciously.

God’s covenantal love (Hebrew = hesed, Greek = agape) is the meta-narrative of the Bible. God has created us for steadfast love in holy relationships, and not only with God, but with one another in marriage, in friendship, and in our discipleship in Jesus. And this human love and mutual devotion are but a glimpse of the divine love poured out for us in Jesus’ life, death, and resurrection.

Love has been on the rap sheet of Christians from the time of Pliny the Younger in the earliest centuries to the camp songs of our generation (everybody sing: “They will know we are Christians by our love, by our love, yes they will know we are Christians by our love”). But this love is covenantal love. It is love that is in it for the long haul with a spouse, a friend, or a fellow disciple. It is love for the other regardless of their utility to us in the present.

+Scott

 
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