Singleness is Not… (Part 1)

Last Thursday my Precept class had a great discussion on what it meant to pursue a life of singleness.  And considering it is Valentines Day, I’m going to begin a series on what it means to pursue singleness.  This isn’t just for my single friends though, if you’re married, feel free to read it.

…Not Getting Married

Now upon reading that title you may be tempted to think that I reused a word that was unnecessary. As though it was my intention to say, “Intentional Singleness is not getting married” to which your reply would be “Duh!” But no, this is not what I meant. To be intentionally single means that in this moment of your life, you will be the single person God has made you to be, which means that you may be getting married in the future, but marriage is not what you are planning for.

This may sound odd at first, but let me explain. Had God wanted you to be married, He would have put that special someone in your life and you would be married. Whether you are 14 or 104 if God wanted you to be married, He would have you married, right now, with no questions asked. But I would guess that most reading this post is not; which is to say that most of you are single. Some of you are struggling with your singleness as though God made some mistake. Sometimes I feel as though I am that can that has slipped out of the bag and rolled under the refrigerator. Lost and forgotten. Let me be the first to say, this is not the case and I will explain this later. But for now, let me just remind you: living a life of intentional singleness is not you saying that you will never be married. It is you resting in God’s plan for your singleness right now until He changes the status quo.

Now that you understand that, let me also say that this does not mean planning for your wedding. No, I did not say, “Intentional singleness is not not planning for your wedding” as though you should be planning for your future spouse and wedding and a live happily ever after. This is not the case with one who is living to be intentionally single. Instead, one who is living intentionally single does not plan for a marriage. Though a marriage may come, it is not planned for. I have found that when I being to plan for a marriage, when I read a book about what it means to be a great husband, or when I think about how life would be so much better if I had a significant other, is when I am tempted to sin the most.

Even though you should not be planning your wedding, you should be growing in your knowledge of married things. “Wait” you reply, “why shouldn’t I plan for a wedding if I am learning anyway what it means to be married? Should I keep knowledge to myself?” Not at all! Knowledge is meant for sharing. It is shared not for the sake of sharing and looking great, but that it would grow people in the kingdom. I am positive that everyone reading this not only knows, but converses with married people on a regular basis. Since this is the case, there might be something that God uses in you to teach a married person about their relationship with their spouse. I can’t think of how many times I have met with a married man for lunch and God has used something I am reading in order to help him understand how to relate to his wife differently.

This balance is not easy. And it is when this is off balance that my view of God is changed and that I begin not trusting God with my future. For instance, if I begin to plan for marriage, and I am not dating anyone and don’t have any plans to date anyone any time too soon, these plans for marriage that I am making are meaningless and only cause me to want to get married rather than the be content in my singleness.

Another example is this, if I am not learning about marriage and teaching others about what marriage is like, I am staying in the same place and if God would have me married, I would not be ready because I hadn’t been learning. Therefore, I would be a poor husband to my wife because I would not know what God would expect from me as a husband and I would be a poor father because I would not know what God would expect of me as a father.

To recap, living a life of intentional singleness does not mean that you are not not getting married, but that you shouldn’t plan for marriage, instead you should grow in your knowledge and understanding of marriage.

Exodus 32-34 Part 1

I recently had the chance to teach a Sunday School Class on Exodus 32-34.  It was a great experience and I had a great time studying the Bible to see why we had this specific story in Exodus.  I see all the Old Testament stories as to be fulfilled by Christ and this story is no different.  Before I specifically blog about what I talked about I need to set up the story. 

Back-story

God, earlier in the book, had pulled the children out of the land of Egypt.  He had called them His people and told them that it had nothing to do with them, but because of His mercies.  He takes them into the wilderness and while there He gives them a list of things to abide by (majorly the 10 commandments) and in chapter 24 they completely agree to all that God had commanded and made covenant with God.  Then in chapter 28 Aaron and his sons are set up as the High Priests in the camp.  Moses then goes up on to Mount Sinai to talk with God and this is where the story picks up. 

The Story

While on the mountain the children of Israel decide God must have killed Moses so they go to Aaron and tell them to make them a god.  Aaron tells them to have their families remove all their gold and bring it to him and they do.  Aaron then makes a golden calf and the children of Israel corrupt themselves with the calf.  God tells Moses that His people have corrupted themselves and tells Moses to leave so that He can burn with anger and consume them.  Moses then talks to God and reminds God of His promise to Abraham, Isaac and Israel.  God then relents from what He had spoken of doing to the children of Israel.

What does this mean for us?

The religion of Hinduism has literally millions of gods.  There are three major gods of Hinduism Brahma, Vishnu and Shiva.  Brahma is the creator of all life, Vishnu is the sustainer of life and Shiva is the destroyer of life.  As a Christian the first thing that comes to my mind is a wooden, silver or gold statue that has a face, hands and feet that people bow to as god.  As people though we have other idols. 

Our idols are Money and Wealth, Power and Glory, Success and Love.  We sacrifice our family and friends to the god of wealth when we put them below our need to have money.  We sacrifice our coworkers and employees to the god of success when we stab them in the back to get ahead.  We sacrifice public opinion to the god of Power and Glory when we say that we will do one thing and don’t fulfill that which we have said we would do.  We sacrifice ourselves to the god of love when we don’t settle for second best, but last best for our pride and need for a person to fulfill “needs” in our lives.  There’s also the god of sports in which we sacrifice ourselves to watch every game even when it cuts into our time with our family or even God.  Or the god of food, or the god of pride, or the god of (insert here).  We have just as many, if not more, gods than Hinduism, yet we wouldn’t call them gods or idols.  We would say that we just need to be noticed, to have a little more money, to be comforted, to whatever we say and yet it is still idolatry.

And Your Point…

God has made a covenant with us that we see it in Matthew 27:35-40.  God told us that we should love Him with our hearts, soul and mind and to love our neighbors like ourselves.  When we place God beneath our gods we break covenant with God.  When we don’t love our neighbors like ourselves we break our covenant with God.  Romans 13:10 says that the fulfilling of the law is love.  Not the god of love, but love to each other.  Even though the children of Israel didn’t know, God would later someone who could fulfill the law of love.

An Account

Well I haven’t been updating this as much as I should.  Namely because my school is getting back in the swing of things, so that is taking a huge chunk out of my life.  On top of that a lot has been going on at church that I’ve been involved with.  Finally, I have to make time to read and that normally will take the place of me sitting down and writing a blog.   This will begin my apologies.

A few months ago, on February 7, I wrote a blog post labeled “Love.”  I spent hours thinking, writing, more thinking and more writing on this post.  Since then I have been corrected on this view.  While most people, like myself, think that αγαπη (agape) is an unconditional, selfless love.  I have been shown this is not the case.  I was recently encouraged to read “Exegetical Fallacies” by D.A. Carson because of Love.  InExegetical Fallacies Carson shows how this is a common misconception among many people, but a form of the word αγαπη was used in the Septuagint as Amnon’s love for his sister Tamar.  If you’ve not read the story you can read it in 2 Sam 13.  In the story Amnon ends up raping Tamar which makes it anything but the αγαπη form that I was talking about in Love.  After reading Exegetical Fallacies I’ve realized that that entire post is unnecessary and unbiblical.

My second apology is for those that use the KJV Bible, but aren’t KJV only.  In December I wrote another post called “Traditionally Minded Pharisaical Christians.”  I understand that I came across really strong and harsh and I didn’t have a very Christian-like attitude.  I in no way wanted to say that all people that use the KJV are Traditionally Minded Pharisaical Christians.  So I apologize if you read that and took offense.

My Confession

To be honest, blogging was the last thing for my list today and if I had blogged it would have been answering questions that I was asking myself during this morning’s chapel. The questions I asked are relevant questions that need to be addressed, but what I am going to blog about today is my own confession and something that I have been thinking about for quite a few weeks now.

My pastor has been going through the Revelation of John. He hasn’t been going through the whole book, but he has been going through the first few chapters and the letters that were written to the churches. The first church, the church at Ephesus, has been the letter that has been on my mind particularly. John write to the church and tells them how they are doing great because they are doctrinally sound and they can refute and rebuke all the people in the church, but they have lost their first love. What Pastor David brought up was that their first love was love and that they had all this knowledge of the Bible, but had no love for the people they were rebuking or refuting.

In the same way Paul touched on this subject in I Corinthians 13 when he talks about love. He says,

“If I speak in the tongues of men and of angels, but I do not have love, I am a noisy gong or a clanging cymbal. And if I have prophecy, and know all mysteries and all knowledge, and if I have all faith so that I can remove mountains, but do not have love, I am nothing. If I give away everything I own, and if I give over my body in order to boast, but do not have love, I receive no benefit.”

This has been such a slap in the face for me. I have grown up studying the Bible, showing people that if they don’t agree with me they don’t know what they are talking about. Making rash decisions and placing myself on a pedestal because I know everything about the Bible and because I know all this you wrong if you disagree. And I may be right on a lot of things, but my point isn’t that, my point is that with that kind of attitude I am not showing my love for other people when I continually argue over stupid things.

The reason this is brought to my attention is that I’ve always talked about how great it would be to die a martyr for Christ. Die in a blaze of glory for my King, but I was sitting at Burger King for lunch today and I was thinking about in the end times how many people are going to reject, blaspheme and even hate God during that time. As I was thinking about this I was looking around and seeing all these people around me and thinking these people are going to die, they are going to go to Hell and they are going to not know about Jesus.

How many people I saw and immediately I was scared. I was scared about what people would think about me if I started sharing the gospel with them. I was scared that if I had bought a homeless guy a meal, sat down to eat with him, what people around me would think of me if they heard me sharing the gospel. I was scared about what the guy would have thought about me. “Did he buy my lunch just so he could tell me how to get saved?”

Why did I think these things? Don’t I know that God, the creator of the universe is in control and that He is the one that draws people to him? Am I that selfish to think that God’s gospel is for me and me alone? How could I even think about being a leader in the church if I won’t share the gospel and be rejected by people that don’t even know God let alone a church congregation that I actually know and don’t want to see be led astray? Why have I made God so small and yet why have I made man so big?

As I think about the answers to my question I come to one conclusion.

My pride.

My pride is what helps me not to share the gospel. My pride is what helps me gain so much knowledge and yet not put it to practical use. My pride is what helps me share the most random facts about the Bible that no one would ever know, but because I have read sooooo much I know it. My pride is what helps me to get into theological discussions and to think things like “if they don’t agree with me then God will deal with them.” It’s all my pride.

That is my confession. In all my pride I have not shared the gospel and it could have been the last chance for that person to ever hear it. Oh to never be selfish. I say that I have so much faith in God and yet I mimic the words of James when he says, “faith without works is dead.”

Marriage

This semester I have a class and I have to read a book called “In the World: Read and Writing as a Christian” by John Timmerman. Each chapter has between 4 and 6 essays and at the end has 4 to six discussion questions.  This past chapter was about “Living Ethically” and one of the essays I had to read was called “Why Get Married?”  At the end, as I said earlier I had discussion questions and I am going to post tow of them and give my answer.  Feel free to jump in and tell me what you think of my answers or give me your won answers.

The questions are 1) Smedes says elsewhere in the book that we are “forever being married.”  In what ways is his statement true?  2)How do traditional vows suggest this?

a. In what way is his statement true?
The way this makes sense to me is to think of the Christian walk like an arranged marriage. God the Father elects people before He created the world in forever past creating the betrothal. After that we are drawn to Christ, the husband, by the Holy Spirit. When we come to Christ we think we know a lot about Him, but the longer we know Him the more we see that we knew nothing about Him from the beginning and that we know, what seems like, even less about Him since the day we came to Him.

b. How do traditional marriage vows suggest this?
The traditional wedding vows are “I, (name), take you (name), to be my (wife/husband), to have and to hold from this day forward, for better or for worse, for richer, for poorer, in sickness and in health, to love and to cherish; from this day forward until death do us part.”
Jesus said every one of these the day He died on the cross. He has not broken any of these vows to any person that is a genuine Christian. We, as Christians, break these vows each and every day.
We do not hold on to Christ when it is better because we think it’s too good to need Jesus. When we’re on the worse side of things we think that because we haven’t communicated with Jesus for so long he won’t listen. We think we can handle it on our own and show Jesus, and everyone else, that we can handle our situation alone.
When we’re richer our riches become our God and we don’t tell people that our wealth is from Christ. When we’re poorer we don’t take time and give it to Christ and let Him take care of it. Rather, we spend a lot of time trying to find a job to make money, so that we can then give our time to God.
When we’re in sickness, we may pray to God to get better, but in a lot of cases we don’t. We’re too busy trying to go to doctors get the medicine that will make us better, we try to get more sleep or get more exercise or anything so that we don’t have to spend time with God. When we’re in health we don’t even think about Christ because everything is going great. God is taking care of me, so I might give him honorable mention, but nothing like what he deserves.
We definitely don’t love and cherish Jesus and His sacrifice. We don’t show our love for God to other people. Sure, we say “I love Jesus,” but do our actions to those around us remind others of this? Chances are we don’t. We do not cherish Jesus for who He is.

Love

The title of this blog is something that we, as Christians, are very familiar with. We get that phrase throughout the Bible, but we see that exact phrase when John says “God is Love” in 1 John 4:8. The question I will try to answer in this blog post is what type(s) of love God, Christians and Unsaved are.

You may be asking at this point, “What does he mean by types?” Well, in the Greek culture there are three forms of love. I will give the Greek word and a definition of the word. After I have given the explanation of the word I will then give an interpretation of what the words mean. I am not a scholar and I have not been in school all of my life, so if I say anything that does not agree with the Bible please let me know, so that I can remove this post from my blog. This post is only my thoughts on the subject.

αγαπη – (ag-ah-pay) “love, that is, affection or benevolence” [1]

φιλεω – (fil-eh-o) “to be a friend to (fond of [an individual or an object]), that is, have affection for (denoting personal attachment, as a matter of sentiment or feeling;”[2]

ερως – (er-rose) (this form is not in a dictionary as a verb rather it is the noun of Eros the Greek God, so I will give my own definition) “This type of ‘love’ does not worry about the other person involved, rather they take everything from that person.

αγαπη– Giving 100% of the love no matter the person, no matter the past, present, or future. The “I will love you always”

φιλεω – Give 50% / Take 50% this is the brotherly/friendship love. The “You scratch my back and I’ll scratch yours type”

ερως – Take 100% irregardless of the party involved. Most of the time used sexually, but the sexual has a deeper reasoning than just sexual. This is the “Give me everything you have and I will give you nothing in return. My use of this term in this blog with is used as just this; there will be no sexual connotation used with this word.

With all of this being explained I will now begin the controversy. I will begin with applying each love to the three groups of people. I will begin with the unsaved, move to the saved and finish with God. I will be using the English transliteration of the word (i.e. agape rather than αγαπη) Without further distractions I will begin with my game plan my nine major points.

Sinners                                Saved                          God

Are Eros                              Cannot be Eros           Is Eros

Think they are Phileo         Are Phileo                   Cannot be Phileo

Cannot be Agape                Should be Agape         Is Agape

As stated before I will begin my explanation with sinners. The first form of love I attached to them was the Eros for and I will begin my explanation with that. The reason I believe they are Eros is because they don’t realize who their maker is; they don’t realize that their very life and breath comes from God. Instead, they continue to take from God without giving Him credit for anything. Every human being has been in this boat in their life. Whether a person is a Christian or unsaved they have been in this boat because we are depraved human beings.

In Psalm 51 David says that he was conceived in sin. Of course who could for get the words of Jesus when he said “You people are from your father the devil, and you want to do what your father desires. He was a murderer from the beginning, and does not uphold the truth, because there is no truth in him. Whenever he lies, he speaks according to his own nature, because he is a liar and the father of lies.” Romans 14:23 says that whatever we do outside of faith is sin. With this being said this shows that unsaved people are the Eros form of love.

The second phrase “Sinners think they are the Phileo form of love. People, especially those that believe in a God just not the one of Christianity, think that the things they do, whether good or bad, will gain (or lose) their spot in Heaven. Even for people that don’t believe in a god they believe that if they do something the cosmos will look on their kindness and something good will happen to them. It would be something like karma that they would believe in.

The last phrase about sinners would be that they cannot be Agape. The place the Agape form was coined was in the Bible. It is used about 135 times when the New Testament talks about love. The other form is used about 20 times. Every time the Agape form is used is in reference to Christians and it is because God is dwelling in us that give us the ability to love others with Agape.

The second group I will be writing on is Christians. I began with saying that Christians cannot be the Eros form of love. We, as Christians, cannot be the Eros form of love because God dwells in us. If we, after “getting saved,” demand and take things from people, proves that we weren’t saved to begin with. Jesus says we should “love our enemies and pray for those that persecute us.” We should love everyone because we have been forgiven of so much.

The second phrase was that Christians are Phileo love. We have been forgiven of so much and because of this we now show love to everyone, but because of our sin nature we don’t love correctly. We are grateful to God for everything He has given us, but we still feel in our hearts that “If I Read my Bible everyday. Then God will bless me with wealth” or “If I stay pure until I am married then God will appease me and give me a wife when I ask for one.” God is not a dog that you toss your bone at and he brings it back to you. I will explain more about this when I get to God and Phileo.

The last phrase I used was that Christians should be Agape form of love. I dare say that not one person reading this could say they have the Agape form of love. I am not saying this out of pride because I am far from Agape, but this is what we should all strive to be. We should all strive to love and pray for our enemies. Not because if we do that we earn our salvation or that God will do good things for us, but because God has done so much for us that we can’t help but to love those around us no matter what they’ve done to us.

On the list I gave towards the top I said that God was Eros, but before I explain that I want to explain the other two.

The second phrase I mentioned was that God cannot be Phileo. If God were this way He would be this way for everyone. He would not do this out of love, but out of His equality. Instead, we see that Christians ask for things and He may or may not answer it the way we ask for it. If God has Phileo love then when we would scratch His back; He would scratch ours because he would be compelled to.

The third phrase I used was God is Agape. God loves us no matter what we did, are doing, or will do. He loves us completely and totally with no questions asked. That’s why John said “God is love (Agape).” We see this through the entire life of Jesus up until His death on the cross.

The first phrase that I saved for last was God is Eros. One could ask “Is that not a contradiction from what you said in the previous paragraph about God being Agape?” “Isn’t Eros the opposite of Agape?” To which I would answer “Hold your horses I will answer these and many other questions you may have including ‘Has he lost his mind?’”

To begin with God is Eros because of how He is viewed in the Bible. On multiple occasions we see that we are “servants,” but this isn’t necessarily the case. The word “servant” comes from the Greek word δοῦλος (doulos) which should be translated “slave.” Which means when God says “Well done my good and faithful servant”, He is really saying ‘slave,’ so, we are God’s slaves. If we are the slaves and he is the Master we have nothing. When we come to Christ we are nothing. After we come to Christ we are still nothing. God takes everything we “have” because of His love for Himself.

This is what is so great! God gives us everything He demands from us. Let that sink in. Before we come to Christ we are nothing. After we come to Christ God gives us everything He demands from us even though we are nothing. If God demands everything of our nothing then that makes God look so great because He is providing everything He is demanding. God demands we have faith in Him; He gives us that faith. God demands we love our enemies; He gives us that love to love our enemies. God demands that we have self-control; and He gives us that self control. How amazing is that! That is like the IRS saying you owe $100,000 in back taxes; then turning around and giving you a check for $100,000.

I am not setting any of this in stone because my opinion can change. This is research that I have done and hypotheses that I have come up with.

[1] Strong, James. “αγαπη” Def. 26. The New Strong’s Exhaustive Concordance. 1984. 7.

[2] Strong, James. “φιλεω” Def. 5363. The New Strong’s Exhaustive Concordance. 1984. 75.

Relationships

Events recently have called into question the idea of what godly relationships are.  People have written books[1] on this subject and I am going to try and answer what these are in a blog post.  (This note was written after paragraph 4.) As I am writing this I just received a blog update and it was a video from Josh Harris about not “wasting your sexuality” I’ll post it at the end of this post.

To begin with I have three friends. One of them is a guy I go to school with, he’s not Christian, knows that girls are interested in him, and leads all of these girls on. Another guy is one that I used to work with. He’s a Christians, knows girls are interested in him, leads them on and says that he’s “just friends” with these girls. The third guy is a guy I go to church with, one would be totally shocked if a girl was interested in him further than a friendship. Not because of his looks, personality, or mental capabilities because he is courteous to women and treats them like queens, but when it comes to dating they say they would “rather be friends”. As I was thinking about these guys, the first thing that entered my head was, “Wow I have a diverse group of friends!” The second thing I thought was, why is it that the guys that treat women worse, get the girl in the end and the guy that treats women best don’t.

I am reminded of I Corinthians 13 when it comes to relationships. Of course we all know that I Corinthians 13 is the “Love” Chapter in the Bible (Song of Songs being the “Love Book”). The verses that I am specifically speaking of are 4-7 and 11.

To begin with, I have to remind friend 3 that no matter how many women reject him that only makes it sweeter when one says yes. He gets down, especially after asking a girl out and being rejected, he often thinks it’s because of some physical, mental, or personality flaw and I remind him that it is none of those things and that if he thinks about it he’s not ready for a relationship. Most of the time he agrees with me, but I definitely see his side of things. There are very few men that I know that almost deserves a girlfriend and yet, he doesn’t have one because God just hasn’t opened the door. The first thing I Corinthians 4:13 says love is, is “love is patient”. Patience is the first thing that applies to love. Am I saying that it is the main absolutely number on thing that Paul was trying to get across when talking about love? No, but I do think Paul put it there first for a reason. Love shouldn’t be the first woman we see and ask her out. Or the first guy that pays us a little attention. Love waits. Love is Patient. To ask the question why in this instance would be selfish on this instance because it would be selfish. It would be the type of why that would be both demanding and stating that we know better than the almighty God. Instead we will continue to pray for him and ask God to give him peace.

The next instances are my first and second friends. One is a Christian one is not and yet they treat women the same way. For me this doesn’t make any sense. As a Christian we are held to higher standards. Not only are we held to higher standards, but the world looks to us as if to put us on a pedestal and when we do good things they don’t do or say anything, but when we act like the rest of the world they question why they should become a Christian because the Christian they know acts just like them. In the instance of these two friends, both “players” one is a Christian the other isn’t, where is the line crossed. What is the difference? Is there a difference? Should there be a difference? For myself, I would have to say that there should be a difference.

My second friend would say that he and the girl are just friends, but they are too friendly to be just friends. No, he’s not sleeping with her, but they might as well be boyfriend/girlfriend. They aren’t because he is this way with more than just this one girl. He has many friendly girls and he says it’s OK to have girls as better friends than guys. This doesn’t make sense to me. Not until one is married anyway. The way I’ve always thought of things is that there are two types of people that are better friends to girls; other girls and gay men. As much as I do not agree with the second it is definitely true. Either this guy is gay or a player. Both are not looked at as scripturally good. Going back to I Corinthians 13, verse 4 says that love is kind. Is it kind to lead these girls on? Is it kind to play games saying they are close friends? Is it healthy to have them as close friends?

I am asking myself these questions as much as I am the reader. I am trying to figure this out as much as whoever reads this.

Another relationship I would like to mention is the relationships of Jesus. Recently, people have asked me why Jesus didn’t get married. The only answer I can think of is not because he didn’t want to, but because He is engaged. He will one day be married to those of us that are the church. For Jesus to be married here on earth would have done two things. One, it would have singled out one woman above all other women to be His wife. She would have been the wife of God himself and would then have to be perfectly holy, something which no one here on earth is. Second, if He had been married he would have been married to two different people. The first would have been his wife here on earth and the second the church. This would be polygamy and is something that God considers a sin. Because Jesus is perfect he cannot sin, therefore, he could not have been married.

I hope this post has made some sense.  BTW Here is the video I mention earlier:

 

---

[1] “I Kissed Dating Goodbye” by Josh Harris, “When God Writes Your Love Story” by Eric Ludy, “Boy Meets Girl” by Josh Harris only to name a few.

Love

 

This semester I have a British Literature class in which we learn about how British Literature influenced the coming of the English language and other impacts it made.  We have some essays due this semester and I thought it would be good to post them and see what others thought about them.  This essay is on George Herbert’s “Love.” 

Love

The Koine Greek language has three words for our one word love.  One is φιλεο (phileo) which is our “brotherly love” type of love.  This type of love is an “I’ll scratch your back, you scratch mine” type of love.  A second type of love is ερος (eros) which is more of a sexual type of love, but means more or less “I will take whatever I want and you will give to me without questions.” And a third type of love is αγαπη (agape) which is equivalent to our unconditional love.  This is the most perfect form of love because it says “Here you are. No questions asked.”  But after hearing what “love” is, how can this be explained in the poem “Love” by George Herbert?   

Love is explained as a verb.  A verb is what shows the action in a sentence.  This is a concept that people learn in the second grade when they are taught what a sentence is; and yet when Herbert opened this poem with “Love bade me welcome” Love is not expressed as a verb.  On the contrary, Love is used as a noun.  Nouns are, of course, a person, place, thing or idea.  Yes, it could be argued that love is an idea, but Herbert wasn’t portraying love as an idea when he wrote this poem. If one reads it as an idea the poem doesn’t make much sense.  According to dictionary.com an idea is “any conception existing in the mind as a result of mental understanding, awareness, or activity.” (idea)  In this context do ideas speak out loud? Absolutely not.  An idea only exists in one’s mind.  Therefore we can rule out an “idea” as being an explanation for what Love is in this poem.   

Since we have ruled out that “Love” is not an idea, the only possible explanation is that Love is a person.  This makes perfect sense because if one substituted his name for the name Love in the poem, the poem would still make sense.  For example, one could say, “Stephen bade me welcome” or “‘You must sit down,’ says Stephen”  and as stated before the poem would still make sense.  Now that we have answered what Love is the next question would be who is Love?  We know from the book that Herbert was an ordained minister and because of this his poems were heavily influenced by his relationship with Christ.  The only explanation for who Love is, is that Love is God.  In I John 4:8b the Bible says “… God is love.” (Blue)  There is no other explanation for what and who is Love in this poem by George Herbert. 

This brings us a third question, according to the Bible God has three persons:  God the Father, God the Son, and God the Holy Spirit, so which of these entities are the One displayed in this poem?  It could be argued that God the Son is the person being displayed in this poem, and while, on the surface that argument is plausible it is not the best excuse for this poem.  Of course, this leaves me with two other choices and neither of them makes any more sense than the first.  So, who is it?  I see that it is all three.  The first paragraph portrays God the Father.  He is the one who asks “What d’ye lack?” and when you respond he gives you what you lack.  The second paragraph is portraying God the Holy Spirit because it is only through Him that we can “look on thee (God).”  And the last paragraph portrays Jesus because it is His “meat” that we eat and remember when taking communion.  

To conclude, George Herbert wrote this poem to show what Love truly is.  He shows that God is Love and that His love is manifested in the three persons of God.  God is the αγαπη (agape) form of love as explained in the introduction.  He gives us what we lack, He gives us a relationship with God and ultimately He gave His life.     

 

Sources

“idea.” Dictionary.com Unabridged (v 1.1). Random House, Inc. 09 Nov. 2008. <Dictionary.com <http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/idea>.

 Blue Letter Bible. “1 John 4 – English Standard Version.” Blue Letter Bible. 1996-2008. 9 Nov 2008. < http://www.blueletterbible.org/Bible.cfm?b=1Jo&c=4&t=ESV >

Blue Like Jazz

I’ve been reading Blue Like Jazz for the past week and it is a completely fascinating book.  Donald Miller has written a memoir of his life, up to the point when the book was published, and his “Non-Religious Thoughts on Christian Spirituality” make sense.  It is the first book I could sit down and read two chapters from different ends of the book and not miss a beat.  He makes quite a few great points in the book and the exerpt I’m going to type I’ve been told, but it never made sense until I read it in BLJ.  To set up the scene Don and his friend Paul are talking about marriage.

“So marriage isn’t all it’s cracked up to be?”  Don asked

“No, it is so much more than I ever thought it would be.  One of the ways God shows me He loves me is through Danielle, and one of the ways God shows Danielle He loves her is through me.  And because she loves me, and teaches me I am lovable, I can better interact with God.”

“What do you mean?”

“I mean to be in a relationship with God is to be loved purely and furiously.  And a person who thinks himself unlovable cannot be in a relationship with God because he cannot accept who God is; a Being that is love.  We learn that we are lovable or unlovable from other people,” Paul says.  That is why God tells us so many times to love each other.”

Are we showing the love of Jesus Christ to each other to prove that they are lovable and therefore God loves them or do we blow them off and show God is not capable of loving them?  God does love them, but are you showing it?

Don’t Waste Your Life

This is my first post and I am going to be starting off this blog with one of my favorite books.  This book, as you can tell by the title of the post, is “Don’t Waste Your Life” by John Piper.  In this chapter Piper is explaining why we, as human beings, were created.  So, without further adue… Here is the quote.

THE CRYSTAL-CLEAR REASON FOR LIVING

What does it mean to glorify God? It may get a dangerous twist if we are not careful. Glorify is like the word beautify. But beautify usually means “make something more beautiful than it is,” improve its beauty. That is emphatically not what we mean by glorify in relation to God. God cannot be made more glorious or more beautiful than he is. He cannot be improved, “nor is he served by human hands, as though he needed anything” (Acts 17:25). Glorify does not mean add more glory to God.

It is more like the word magnify. But here too we can go wrong. Magnify has two distinct meanings. In relation to God, one is worship and one is wickedness. You can magnify like a telescope or like a microscope. When you magnify like a microscope, you make something tiny look bigger than it is. A dust mite can look like a monster. Pretending to magnify God like that is wickedness. But when you magnify like a telescope, you make something unimaginably great look like what it really is. With the Hubble Space Telescope, pinprick galaxies in the sky are revealed for the billion-star giants that they are. Magnifying God like that is worship.

We waste our lives when we do not pray and think and dream and plan and work toward magnifying God in all spheres of life. God created us for this: to live our lives in a way that makes him look more like the greatness and the beauty and the infinite worth that he really is. In the night sky of this world God appears to most people, if at all, like a pinprick of light in a heaven of darkness. But he created us and called us to make him look like what he really is. This is what it means to be created in the image of God. We are meant to image forth in the world what he is really like.

DOES BEING LOVED MEAN BEING MADE MUCH OF?

For many people, this is not obviously an act of love. They do not feel loved when they are told that God created them for his glory. They feel used. This is understandable given the way love has been almost completely distorted in our world. For most people, to be loved is to be made much of. Almost everything in our Western culture serves this distortion of love. We are taught in a thousand ways that love means increasing someone’s self-esteem. Love is helping someone feel good about themselves. Love is giving someone a mirror and helping him like what he sees.

This is not what the Bible means by the love of God. Love is doing what is best for someone. But making self the object of our highest affections is not best for us. It is, in fact, a lethal distraction. We were made to see and savor God—and savoring him, to be supremely satisfied, and thus spread in all the world the worth of his presence. Not to show people the all-satisfying God is not to love them. To make them feel good about themselves when they were made to feel good about seeing God is like taking someone to the Alps and locking them in a room full of mirrors.

The Bible is crystal-clear: God created us for his glory. Thus says the Lord, “Bring my sons from afar and my daughters from the end of the earth, everyone who is called by my name, whom I created for my glory” (Isaiah 43:6-7). Life is wasted when we do not live for the glory of God. And I mean all of life. It is all for his glory. That is why the Bible gets down into the details of eating and drinking. “Whether you eat or drink, or whatever you do, do all to the glory of God” (1 Corinthians 10:31). We waste our lives when we do not weave God into our eating and drinking and every other part by enjoying and displaying him.

You can find this book and many more by John Piper here.  Just a few questions to think about.  Are we doing everything we can to bring glory and honor to God, to the point that we gorify Him with everything we eat and drink? Or, as Piper puts it, are we going to the Grand Canyon and looking in a mirror?