The Most Excellent Way

This is lengthier than -- and slightly different to -- most of what's on offer here, but it will still only take about 5 minutes to read and even less time to forget. Go on. Do it.

I discussed love with couple of friends recently; one an idealist, the other a realist. To my idealist friend I became an idealist, though I myself am not one under the law of idealism. To my realist friend I became a realist, though I do believe in the kind of true romance that causes two likable protagonists to get married after spending a solitary evening together and to subsequently get caught up in a string of wacky adventures directed by Quentin Tarantino.

I’m in the process of re-evaluating everything I know -- or rather, would like to think I know -- about love. After all, there are few more important things to know (and to know about) than it. Love is at the centre of everything; it’s our raison d’etre…at least according to my sister, anyway. The apostle Paul pinpoints it as the most excellent way. So excellent that if we have everything else but we have not love, we have nothing.

Unfortunately, we have been sold a lie about love by the culture around us, though it is a lie not too far from the truth. The lie is the following: Love comes to us pre-packaged, ready to roll. It is a prize or a treasure waiting to be found, and when it is found you live happily ever after, constantly feeding yourself on this precious resource. Love, for want of a good analogy, is like a giant chocolate bar, to be consumed for your own pleasure. To apply a line from Kevin Devine’s critique of Western society, “We want everything we see and when it’s gone we just want more.”

Think of all the films that end with a couple finally getting together, be it finally kissing, finally having sex, or increasingly rarely, finally marrying. In such films, the prize has been won; the treasure has been discovered; the chocolate bar has been unwrapped. These moments are sold to us as the zenith of love. The lucky couple has reached it, now go ye and do likewise - that’s the greatest command of our time.

And so off we go, nibbling away on assorted sweets until we stumble across the bar for us. We chase something that’s supposed to be the end, but the reality is that it is only the beginning. A date, a kiss, even a wedding, is but the start of love. As a leading Canadian philosopher once said, love can touch us just one time but it lasts for a life time. A life time, people!

True romance does not come to us like a product from a vending machine. Say the right words, make the right girl laugh, and you will not receive a thing called “love” in return for your payment. For love is primarily not something received, but something given. We see this in the definitive love story of the world; the one between God and man. God did not redeem because he was loved and because he took; he redeemed because he loved and because he gave. His loving was his giving; His giving was his loving.

Now of course there exists the dynamic of gift and reception. A gift is precisely something to be received. I make no mistake about it: love must be received if it is to have its full effect on the lover and the beloved. Nonetheless, our destiny is not only to be loved. We are created and called and destined to be lovers in the image of God.

This goes against the grain of our hyper-consumerism, which compels us to constantly ask the question “From where can I take love?” Thus we mistake love for being two people taking from each other; two people using each other for their own ends. In such a relationship, sacrifice is replaced with satiation. Take, take, take; use, use, use. The cardinal sin is to deny oneself, to lose oneself for the sake of the other.

But the fundamental structure of the universe, the story of creation told in the Bible, and the deepest realities revealed by Jesus point in the opposite direction. We are most truly ourselves when we deny ourselves -- that is, deny our selfish ambition and “rightful” claim to things -- and instead consider others greater than the self. We find life to the full when we lose our lives for the sake of others. In a world where we see everything and everyone as an object, this deep reality makes no sense. When we begin to see people as subjects, however, we will find that our life of love takes on a new dynamic more fulfilling and more satisfying than we ever could have known. For objects cannot make themselves known, they cannot love; but subjects can.

(When we wholly objectify the person we try to love, we then become confused as to what love looks like and why we actually love them. This is where all that movie mumbo jumbo comes in - I love you because your hair gets wet when it rains; I love you because you always know who the bad guy is when we watch Scooby Doo; I love you because you do something quirky with some part of your body when you’re nervous; I love you because you remind me of my mother.)

Song of Songs -- a book in the Bible which a creepily giddy Rob Bell calls a “collection of Hebrew love poems that are so explicit and erotic that young Jewish boys weren’t even allowed read them until they were older” -- repeats the following exhortation a number of times: do not awaken love until it so desires. This is why I said earlier that the present culture’s lie about love is not far from the truth. The love between a man and a woman is a mysterious thing. It can build slowly over time between friends, or it can catch complete strangers unawares. Love awakens when it wants to awaken, and when it does it becomes the stuff of fairytales and stories; a transcendent power worth telling of.

Despite some the above scepticism, I do believe in it -- the pushing chocolate-covered candies, or in some cultures, a chicken. I’ve seen genuine love grow between a shy, realist, geeky man--boy from Massachusetts who thinks a sermon tape makes for a perfectly good gift (but then so do I, so who am I to judge?) and a forthright, idealistic woman--girl with dreams of true love and the irrepressible will to pursue it, even if it means sending little emails back and forth for hours on end while two younger siblings moan about her hogging the computer. I’ve also seen a more orthodox awakening of love; some conversations, some stalking at her local church (which quickly became his local church), some dates, regular and thoughtful gifts, lots of golf. The romance was perhaps more organised and economical, but it was no less real, no less risky, no less adventurous.

Being present at both of these couples’ weddings as an at once proud and humbled brother has opened my eyes that little bit more to the wondrous, mystical nature of love. A great awakening does await. But for this awakening to fulfil its potential then love itself must be ready to get out of bed (a far cry from our modern mindset that equates love with us getting into bed). And for love to be ready, we must be ready to love. Not ready to take, ready to use, ready to consume; but ready to love, as it has been made known through the cross of Christ.

I’ll end with an extract from a Richard Hays wedding homily, quoted by him in The Moral Vision of the New Testament. He says everything I want to say more succinctly and eloquently than I ever could:

What does love look like? There are so many counterfeits abroad. How will we recognise it when we see it? Over and over again, the Scriptures answer by pointing to Jesus’s death on the cross. The love that comes from God expresses itself in sacrificial self-surrender. Jesus surrendered power and divine prerogatives and gave himself for us. That is what love is: self-giving for the beloved, not self-seeking to possess the beloved. Love that only seeks its own gratification is finally a disappointing and destructive illusion. But when we know the overflowing love of God, we let it flow through us to others.