| Topic: |
Religions > Atheism |
| User: |
"Ed" |
| Date: |
03 Apr 2007 04:14:33 PM |
| Object: |
Re: homeless woman needs a bed, will love you long time |
Love's Labor Won
Presenting 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]
-------------------------------------------------------------------------
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.
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| User: "Robibnikoff" |
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| Title: Re: homeless woman needs a bed, will love you long time |
04 Apr 2007 11:50:39 AM |
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"Ed" <ed_jal233@hotnail.com> wrote in message
news:1175635000_241@sp6iad.superfeed.net...
Love's Labor Requires Clean Sheets
--
Robyn
Resident Witchypoo
BAAWA Knight!
#1557
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