Faith and relevance in the 21st century

Category: Love (Page 2 of 7)

Nothing else matters

Life is short. When you see the deterioration of people in old age and you realise that, while you’re not old, you’re not young anymore either, it makes you think about how you want to leave this world.

As I see people wither in old age, people who you’ve always seen as somehow invincible, you realise how fragile life is. We are dust, and to dust we return. It makes you think about the meaning in your life, and that we really haven’t got long to make a real difference. I wonder if it’s impossible for a young person to really realise that. When you’re young, it’s all ahead of you. It’s a young person’s world, it was said to me once.

It’s only the experience that comes from years; either that or great suffering in your younger years, that allows you to see that life really is fragile. A pastor once told a story of a man he visited who had just turned 65. The man wondered how he got to that age so quickly. It was like he woke up one morning and all of a sudden his life was almost over, just like that.

Life is not a dress rehearsal. It is to be made the most of. As I get older and see the frailty of the elderly, I feel anxious about getting old and I feel more of an urgency to leave the world a better place. It’s not about leaving a legacy; whatever people think of you doesn’t matter. It’s what you actually did that matters, whether people think it was good or not.

I think of the great sermon by Martin Luther King, ‘The Drum Major Instinct’. It’s about true greatness. Being great is fine. Be great at serving, be great at loving others, be great at not needing recognition for your good deeds. Just do them, whether people notice them or not. That is greatness. It’s the contribution that matters, not the recognition of it.

We are here and gone in a puff of smoke. But what we do lasts forever. Eternity is in our hearts. It is our destiny to leave a contribution that matters. Nothing else measures up but to have done your bit to improve the world.

Love in the face of terror

”We shall match your capacity to inflict suffering by our capacity to endure suffering. We will meet your physical force with soul force. Do to us what you will and we will still love you…Bomb our places of gathering and threaten our children, and, as difficult as it is, we will still love you. Drive into our crowds at busy markets and stab anyone in the way, shoot up people in our cinemas with your automatic weapons, and we will still love you. Send your messages of fear and hatred around the world, and we will still love you. But be assured that we’ll wear you down by our capacity to suffer, and one day we will win our freedom. We will not only win freedom for ourselves; we will appeal to your heart and conscience that we will win you in the process, and our victory will be a double victory.”

 – Paraphrasing Martin Luther King

No one should have to bury their own child. As I think of what happened in Manchester recently, and in London this week, and in Kabul last week (which you probably didn’t hear about because it wasn’t all over social media and mainstream media), I feel for the mothers of children who have died and who have to organise another funeral for a loved one. What the parents of those sweet young children have to go through when they identify bodies and grieve over innocence just cannot be comprehended.

As we wake up to more news of terror attacks, I am more convinced than ever that love is the only force that can truly make a difference. I am inspired by the words of Martin Luther King and his unshakable conviction about the power and influence of love in the face of tragedy.

The shock we feel when we hear of cowardly attacks like those in Manchester, Kabul and London can be overwhelming. Anger runs high, along with the disbelief. It all rings too close to home for most of us. We know it could have been us. So a natural and understandable response is to lash out and want to hit back and wipe out the bastards who took away our loved ones. What I am convinced of though is that there is no solution in that way of responding. As Dr King said, hate begets hate and violence begets violence. As long as political leaders keep calling for Muslim bans, make billion dollar deals with governments with shady links to terrorists (as the US did last week), and we keep bombing the crap out of Muslim countries, of course the problem is not going to end.

This boils down to what sort of society we want. If we destroy the terrorists, we don’t destroy terror, because more will come up and take their place. And by destroying the terrorists we stoop to their level. As Gandhi said, an eye for an eye just leaves everybody blind. 

So I am more convinced than ever that love is the only way. Many say that love is weakness and hopelessly idealistic, especially in the area of international terrorism. For a world in which violent thinking is so ingrained, love is indeed weakness. But it is the only option we have if we want an enlightened society.

As the great powers of the world advocate bombing the terrorists into submission, love quietly goes about its work, converting enemies into friends and thereby defeating its enemies. Abraham Lincoln, a President who really did make America great, said that.

Love absorbs suffering and thereby defeats it. That is what Jesus did on the cross. An innocent man, violently put to death, did not strike out violently in revenge against his oppressors . He took the suffering upon himself and exposed it for what it was. And thousands of Christians in the first century did the same, following in the footsteps of their Master.

As people live out the virtue of love, many suffer and even die. That is what Jesus meant in the first century context when he talked about taking up your cross. As Dietrich Bonhoeffer said, when Jesus tells someone to take up their cross, he bids them come and die. Bonhoeffer would know. He did exactly that. He did it because his hope was in a better day, a far country that was coming, a day when love will have finally won the victory. Death now had no sting for people like Bonhoeffer. It was impotent in the face of love.

N.T. Wright talks about this hope using the analogy of the D-Day landings in Normandy. The success of that invasion meant that the Second World War was effectively over. It was just a matter of time. But it would still take another year and the loss of thousands more lives for the war to be officially over. But it didn’t mean that the war hadn’t been effectively won on D-Day. It’s the same now. The fact that people die today for standing up for love in the face of terror doesn’t mean that love doesn’t work; it means that their hope is in something more powerful, something bigger, something inevitable.

Love is the only thing that will eventually defeat terrorism. Just even writing that feels hopelessly naive and idealistic. But that is a reflection of how deeply our culture of violence has ingrained that belief in us. To believe in love is to swim against the tide. Jesus was seen by many as just another failed messiah when he was lifted onto a Roman cross. But if we believe, like those first Christians did, that that was not the end of the story, then we will have the courage to show love in the face of terror.

Why are Australians so angry?

“Why are Australians so angry? We’re one of the richest nations on Earth, with one of the highest standards of living. We live in a free and democratic society where political views can be expressed without fear of being jailed or gagged.”

This article starts by comparing a trip to Bali with life in Australia. As I’m currently in Bali, this really resonates. Why aren’t our enormous riches making us happy? Why do we feel so entitled to everything being done our way? Aren’t our riches and freedom enough for us?

Living life for others is what makes us happy. The pursuit of happiness in itself is a pursuit without a destination. Happiness is a by-product of living a life of service for others. Loving our neighbour, even our enemy, gives us a joy that is not dependent on circumstances.

In a materialistic society we look to externals to give us our sense of wellbeing. Externals can and do give us a level of satisfaction (like being on holiday in Bali), but they will never give us what we really desire. There is always a level of dissatisfaction with life just under the surface. Acknowledging that is a sign of emotional health.

Emptiness, including boredom at times, is a gift. It is not healthy to always seek to fill the emptiness inside us. Until we realise that, we will remain angry and seek to act it out rather than choose the more healthy option of acknowledging it and seeing how we can choose to love our neighbours. Nothing less than the survival of the planet depends on it.

Australians are among the luckiest people on earth. What are we so angry about? | Brigid Delaney’s diary

I’m driving to Denpasar airport in Bali (or rather being driven, I am still learning to drive) and it’s a nightmare. I see three near-collisions. Yet no one is honking their horn. There are hundreds of cars and motorbikes jammed into a terrible road yet the streets are actually kind of quiet.

Mixed feelings on Anzac Day

I always have mixed feelings on Anzac Day. I get emotional at the enormous courage and sacrifice of people who gave their lives, but they were innocent victims of powerful people who sent them to a slaughter.

Not just the massacre of Gallipoli where the Anzacs fought, but the Battle of Stalingrad where soldiers were given one rifle between them, so when the first soldier was killed the second picked up his rifle and went as far as he could until he was shot.

I also find it largely ironic that at every Anzac memorial we see the words of Jesus: greater love has no one but to lay down their life for their friends. The Anzacs did this, and it was an example of Jesus’ sacrifice, absorbing and exposing the evil of the world, including the evil of war. Within the unspeakable horror of war, the Christlike attributes of courage and suffering love are made all the clearer. Love often stands out more in the middle of evil.

Love is the greatest apologetic

Here is my latest article on Christian Today.

In a post-Christian Western world, traditional apologetics are way out of date. Jesus never used them either. His apologetic was love of God and neighbour, the greatest commandments.

Hope you get a lot out of this…

Love is the greatest apologetic

In post-Christian Australia, traditional Christian apologetics don’t get very far with a lot of people. 30 years ago, when I was still a fairly new believer, books like Josh McDowell’s Evidence That Demands a Verdict were wonderful in helping to strengthen my faith. Today though, they don’t do a whole lot.

Peace in a weary world

Shooting_at_Pulse_Nightclub

Do you ever feel like you just want a break from life?

I am a morning person. It’s the time of day when I feel most alert and clear-headed. This morning my thoughts turned to the heaviness of another tragedy, this time in the home city of my brother and his family (they’re all ok; they were nowhere near Pulse nightclub at the time).

What happened on the weekend in Orlando was of course tragic in the most terrible sense. It’s wearying. And I feel even more weary when I see Christians on both the left and right of the political debate putting forward their views on how the killings in Orlando are and will be reported by different media outlets.

I just want to reflect on the fact that 50 people lost their lives. At a time like this I don’t care for the point-scoring arguments of whether the left will always say that Muslims are being vilified or the right saying that we don’t talk enough about Islamic violence.

Violence of any kind, no matter who commits it, is wrong and destructive of life. I just want peace at this time. The world needs it. We all need it. At such a dark time as this I am reminded of the pleading words of Rodney King after the LA riots of 1992: can we all just get along?

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Brene Brown: love weeps…

I love Brene Brown.

I mean, I’m not in love with her, but I love her reflections on life. Her raw honesty, especially about grief and shame, are so refreshing. Having experienced a fair amount of grief in the last few years, and learning to recover from shame, what Brene Brown says resonates so strongly with me. 

In this short interview montage, Brown talks about a number of things, but her take on why she says God is love and Jesus is the Son of God is disarming in its rawness and challenge to nice, middle-class faith. Check these words out on love:

“People would want love to be like unicorns and rainbows, and then you send Jesus in and people say, ‘Oh my God, love is hard, love is a sacrifice, love is eating with the sick…love is trouble, it’s rebellious.”

Then she quotes one of my favourite song lyrics, from Leonard Cohen’s Hallelujah: “Love is not a victory march; it’s a cold and it’s a broken hallelujah”

Brown goes on:

“Love is not easy; love is not like hearts and bows. Love is very controversial…Jesus wept – love weeps”.

When Brene Brown talks, I listen. This is someone who knows what coming through the other side of suffering is about.

“I thought faith would say, ‘I’ll take away the pain and discomfort’, but what it ended up saying was, ‘I’ll sit with you in it.'” Good words from Brené Brown as we enter Holy Week.

Posted by The Work of the People on Saturday, 19 March 2016

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