The heart of intimacy

My last post on shame was a bit of collaboration of different struggles that I have observed friends and others going through. I hope to post the follow-up “reply” letter soon, but after this week, I decided to write about something personal first.

I don't desire relationship (whether romantic or otherwise) because I want to fulfill my needs surrounding security, loneliness, self-discipline, spiritual maturity, spiritual status, direction and goals in life, or who I am. I desire relationship because I have intellect, emotion, wisdom and a love for adventure that I want to share, and because I see in someone else intellect, emotion, wisdom and a love for adventure that I want to learn from and partake in together.

Have you ever noticed that people often only stop to engage in real conversation when something is wrong with you? People are often only interested when there is a challenge to be overcome. So, in the end, does the challenge or the actual person take precedence?

I get frustrated with both guys and girls that fall “in love” (what a desecration of the word love!) because the other person is “hard to get.” Love isn't a game. Fault me for being too wholehearted, but when someone offers love willingly and freely, don't scorn it...the real excitement and fervor has just begun.

But I understand. If all you think of in a relationship is the romance or vulnerability, then once you have mastered it, the fun is over. But relationships are so much more than that!

Relationship is partnership: Men and women were not created to get married for sex, for mere companionship, or even for starting a family. No! They were made to go together because they had something to accomplish through marriage, a task of caring for the world together, of getting married not just because they loved each other, but also because they loved the people around them.

Marriage is ultimately public in its purpose – and listen why! I went to a spoken word/guitar event last night, and on the way home, some girls had a conversation that went like this:

“I love to draw, but wish that I was talented at spoken word.”

“But you are so good at drawing!”

“I know, but I can't really share it with people, unless it's a museum or something.”

“Oh, so you just want people to know how awesome you are?!”

“No, it's just that art seems to mean something more when it's shared, when you can bless others with it.”

Is it not the same with marriage (or friendship)? It loses sweetness when it is not focused around the deepest desire to work alongside one another as a display of art and harmony, to change this world and the next.

Relationship is intimacy: The saddest reality is that it is often easier to love a stranger than a close friend, easier to communicate with a love interest than a boyfriend or girlfriend. I think fear holds us back a lot in this regard, because we don't take risks when we have something to lose.

But if we fear losing intimacy, it's already lost.

Relationship is entrepreneurship: It's more than just getting to know the other person. The act of speaking does more than define – it creates; the naming of a relationship does more than identify – it alters; love does more than explore – it invents.

Love should be like standing on the precipice of a mountain, with the wind in your face, thrilled and enlivened by the thought of reaching the distant ridge with footsteps that have never fallen because only you can take them, in ways that not even dreams have known.

Relationship is convicting: When you meet someone that has entered into God far more than yourself, that seems more alive to the world than you, that loves more and more deeply, it is heartstoppingly convicting. There is nothing more humbling than to accept when someone truly loves you.

To be amazed, blessed, and convicted by relationship with a person is to love and be loved.

The Beginning of Again

This is home.

The smell of Arnold, the view from Mac's, the cafeteria toaster bursting into flames, the familiarity of my favorite department, the pre-chapel chatter, running into that certain Latimer door when the magnet doesn't release in time, the flash of a smile from a professor that makes my day, knowing that dinner isn't great when the sub line is long, the daily “Hello!!” from Trudy, late night dorm conversations, snow days on the threat of flurries, textbooks that I want to keep for life, the delight of actually getting something in the mail after struggling to turn the combination, being Facebook friends and fellow church members with my professors, Woodlee fire drills because everyone loves popcorn, Ben Norquist's beard, our quirky “triangle” that is more similar to a tetracontagon, and the love here that draws and cultivates my life into who I was meant to be.

Don't mistake me. It's not that every experience is rosy and nostalgic, but rather that each circumstance presses me further into the congruence of what I know and how I live.

My eyes shine to read our Statement of Faith, which affirms that God created us in His image as related in the book of Genesis. The glory of letting the very Word of God speak for itself is beautiful to me. This commitment is infinitely sweet, and it brings me to rejoice in the truth of God's divine and personal act of creating us with intrinsic worth and value. I delight in the truth that we are taught, and that Bryan is known for. Yet that truth does not remain static.

Bryan is also known for the love here – institutional congruence that what we believe about the origin and nature of man calls us to treat others with dignity, honesty, appreciation, and gentle concern for their well-being. Search the Bible and find that again and again, loving God cannot be separated from loving people. It is the great meta-theme of God's anger at Israel for oppressing the people even while they worshiped at the Temple, of fasting but not feeding the hungry, of upholding the Law but burdening the people, of providing unblemished lambs but at an exploitative price, of rushing to the synagogue right past the man beaten by robbers and lying in a ditch.

Let Bryan College be utterly devoted to the knowledge and love of God, and from that, just as devoted to being the hands and feet of God's love for his people. Care tenderly! Manifest grace! Speak with integrity! Provide for your neighbor, which includes those that are as different from us as the Samaritans were the Jews. May it be that the truth of the significance of man is supported and not undermined by the actions of Bryan College.

I long and pray for this college that I love so dearly to uphold all that which sums up the Law and the Prophets: Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your strength and with all your mind and love your neighbor as yourself.

Splendor

Our culture is obsessed with finding “the right person,” and in Christian circles we are taught to not be “unequally yoked,” but rather to wait for a Godly person to marry. But the main concern of single young adults (or singles of any age) should not be to find a Godly person, but to be a Godly person. Readiness for marriage is not about knowing another person completely, but about earnestly humbling yourself by submitting to God's view of sin in marriage, marriage in love, and love in sin. We should know what unconditional love really means, but we should also accept that we cannot offer it on our own. Truly, it is only through the indescribable grace of God that we are able to love regardless of the good and bad aspects of someone's character and actions.

I think that we should marry someone only under deep consideration, but God did not give us the ability to foresee the future. Most of marriage will be compromised of issues that we didn't not expect, life and marriage changing circumstances that we are not equipped to handle, and problems we could not have ever anticipated. Just as we cannot deal with our own sin in our own strength, we cannot cultivate a God-glorifying marriage (which is the union of two very sinful people) without recognizing that no amount of our own effort and preparation will get us there. Thus, our understanding of what sin is, and how we deal with it, directly affects our marriage.

Love, by it's very nature, is a joyful commitment to one person that never falters, even in extreme situations such as the loss of mental capabilities, or paralysis. When we love the soul, the eternal being that God created, then we can truly delight in the personality and talents of the one we love, because it is no longer the justification of our love, but the splendor.

The Silence

     Love is not about personal fulfillment, but about giving your life for another, dying to self for another. This I know, but I have recently come to a greater appreciation and understanding of God's love for us. Strangely enough, I have rarely doubted God's kindness even in the midst of dark times. But I did not understand until now how it is that God lets us suffer not because he is powerless or wants us to “choose to love him” or even that he redeems all things, but because he loves us. He sees what we cannot, and allows us to feel what we would never wish upon ourselves, because it will bring about some necessary change in our pattern of thinking. We must not mistake his love, for it must pierce him to see how we suffer, and yet fill him with joyous hope for our coming maturity and understanding. May God give us all strength to emulate him in our own love. The amazing thing is that God does this not because he thinks less of us – no, no! He loves in this fashion because he delights in our personhood and in the individual talents which he longs to bring forth in us (all the more for his unconditional love that gives us dignity whether or not we are using those talents).

     How my heart is called out when I see that God's love is selfless, not just in giving up his son, but in that he is willing for us to despise him for our circumstances, just so that our ultimate good is achieved. I have never dwelt on God's love being selfless, not just sacrificial. Our purpose in life is to bring him glory, how can he be selfless? But he is!

     The Bible declares, “The Lord is near to all who call upon Him, to all who call upon Him in truth.” What I have always found surprising about God is that even though he loves us unconditionally, he requires one thing for us to know him, and that is to accept his love, via Christ's death and resurrection. He is not forceful or manipulative, but lets us go in silence, all the while giving us every proof of his love. My friends, accept the love of God. Yes, he puts difficult situations in our life, but it is so that we can be truly loved!

     I know that I frequently reference the words and music of Jon Foreman, but it is with good reason. His words are no less stirring than his music, which in my opinion, is a high standard indeed. He sings "the song that's inside of my soul" over and over again, and while not his direct original intention, this song is a wonderful human reflection of God's love. Jon Foreman's commentary following the lyrics remind me also that God is not out to consume us for his own benefit, rather to show that love is not about personal fulfillment, but about giving your life for another, dying to self for another. God is the ultimate fulfillment that will never be far from us, who is waiting for us to turn to him, and this weighty silence will be shattered in his grand symphony when we choose to no longer be alone.

Enough To Let Me Go

Oh
I'm a wandering soul
I'm still walking the line that leads me home
alone
All I know
I still got mountains to climb
on my own
on my own

Do you love me enough to let me go?
to let me follow through
to let me fall for you
Do you love me enough to let me go?
Back from the dead of winter
back from the dead and all our leaves are dry
you’re so beautiful, tonight

back from the dead we went through
back from the dead and both our tongues are tied
you look beautiful tonight
but every seed dies before it grows

breathe it in
and let it go
every breath you take is not your to own
it's not your to hold
Do you love me enough to let me go?

     I was thinking about how love (not just lust or codependency that commonly flood the tunes on the airways) actually involves quite a bit of faith. There's a lot of letting go involved. Two souls in love is an intricate dance of give and take. I can be a fairly solitary person from time to time. Sure, I love being with people, but I also need time alone. I guess I thrive on the poles. So this song is about the dance involved in a relationship the coming together and letting go. The song equates love with breathing- pulling in and releasing. Or a seed, for the seed to grow it has to be dropped and buried. 

     In our barcode media, love is often portrayed as consumption. As consumers in a commercial driven culture we can begin to view other souls as objects, or potential cures for our deepest fears and insecurities. "Perhaps if I found the right lover I would no longer feel this deep existential despair." But of course no human soul could be the Constant Other, the face that will never go away. Only the infinite can fill that role. But the silence can be deafening. It's a fearful thing to be alone. Do you love me enough to let me go? "I can't live without you"- "I would die if you ever left me"- These are not the songs of love, these are the songs of consumption.

~ Jon Foreman

Four Letter Word

     Love, by definition, cannot say “I love you, because...” unless it is followed by “you are a creation of God.” Any other statement would be internally inconsistent. Love for a person is solely unconditional, and cannot be retracted or extended because of that person's weaknesses, or much the harder, because of his strengths. For of course we love kindness and mercy and gentleness, but that is love for those characteristics, not love for the person himself. Again, love, by definition, is also a statement of action; we love someone by actively pursuing what is best for him. Thus, our actions ought to be the lover, and not what is beloved; expressions of love, not reasons for love; desire to love, not desire for love.

     In this selfless state, love is free of expectation, but full of hope. Love gives without boundaries, for it has no quantifier that can be attached to limit its depth, nor qualifier to dampen its spirits. Love acts and speaks without shame or fear of rejection, not by virtue of its strength, but by virtue of its transcendence. Love is not discrete, it cannot be counted or measured or spoken of in degrees. So when our love is weak in action, we do not love less, provided that our actions are still truly unconditional and disinterested. How great the bond which springs from this love, for the beloved ceases to strive and long for affection by struggling to appear worthy of love; instead, the beloved is known deeply and still fears not.

     I do not feel worthy of love, and yet I recognize that I have been declared worthy twice, first by the natural birth which signifies that God made me in His image, and then by the spiritual birth, attainable through the love action of Christ's death, which restored me once again to my Creator. The marvelous trait of love is that it fills the beloved with itself, and the beloved is humbly brought to love in the very same fashion, pouring back into the lover, but also into persons that are as discouraged and empty as the beloved once was.

Now, let it be known, I am loved and filled with love, for God is Love.

Love, fear and sex

     I see this frightful inability for men and women to relate to each other in non-sexualized ways. We wonder why sex trafficking exists, but sadly, in each of us there is a capacity for such atrocity (read “Ordinary Men”!). This is not a fanciful representation of how distorted we are; Do you not see that even “healthy” relationships between ordinary people tend toward objectification, sexual and otherwise? Shake off your blindness and listen to yourself and those around you! “He is a wonderful person, my ideal in most ways really...it's just that I'm not attracted to him.” “She is amazing, but I just don't think we are romantically compatible.” Die to that notion, my friends! Love is not a pleasure trip, nor marriage a “holy” sexual lifestyle. Love is intentionally choosing someone to take responsibility for, to die to self for, to become holy with as you both change, to gently let into the deep parts of you in order to rejoice in what is good and strip away what is debilitating and frightening. So, will you sacrifice love on the altar of sex, or will you sacrifice self on the altar of love? Pick sex and you will bitterly end with neither, pick love and you will delightfully receive both. Do not be fooled. Sexual incompatibility is the invention of narcissistic, distorted man.

     The question remains, of course, how do you actually go about choosing someone? We all want it to be love at first sight like the stories we hear, and I think that happens with some regularity, but most do not see it, for the all the reasons above. Oh, and plenty of people are sexually attracted at first sight, but track and see how well those couples do in the long-run (anyone getting visions of King David?). Another point of what not to base your decision on: Even in the cases of very striking stories, God isn't going to whisper the name of your beloved in the night, any more than he put stone giants with mad fighting skills blocking the paths to all but one college. Does God direct us? Most certainly! But God is not so short-sighted as to tell us the action we should take, instead he leads us in the maturity that we need to make choices about not only who to marry, but also how to care for the person once we do have them. God is holistic in his leading. And all God's hipsters said “Amen!”

     Okay, back to practicality then, because I think that there are bad matches. I recently had a wise man tell me that marriage is always about intimacy, and sometimes about romance. Following off of that, choose someone that you can be intimate with even when you are not interacting romantically (although that is certainly a form of intimacy, it is one that comes and goes). Are you able to think in the same ways so that the other person can really know and understand you? Are you able to show the other person the fullness of your personality – humor, intellect, social attitude, intentional spirituality, life passions? Can you relate to each other in moments of laughter, grief, rejoicing, sobermindness, silliness, passion or creativity?

     It is not that you must have every list perfectly checked off, but to give a tangible idea of what intimacy could look like. We each have different things that make us feel intimate with someone else, and it may not always match up with the ideal list we have in our head. Moreover, no one is a “perfect match.” Do not get involved because you need someone, or because you feel that they have become so much a part of your life that you cannot do without them. And conversely, to win someone over in such a fashion is not love but manipulation. Even in friendship you must be extraordinarily careful not to hold on for your own satisfaction, a task far more easily said than recognized as a pattern in your own life.

     And that is the worst of it – it is easy enough to understand love and the evils of manipulation and selfishness, but it takes a great deal of humility to recognize and address such relationships with repentance and restoration. If you claim that you cannot learn to love, if you cast yourself as understanding everything or failing at everything, do not deceive yourself into thinking it is anything but pride. Pride is the root of fear, because it sets Self up as the reference point. What is the “cure” for this pride and fear? It is not trying another relationship, or working through things on your own, trying to fix your problems. God must be the reference point, because it is only perfect love that casts out fear, and no human can offer perfect love.

~ ~ ~

     Yes, the reactionary impulses of hate, fear, and despair really are defenseless against the storms of this life. And yet, this selfless love really might be stronger than death. Perhaps, the kingdom of the heavens really is at hand, ready to give, ready to love. And with this love as my song I will overcome. In surrender to divine love I will find my strength. "Let no debt remain outstanding, except the continuing debt to love another." 

~ Jon Foreman

     Love must be sincere. Hate what is evil; cling to what is good. Be devoted to one another in love. Honor one another above yourselves. Romans 12:9-10

    For through the Spirit we eagerly await by faith the righteousness for which we hope. For in Christ Jesus neither circumcision nor uncircumcision has any value. The only thing that counts is faith expressing itself through love. Galatians 5:5-6

     People throw away what they could have by insisting on perfection, which they cannot have, and looking for it where they will never find it. ~ Edith Schaeffer

     You, my brothers and sisters, were called to be free. But do not use your freedom to indulge the flesh; rather, serve one another humbly in love. For the entire law is fulfilled in keeping this one command: “Love your neighbor as yourself.” Galatians 5:13-14

     Love is not affectionate feeling, but a steady wish for the loved person's ultimate good as far as it can be obtained. ~C.S. Lewis

     Dear friends, let us love one another, for love comes from God. Everyone who loves has been born of God and knows God. Whoever does not love does not know God, because God is love. This is how God showed his love among us: He sent his one and only Son into the world that we might live through him. This is love: not that we loved God, but that he loved us and sent his Son as an atoning sacrifice for our sins. Dear friends, since God so loved us, we also ought to love one another. No one has ever seen God; but if we love one another, God lives in us and his love is made complete in us.

     This is how we know that we live in him and he in us: He has given us of his Spirit. And we have seen and testify that the Father has sent his Son to be the Savior of the world. If anyone acknowledges that Jesus is the Son of God, God lives in them and they in God. And so we know and rely on the love God has for us. God is love. Whoever lives in love lives in God, and God in them. This is how love is made complete among us so that we will have confidence on the day of judgment: In this world we are like Jesus. There is no fear in love. But perfect love drives out fear, because fear has to do with punishment. The one who fears is not made perfect in love. 1 John 4:7-18

“I had started to see Donna as someone I could die for, rather than someone I could use for my own fulfillment.”
~ Jason Shaw, http://ancientlyric.blogspot.com/2013/12/ross.html