Soul Thoughts

Faith and relevance in the 21st century

Category: Love (Page 3 of 7)

Why the Resurrection still matters in the 21st century

March 27, 2016 / / 0 Comments

Behold-the-Man-Antonio_Ciseri-e1330966503449Another Easter has come and gone. As we reflect on what it means 2,000 years after the event, I am reminded that the circumstances in which the world finds itself in today, early in the 21st century, are similar to that in which the first Christians found themselves 2,000 years ago.

On that first Easter day, a handful of Jesus’ disciples became convinced that a new King had been enthroned, a new Lord. They became convinced that the teacher from Nazareth who they had been following around for three years was alive again, was the saviour of the world, and was the world’s rightful Lord. He actually was who he said he was, and now they finally understood.

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Jesus was not a nice guy

February 16, 2016 / / 0 Comments

priorities-full

“Trying to manage my…image kept me trapped, working to control others’ opinions of me rather than doing what I knew was right…I stayed on the margins of my life, acted to get into the thick of things, terrified that I was going to hurt someone, or offend someone, or mess everything up.” – Alison Vesterfelt

I used to be like this. In my teens I wouldn’t talk to anyone unless they spoke to me first because I thought I might offend them. It was really about me being scared of rejection. I’m still a people pleaser to an extent. Just last year I was told by someone at work that I was the nicest person in the office. It was a compliment but it didn’t sit right. I instinctively knew it was something that was a character flaw in me.

When I was in my early twenties, I used try to compensate for my niceness by being overly blunt a lot of the time. I did it to the point of sometimes being rude. I was a mixture of both bluntness and niceness. People saw me as kind, which I was as well, but I didn’t know then what I know now about being loving. I was deeply insecure and scared of going back to the niceness that was previously such a large part of my character. I thought that if I went back to that, I was going backwards in my growth and wasn’t being real. 

These days I speak up a lot more. I’m still a bit of a people pleaser at times, but I have learned that Jesus was not a nice guy. Let me repeat that: Jesus was not a nice guy. If you think he was, you’re missing my point about niceness.

But hear this though: it’s not a matter of trying to compensate for being overly nice by being blunt, or vice-versa. Neither niceness or bluntness is necessarily loving. It’s about trusting God, surrendering everything to Jesus with the attitude he showed in the Garden: not my will but yours be done.

As Alison Vesterfelt says, these days I try to think about kindness instead of niceness. Just thinking of it like that is mind-blowing for me. Jesus was the kindest, most loving person who has ever lived. That’s the sort of person I want to be.

Are the commands of Jesus only for Christians?

November 4, 2015 / / 0 Comments

Where_is_the_loveThe recent speech by our former Prime Minister, Tony Abbott, in honour of the late Margaret Thatcher in London, has certainly stirred the pot in terms of what it means to love our neigbour.

In the speech, Abbott spoke about asylum seekers making their way into Europe, and compared the situation to his former Government’s attempt to stop asylum seekers from reaching Australia by boat. In invoking the command of Jesus to love your neighbour, Abbott made the point that, while it is a wholesome ethic, it is currently leading Europe into “catastrophic error”.

The speech predictably gave rise to much heated debate about the treatment of asylum seekers and, in particular, whether or not Abbott was actually trying to say that Jesus was misguided in saying that loving your neighbour is the best way to live life. It has also raised the question once again of whether or not Jesus’ command is meant only for Christians.

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Life, death, love and grief

August 12, 2015 / / 0 Comments

white flower

A former colleague and friend of mine died last week. She was too young, and left behind a husband and two kids.

People who were closer to her than I was have been comforting each other this week in their grief. It has been terribly sad to witness.

The times in my life when I have known people who have died have been times of bonding with other loved ones of the deceased. It is not shared experiences necessarily or shared happiness that bonds people. It is shared suffering. When you grieve together over the suffering of a loved one, love comes to the fore.

It’s ultimately what life is about, really. Life is primarily about the experience of loss, ultimately to the loss of our life. 

Martin Luther King said once that suffering is redemptive. What he meant by that is that it is not meaningless. In a friendly universe, where the moral arc bends towards love, suffering can always be turned into good.

Jesus was known as a man of sorrows, one who was familiar with grief. He cried at the death of his friend Lazarus, he agonised over his coming suffering and death in the Garden of Gethsemane. and he cried out in desperation as he hung limp on a Roman cross. Jesus’ suffering was real, but it was not meaningless. Continue reading

How to overcome your addiction (yes, yours)

July 25, 2015 / / 0 Comments

Hi, my name is Nils and I’m an addict. And so are you.

Most of us don’t have the obvious addictions like drugs, alcohol, gambling or sex. But we all have attachments, certain beliefs about ourselves and the world. Everyone of us is addicted to certain patterns of thinking. If you’re not sure about that, a great book to read about it is Addiction and Grace by Gerald May. 

We live in a society that places way too high a value on feeling good. When that happens, especially at the expense of relationship and connection, addiction thrives and shame eventually sets in. We substitute feeling good about ourselves for feeling good.

In our culture, addictions take many forms. We are addicted to our smart phones, to shopping, to making more money, and it is killing our souls. If you don’t think you are addicted, try stopping for a few weeks and see how you feel.

Research is now showing that there is a definite link between the lack of connection in our society and addiction. As the above TED talk points out, in the United States, the number of people who can say they have close friends to call on in a crisis has been diminishing since the 1950s. The same would be true in Australia, as we are a very similar culture which is enormously influenced by the US.

Johann Hari, in the above talk, also says this:

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What I learned about love at 38,000 feet

June 30, 2015 / / 0 Comments

276924317_6285a7c0e9_oRecently I’ve been feeling a lot more troubled at the state of the world.

When listening to songs about the struggles that ordinary people go through, I find myself just tearing up. The same is happening more when I hear songs about justice and the passion for this world to be made right. It’s just been getting to me. I think it’s an answer to a prayer asking for God to transform me. Maybe I’m finally developing the suffering heart of God that is broken over the problems of the world.

But at the same time as I find myself weeping over the state of things, I find a similar, though ugly, side of me being revealed.

It happened on a flight to Sydney recently when I had my headphones on and was listening to some music about things close to the heart of God. The person sitting next to me started making comments about the great views of the land below that we were flying over. This person didn’t seem to realise that I was otherwise occupied. Every minute or so would come another comment about how beautiful this or that piece of scenery was. Continue reading

Love anyway

May 15, 2015 / / 0 Comments

love-anyway-shevon-johnson“To love at all is to be vulnerable. Love anything and your heart will be wrung and possibly broken. If you want to make sure of keeping it intact you must give it to no one, not even an animal. Wrap it carefully round with hobbies and little luxuries; avoid all entanglements. Lock it up safe in the casket or coffin of your selfishness. But in that casket, safe, dark, motionless, airless, it will change. It will not be broken; it will become unbreakable, impenetrable, irredeemable. To love is to be vulnerable.”

– C.S. Lewis

Love, by its very nature, involves a level of pain, because it is sacrificial. It’s very essence is to give, thereby leaving it open to betrayal and abuse. But to love is to live; it is the only way to have joy in life.

I find it fascinating that, in the moment of his greatest betrayal and desertion by his best friends, Jesus spoke of his own joy (John 15:11). This is the only time in all the gospels that Jesus speaks of his own joy. This was also the night before the agony of his crucifixion, which was also his greatest act of love.

For Jesus, love involved great pain. But he loved anyway. And within it he knew joy.

This all reminds me of another quote from a person who knew what it was to love. Mother Teresa once said this:

“People are often unreasonable, irrational, and self-centered. Forgive them anyway.
If you are kind, people may accuse you of selfish, ulterior motives. Be kind anyway.
If you are successful, you will win some unfaithful friends and some genuine enemies. Succeed anyway.
If you are honest and sincere people may deceive you. Be honest and sincere anyway.
What you spend years creating, others could destroy overnight. Create anyway.
If you find serenity and happiness, some may be jealous. Be happy anyway.
The good you do today, will often be forgotten. Do good anyway.
Give the best you have, and it will never be enough. Give your best anyway.
In the final analysis, it is between you and God. It was never between you and them anyway.”

Love anyway.

Non-violence in the face of ISIS?

March 6, 2015 / / 0 Comments

Post by Sojourners.

Once again, Sojourners are one of the very few Christian movements to put forward a credible, intelligent alternative to the violence of Empire in the face of the brutality of ISIS. This article by Micah Bales should be compulsory reading for every Christian wanting to articulate a Christian response to ISIS.

The way of the cross is indeed foolishness to many. As a believer, it is even foolishness to me at times. That just shows how entrenched in the way of the world I am.

Check out some of these quotes from the article above:

  • “When we choose to follow Jesus, it’s a death sentence. To become a disciple is to take up the cross, just as Jesus did. Followers of Jesus don’t get to kill our enemies. Followers of Jesus don’t get to conquer terrorists like ISIS with violent force. As followers of the slain lamb, we are conquerors through the blood of Jesus, through our commitment to show love even to those who want to behead us.”
  • “The world needs to know that the people of the cross are the ones who will die saying, Forgive them, Father, for they know not what they do.”
  • “We are called to be the seed that dies – by beheading, if need be – in order to give birth to a world of beauty and justice that is unthinkable for those who are seen as reasonable and realistic in this blinded age.”
  • “This won’t protect us from the violence of evildoers…But it is the way that leads to life. This is the faith that overcomes the world. It’s a life of trust and joy that rings out like a bell in these times of fear and oppression.”

When we are willing to die for the way of Christ, to be martyrs for the kingdom of non-violence, we show that we would rather die than cooperate with the way of death that Empire tells us is right. That is the foolishness of the cross. We would rather follow a Messiah who gets himself killed than one who overthrows Empire and conquers all.

Yet the irony is that in following the Messiah who gets himself killed, we become those very conquerors. We are more than conquerors through him who loved us. That is the way of Christ that overcomes the world. In the end it is this way, and not the violent way of Empire, that wins. To quote Martin Luther King, the arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends towards justice.

Finding love by loving others

September 27, 2014 / / 0 Comments

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This is a really good piece. I particularly love this quote:

“Because we do not usually understand and internalize the nature of our foundational sin, we usually think our job as Christians is to embrace a moral system, live by it, and thus to be good people in contrast to all those who are evil. In fact, God’s goal for us is much more profound and much more beautiful than merely being good: it is to do the will of God by being loving, just as God is loving.”

Finding the life we’re after by being loving goes against what much of the church says. We are often taught that loving ourselves first is the way to loving others. But that is not biblical. We find life by loving others, by “losing our life” for the sake of others. That is what loving God is. Of course it does matter hugely that we accept that we are loved. But that is different from trying to build our self-esteem at the expense of others.

It is actually about realising that we are already loved; we don’t need to do anything to feel loved. Our identity comes from knowing that we are already loved and then loving others out of that freedom. It is in the giving of loving others that we find identity and the fulfilment that we are constantly searching for.

It is a huge relief to realise that we don’t need to be “needy” and desperately search for love. If we do that we end up using and manipulating others. Love is infinitely greater than fear.

What does maturity look like?

June 19, 2014 / / 0 Comments

Understanding peopleI’ve just been reading a bit of Larry Crabb’s book, Understanding People, again. It’s a book I got in 1987 and it has made a huge impact on me.

The sections I read today discussed maturity and what that looks like. The fact is that much of what looks like maturity in people is actually a commitment to self-protection.

Here are some quotes from the book that have really struck and challenged me. The fact that I find a lot of these quotes so uncomfortable is a sure sign that they apply to me.

  • “Maturity is less related to perfection than to a growing awareness of imperfection, an awareness that…drives us toward dependency on Christ for anything good to come out of our lives.”
  • “A mature pattern of relating involves whatever actions represent the abandonment of self-protection. The defensively pushy person will become more gentle as he matures, while the self-protectively gracious person will assert himself more.”
  • “Mature people relate to others without self-protection as their controlling motive. They love. Their actions may be gentle or brusque, silly or serious, traditional or progressive, quiet or noisy, gracious or severe, tolerant or confrontative, but they will be patient, kind, not envious, humble, sensitive, other-centred, slow to anger, quickly forgiving, haters of wrong, lovers of right, protective, trusting, hoping, persevering.”
  • “[Mature people] relate to others on the basis of a trust in God to look after their deepest welfare that frees them to direct their energies toward helping others.”
  • “In [the presence of mature people], our growth seems more appealing to us than required of us.”
  • “As people learn to love, the internal structures that sustain their emotional and psychological ills are eroded.”
  • “When the Scriptures give no clear instruction to govern specific choices, then the principle is always to do what is loving.”
  • “The effect of dependence on God is freedom to take hold of our worlds and to deal responsibly with them without being controlled by a fear of the pain to which our obedience may lead. The effect of clinging to God is the freedom to love.”
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