The garden has been planted - or at least partially so - and the trip up north to rescue the wounded snowmobile was successful. In that short week, conversations were mostly about politics, in which I assured my son that this presidential election was the most bizarre in my lifetime. The biggest news, though, has been the weather - it is full spring! The young leaves on the trees are so green and delicate, wild flowers abound, and the taller grasses are putting out red and gold colored tassels. All beautiful, so much so that on this soft blue morning, I feel in love. It is glorious and I am inclined to whatever has made such beauty, and given me the ability to enjoy it. Life is good.
It will not always be so, as so many others remind me. It is not just the weather. A neighbor who is usually as perky as a bird is now subdued, made somber by her recent diagnosis of breast cancer. Others I know have severe financial problems. A friend of my son talks of his youth, of how his parents gave him up at a young age to his uncle, who beat him just for the hell of it, among other horror stories. And of course, the weather will turn bad again, from tornadoes to drought to the usual turning of seasons. We are not always in love with life. It can be a bitch.
Thus it came as a surprise when, on an offhand comment, someone asked (almost but not quite sarcastically) yesterday - do you love Jesus? I would not mention this were it not for today's church service, where the priest's sermon led to his final phrase, "and this is why we love Jesus so."
But do I? If one is Christian, one is supposed to, for Christ died on the cross for our sins, but I have to admit that I think I do not. Jesus is more of an abstraction to me, a philosopher who may indeed have been the unique Son of God - I am willing to accept that - but do I love him? And how? What is love?
I may love God when life is good, but do I when it is bad? When the pain of a terrible disease strikes home, or a loved one dies tragically, do I love God? The loved ones I can - they are flesh and blood and have been before me, offering me a cushion to lie upon in the bed of our social needs as a species. These are the friends and family of "agape," or social love. There is also that one - or more for some - that we love from "eros," that powerful sense of sexual love. The former often stays for life, while the latter may come and go, or wax and wane, but both are built on the hard ground of actual face to face interaction. The love of God, too, in good times is built on a tangible reality, even as it might wane, as with eros. But Jesus?
The god of experience is the Old Testament god - one of great mystery, of divine intervention, of beauty - and of wrath. He is built on the realities of our lives. If we say we love him, it is as much out of fear as out of human love. It is complicated, but we understand it. But, again - do I, do we of the Christian faith, really love Jesus? Can we?
The depth of these questions is striking, and perhaps uncomfortable, for in admitting that we do not really, fully love Jesus, as, say, we love our children, we feel that we risk the wrath of that old god. For me, any attempt to "love" Jesus has to begin with anthropomorphizing him, by turning him into a beloved relative, the perfect father; but that is an abstraction, and I know it. I really don't know the human Jesus at all, and with that, is is nearly impossible to love the god-Jesus, for he is both the green leaves and blue sky that I love, and a guy who once lived that I have never spoken to.
Perhaps it is our times; in days of old, in seemed that many people actually loved their kings and would willingly die for them. We do not love our presidents like that, and if we die for our country, it is for those we know and love in it and our way of life. Even so, those people of old had the actual king before them, whereas the Christian does not. Must this love, then, come from faith? For in our era, love comes more from mammalian instincts than from some abstraction, so much so that we might wonder if such love (of king) was actually real. Could it be that our slide into a science of materialism has made this abstract love less real, less possible? Could it be that what led the early Christians to such sacrifices was only possible because of a way of thought that is now largely gone?
I do not question the reality of the saints when they speak of their burning love for Jesus. Given my belief, I would love that as well, but in all honesty, that is now not the case. Perhaps it is that our world needs more faith than ever, more grace than ever. If God is as we think It is, then It would know and save us. "It" would have to, for their are no masks before God - we cannot pretend. I may love God now as the sustenance of nature, but even with that, this might, and probably will, change. How much harder is love for a ghost being from a long, long time ago?
And yet it is possible - it happens all the time. And with this faith that has brought true belief and love, so many have come to love even the most vial; have come to work among the damned in prison and among the desperate in the worst of slums. It must be real - but how does it come? A question for this late Sunday morning, when all is beautiful and well. FK
It will not always be so, as so many others remind me. It is not just the weather. A neighbor who is usually as perky as a bird is now subdued, made somber by her recent diagnosis of breast cancer. Others I know have severe financial problems. A friend of my son talks of his youth, of how his parents gave him up at a young age to his uncle, who beat him just for the hell of it, among other horror stories. And of course, the weather will turn bad again, from tornadoes to drought to the usual turning of seasons. We are not always in love with life. It can be a bitch.
Thus it came as a surprise when, on an offhand comment, someone asked (almost but not quite sarcastically) yesterday - do you love Jesus? I would not mention this were it not for today's church service, where the priest's sermon led to his final phrase, "and this is why we love Jesus so."
But do I? If one is Christian, one is supposed to, for Christ died on the cross for our sins, but I have to admit that I think I do not. Jesus is more of an abstraction to me, a philosopher who may indeed have been the unique Son of God - I am willing to accept that - but do I love him? And how? What is love?
I may love God when life is good, but do I when it is bad? When the pain of a terrible disease strikes home, or a loved one dies tragically, do I love God? The loved ones I can - they are flesh and blood and have been before me, offering me a cushion to lie upon in the bed of our social needs as a species. These are the friends and family of "agape," or social love. There is also that one - or more for some - that we love from "eros," that powerful sense of sexual love. The former often stays for life, while the latter may come and go, or wax and wane, but both are built on the hard ground of actual face to face interaction. The love of God, too, in good times is built on a tangible reality, even as it might wane, as with eros. But Jesus?
The god of experience is the Old Testament god - one of great mystery, of divine intervention, of beauty - and of wrath. He is built on the realities of our lives. If we say we love him, it is as much out of fear as out of human love. It is complicated, but we understand it. But, again - do I, do we of the Christian faith, really love Jesus? Can we?
The depth of these questions is striking, and perhaps uncomfortable, for in admitting that we do not really, fully love Jesus, as, say, we love our children, we feel that we risk the wrath of that old god. For me, any attempt to "love" Jesus has to begin with anthropomorphizing him, by turning him into a beloved relative, the perfect father; but that is an abstraction, and I know it. I really don't know the human Jesus at all, and with that, is is nearly impossible to love the god-Jesus, for he is both the green leaves and blue sky that I love, and a guy who once lived that I have never spoken to.
Perhaps it is our times; in days of old, in seemed that many people actually loved their kings and would willingly die for them. We do not love our presidents like that, and if we die for our country, it is for those we know and love in it and our way of life. Even so, those people of old had the actual king before them, whereas the Christian does not. Must this love, then, come from faith? For in our era, love comes more from mammalian instincts than from some abstraction, so much so that we might wonder if such love (of king) was actually real. Could it be that our slide into a science of materialism has made this abstract love less real, less possible? Could it be that what led the early Christians to such sacrifices was only possible because of a way of thought that is now largely gone?
I do not question the reality of the saints when they speak of their burning love for Jesus. Given my belief, I would love that as well, but in all honesty, that is now not the case. Perhaps it is that our world needs more faith than ever, more grace than ever. If God is as we think It is, then It would know and save us. "It" would have to, for their are no masks before God - we cannot pretend. I may love God now as the sustenance of nature, but even with that, this might, and probably will, change. How much harder is love for a ghost being from a long, long time ago?
And yet it is possible - it happens all the time. And with this faith that has brought true belief and love, so many have come to love even the most vial; have come to work among the damned in prison and among the desperate in the worst of slums. It must be real - but how does it come? A question for this late Sunday morning, when all is beautiful and well. FK
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