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July 4, 2020 - January 6, 2024
What we urgently need is to see that both the sentimental and the erotic are given substance, grounding, depth and strength when they are governed by what we might call the law of love, which is, of course, the law. We teach love by teaching the law.
the law is deeply relevant to those who seek to fulfill Christ’s call to love their neighbor, for it provides the content and substance of—the parameters and guidelines for—the fulfillment of this call on the life of the Christian.
The ego-centered person is essentially the child who has grown up but never come to an understanding of a fundamental feature of life: that we live in deep interdependence, that we need one another even though none of us is indispensable, that we cannot live with a feeling of entitlement and that we have been created to love others and serve others.
there is no absolute denial of the self and our own interests. The issue at heart is to see ourselves in context, to see that we are not the center. Thus we come to a full appreciation of the call to love one another only when we know the grace of what Rowan Williams calls the de-centered self.
the paradox of the Christian call to love is that we know the love of God and the love of others by giving freely of ourselves rather than by using or controlling others, by demanding their affection or love.
early church writers affirm something that will be a recurring theme in the history of the church: the close connection between spiritual maturity, humility and, to use the ancient phrase, the ordering of the affections.
in Life Together Bonhoeffer distinguishes between what he calls “self-centered love,” which is love for the other but for one’s own sake, and love that is for the sake of Christ and for the sake of the other. The first is an oppressive love. It loves the other not as a free person but to win, conquer and control; it loves only for the love one hopes to get in return.
The challenge to love your neighbor as yourself is qualified by two intriguing phrases that the apostle Paul uses in Romans 12. First he stresses, “Let love be genuine” (Rom 12:9). And then he writes, “So far as it depends on you, live peaceably with all” (Rom 12:18).
Listening can be of greater service than speaking.
Those who are resolved to live in a community marked by and infused with love are those who, in the words of James 1:19, are “quick to listen, slow to speak.”
Listening is a fundamental means by which we honor the other and fulfill the call to honor others above ourselves (Rom 12:10).
Our listening includes an identification with the emotional contours of the other’s life, with the joys and sorrows that mark our shared human experience.
If we are marked by sincere or genuine love it is evident in this: that we listen more and talk less. Perhaps a good rule of thumb in any relationship is that we resolve to listen, at the very least, twice as much as we speak. And we listen, essentially, that we might fulfill the call of the Scriptures to welcome one another in the Lord (Rom 15:7).
Our love for the other can include a profound respect for the freedom of the other to differ with us.
Forgiveness will be accompanied by the love of justice and the pursuit of the good and the noble for the sake of each party involved, including the one who has done the wrong.
Finally, one more point. To forgive is to let go of the need for vengeance. We do not repay evil for evil; we do not harm; we live peaceably with all.
We respond with generosity. This is crucial. It is not a calculated pseudoservice given with the expectation of something in return; it is not the service that leads to a feeling of entitlement or that obligates the other.
Furthermore, it means that we do not necessarily respond to the demands of the other. Rather, our response is always in Christ for the other.
we can and must learn how to serve quietly without seeking recognition or thanks for the simple reason that we do it in Christ and for Christ.
Love and service do not create obligation or dependency. Our service on behalf of our children does not create in them an obligation toward us. Our service on behalf of the church does not establish for us a feeling of entitlement. Our service on behalf of the world is given freely without the assumption that the world now owes us something.
When patriotism is confused with love it is a distortion of the biblical ideal.
To love is to ask what is best for the other
rather than what is convenient or preferable to me.
Bonhoeffer believed in the importance of Christian community and of the priority of learning how to love one another. But he also stressed that we do not love community per se or treat community as our highest value. For indeed, the danger is that we would ask the Christian community to be to us what only Christ can be to us.12 Put another way, our love for God is always primary. And our love for others is but an expression of our love for God. We love others in Christ.
like a lake that goes dry without a spring that continually feeds it, our love for others will go dry if hearts are not fed by the stream of God’s love.
worship is fundamental to our formation in Christ.
de-centered lives,
Worship gives us perspective. Through worship we see the
big picture and we actively cultivate an awareness that it is not
all about us but about Christ and his purpose...
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Of course, this is the case only when worship is Christ-centered—not seeker-focused, not dumbed down so that it is all about our needs, which essentially makes it ego-centered rather than Christ-centered.
Just as there is no love without truth and wisdom, there is no truth, no wisdom, that is not proclaimed and taught in love and evident in the love and unity of the church.
those coming to faith require a catechetical process by which they learn what it means to be the church, a community marked by the commitment to hospitality, patience, forgiveness and service.
Now we come to the capstone, the ultimate mark of a person
who is mature in Christ. We speak of joy, along with a call
to emotional maturity and the ordering of ...
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Joy is not one of the “components” of Christianity, it is the tonality of Christianity that penetrates everything.
chapter on joy assumes the earlier call to wisdom. The triumph of the Bible in this regard is the union of heart and mind.
our joy now in the midst of this deep fragmentation is a foretaste of what is yet to come;
sorrow is not our true home. We were designed to live in joy; because of both creation and the redemption of creation through the cross and the assurance of this redemption in the resurrection,
holy people are happy people.
all true moral education must address what he terms the “habits of the heart.”
A key voice in this discussion has been that of Alasdair MacIntyre, whose work has stressed that in moral formation, morality is derivative of desire and that therefore if we care about character formation, the heart of the matter is not morality but desire.
to speak of formation and thus of character development is to speak of the ordering of the affections. This was central to both John Wesley’s and Jonathan Edwards’s understanding of sanctification.
spiritual formation is not morality, however good and important and essential this is, but rather the ordering the affections in Christ.
Yes, the affections are unruly! So how are they ordered? Certainly reason matters and theology and wisdom play a part, but the issue is not to control or suppress emotion with reason but rather to cultivate our desires—most notably, in the desire for the good. The affections, the deep loves, the desires and thus joys of our lives are “ordered.”
Faith speaks of trust, of course, in the risen and ascended Christ and hope suggests confidence in the capacity of the ascended Christ to fulfill God’s promises.
the necessary focus of spiritual formation is the cultivation of faith and hope. Joy is the pinnacle and the outcome, yes, but we come to this by cultivating faith and hope.
Hope is faith expressed in the passages of our lives in space and time; it frees us to live faithfully in time.
How do we live so that the emotional contours of our lives are shaped and informed—ordered—by the reality that Christ is the ascended Lord?
