I'm Emerging. I like Philosophy.

Love is What Makes the World Go Around
The Commune 10.1.07

The world we live in is filled with constant struggle. As I so very slowly grow old, I am beginning to notice that nearly all of our strife stems from relationships. They say that art imitates life, and if so, TV most definitely demonstrates the difficulty of relationships.
Take Felicity, for example. Over the past couple of weeks, Hilary and I have been watching it on DVD. The show chronicles the college career of one girl, Felicity. She moves from California to New York following a boy she barely knows named Ben. When she finally gets to school, she develops a relationship with her RA, Noel, while her new friend, Julie, dates Ben, the boy from California. They struggle through their relationships for almost a whole year. At the end of spring semester, after having cheated on Noel once, Felicity is forced to choose between Noel, the boy she’s been dating all year, and Ben, who just broke up with her friend Julie. Choosing Noel would be the easy solution and would do the least damage to the world around her. Unfortunately, Felicity chooses Ben, ruining her relationship with Noel and Julie. Ben and Felicity date for exactly two episodes before they break up.
Or think about The OC. Ryan moves to a wealthy neighborhood from the slums. He immediately begins dating his new next-door neighbor, Marissa. After a series of strange events, Ryan and Marissa still have a somewhat romantic relationship even though they have become distantly related.
The point is: relationships are complicated. When our hearts are on the line, there is nearly always trouble. And so, we are going to put our study of the Beatitudes on hold. In its stead, we’re going to spend a few weeks talking about relationships. This will be an open discussion. It won’t necessarily be a Bible study, in as it will be a topical study. Therefore, we’re going to bring in different ideas from philosophy, from literature, from our culture and even from experience, as well as the Bible. In truth, this is an exercise in practical theology.

Disclaimer: This study focuses on all of our relationships, and we will begin by discussing relationships as a generality. When I say relationships, I mean our bonds with any persons regardless of gender or attraction. When I say love, I mean love as is issued in the Divine Imperative.

Plato is one of the founding fathers of philosophy. In his work, the Symposium, Plato puts forth his definition of love, somewhat based on the ideas of his tutor, Socrates. The piece is written as Socrates offering his comments on the playwright Aristophanes’ own views. Aristophanes’ felt that love was the continual striving of the soul for one’s other half. He believed that the gods had split every man in two as an act of judgment. Therefore, each man was forced to seek out his other half, and therefore completion.
Socrates adds that man only seeks such completion, if it is truly good. Therefore, for Socrates, we seek the good, and not simply completion. Love is the pursuit of the goodness inside of something. Plato sums up by saying, “Love is desire for perpetual possession of the good.”
This raises some interesting questions: First, is possession a vital aspect of love? Secondly, how does one define the Good?
One must be familiar with Plato’s allegory of the cave and his idea of Forms. Plato felt that all things are merely a shadowy representation of their true essence. The Good in any object is the metaphysical, lofty reality of what is merely represented in its physical form. So to desire the Good is not simply to desire a relationship, or a person, but the highest in its very essence. What this means for us is that as we seek relationships, we must decide what the Good truly is.
Last week, we talked about Kierkegaard’s understanding of purity of heart: “Purity of heart is to will one thing: the Good.” For Kierkegaard, that one thing, that Good was God. He felt that truly loving someone meant encouraging them, driving into the presence of God in a deep intimacy. What is the purpose of our relationships? What is the purpose of our love? Is it to acquire completion? Or is it the pursuit of the Good, namely God? Are our relationships based solely on our desire to have a craving for affection met? Or is our craving for the Author of life and purpose?
Jesus said, “First search for the Kingdom and the righteousness of [God], and everything else will be provided for you.”
In the Symposium, Socrates goes on to say that the pursuit of beauty and goodness necessarily desires the procreation of beauty: to seek the Good means that we desire that Good to continue into the future. The example that Socrates gives is the desire to have children. People desire to reproduce so that they may have an impact on the future, in Socrates’ mind. True love always desires to produce true love. The Good demands that it perpetuate itself. This brings us back to our question about receiving. Is love about the reception, or the continuation of itself?
In Mere Christianity, C.S. Lewis says, “Nothing that you have not given away will ever be really yours.” Or hear to the words of the German poet Rainer Maria Rilke, “This is the miracle that happens every time to those who really love; the more they give, the more they possess.” The reward for our giving love in relationship is the giving of it, and our growth in its understanding and its practicality.
Our understanding of love and relationships must be centered on the Good. Christ must be our reason for loving and the reward. He must be the source and focal point of our relationships. He must be both the motivation and the goal.
Next week, we’re going to discuss humanity’s designed purpose for having relationships. We’re going to talk about the idea of relational theology, and ask the question of the importance and necessity of living in community with our brothers, our sisters and those who live outside of our own bubble.

How to Have a Prolific Blog...

I decided to follow a lead, and title this post with a completely irrelevant (and even misleading) title. So there.

Do you think preachers say dumb things? Check this out:
http://markdroberts.com/?p=200

Do you hate invitations? Check this out:
http://www.internetmonk.com/archive/abandoning-the-invisible-lifeline

Do you like coffee? Check this out:
http://ianscottpatersonblog.blogspot.com/2007/09/cup-of-coffee.html

That's all I got to say about that.

for jean.

I'm teaching about worship at a retreat coming up in October. Here's my rough draft. Be gentle.

At least once a week, we gather. Some goofy lookin’ guy plays guitar and sings in a microphone so the shy kid in the back won’t have to actually make a sound. The songs always start upbeat, less thought provoking. The lyrics aren’t usually quite as clever to these quicker songs. “We praise you for always and ever,” being the general gist. Then, there’s that one song. It’s that transition song. Most of the time it’s a moderately upbeat song with a catchy chorus. Goofy Guitar Man will play the song through straight-up once, and then the inevitable happens. The song should be over, the last chorus sung, the last chord ringing in the ears of the crowd. Yet, for some reason, Goofy Guitar Man keeps playing, only slower than before. Then he says something to the effect of, “I want you to just think about the words to this song,” right before he drags the whole crowd through a painfully slower rendition of what was once a decently poppy song.

And somehow, it seems that this experience or one similar has come to define what worship is. We judge our worship experiences based on how well the music was performed and whether or not we got goosebumps. For some strange reason, the quality of our worship isn’t based on the quality of the One being worshipped, but on our own responses to it. People ask how worship was, and we respond with varying degrees of how much we “felt” it.

So what is worship anyway? I mean, what is it really? Maybe the easiest place to start is to clarify what worship is not. Worship is not a musical style. In fact, music as a medium does not even scratch the surface of what worship truly is. If worship were simply singing songs and doing dances, then every loser in a karaoke bar would be a saint.

Secondly, worship is not defined by a place. Once, Jesus asked a Samaritan woman for a drink of water. She asked him a question about where the worship was best. Jesus told her that the place of worship is irrelevant compared to its genuine nature.

Third, worship is not an over-charged emotional adrenalin rush. It cannot be measured in buckets of tears or squishy, smelly bear hugs at the altar. Because of this, worship is not a competitive sport where one scores points by raising hands or singing harmony. It is not, contrary to popular belief, driven by what we “get out of it.”
This weekend, we are going to discuss three ideas of worship that I believe are essential to its understanding. The first is this: Worship is entrance into sacred space. In the Old Testament, God instructed Moses to build him a tabernacle. This was the place where God would meet with Moses to guide the people. Later, it was the basis for the Temple. In this layout, there were a series of rooms divided from one another. The central room was known as the Most Holy Place. This was the place where God dwelled amongst the people. God even had Moses build him a throne known as the Ark of the Covenant.

When people went to worship, they went to the Tabernacle or the Temple. They went to the place where God dwelt amongst his people. Worship was an act of gratitude and meditation in which they went to the very place that God lived.

When Jesus was crucified, Matthew 27 describes how the veil of the temple was torn from top to bottom. Hebrews 9.11-14 and 10.19-25 tell us that Christ has completed a new covenant, allowing us through his sacrifice to enter the presence of God on a spiritual realm. Any time we worship, our hearts and our spirits are taken into the very presence of God. As we enter his house, we consider his faithfulness and his goodness to us.

Worship is an experience of individuals in a community. I remember sitting in a worship service when I was in high school. It was a well-put together service. The band was on; the atmosphere was prime. As we moved into the more intimate tunes, I closed my eyes and began to focus on what God wanted me to hear. I pushed away all of the distractions of the people around me, what I was going to do later, what happened at school. I did everything I could to find out what it was that God wanted to say to me. I was in a world all of my own. And then God spoke. He told me to look around. I protested. I said, “God, this is our time. You and me. I don’t want to look around. I just spent a lot of energy forgetting that those people were there so I could focus on you.” But God insisted that I look around the room. So, I slowly peeked my eyes open and looked around. I saw the most beautiful thing in the world. It was an entire room of people engaging the same God that I was seeking to engage. We were one. We stood not as a bunch of islands, but as a body. When we worship, it is our common celebration of what God has done for us as his people. His promises, his blessings, his goodness falls on us as a group. And because of the unity we have as God’s church, each one of us is equal. We all came to the point we are at because of what HE did, not what we have done. We stand as a body of equals. None greater. None lesser. And we celebrate the faithfulness of God that gives us grace and life abundant.

Worship is war. The book of Revelation is typically characterized by its incredible amounts of violence. Whether it is the four horsemen killing one third of the human population or giant locusts torturing men without ending for months at a time. Famine, war, disease and death seem to strike without mercy over and over again. But somewhere in each series of injustice and violence, there is a pause. While these horrible things continue to happen on earth, we get small glimpses of heaven. Even though it seems to be hell on earth, in each of the heavenly scenes, God is glorified (i.e. Rev. 7).

I think what the book is trying to teach us is that worship is an act of war. We see the horrible disasters of the world around us, and we mourn. We draw near to God, knowing that through Christ’s sacrifice we can enter God’s very presence. By doing so, we say to God, “I know that life sucks on earth, but wherever you are, God, it is good. You are faithful. You are true to your word.” It is through worship that we ask God to make our realm and his realm one place. We ask God to make our world the same as his place in order to redeem the world. “God come and bring salvation to the whole world! We want the end of death, the end of disease, of pain, of injustice! God come and be in this place!”

Worship is not about what we can receive, but it’s all about what God has given us. It’s not about whom we are with specifically, but it’s about our community. It’s not about a place or a time, but it’s all about being in the very presence of God. Worship is a way of life that lives in the midst of God’s kingdom here on earth.