Love Will Keep Us Alive

One of the styles of group Bible study I learned when I was in college, especially when dealing with stories, is to roleplay. Everyone would read a particular story together, and the facilitator would ask the question: “If you were in the story, who among the characters would you be?” This approach is both interesting and fruitful, because members will realize the perspective of the different characters of the story. By putting one’s self in someone else’s shoes, we begin to understand what people think, feel, and do. We will try to do this in the parable of the Good Samaritan (Luke 10:30-35).

“A man was going down from Jerusalem to Jericho, and he fell among robbers, who stripped him and beat him and departed, leaving him half dead. Now by chance a priest was going down that road, and when he saw him he passed by on the other side. So likewise a Levite, when he came to the place and saw him, passed by on the other side. But a Samaritan, as he journeyed, came to where he was, and when he saw him, he had compassion. He went to him and bound up his wounds, pouring on oil and wine. Then he set him on his own animal and brought him to an inn and took care of him. And the next day he took out two denarii and gave them to the innkeeper, saying, ‘Take care of him, and whatever more you spend, I will repay you when I come back’.”

From this parable, let us deal with three sets of characters with three different reflections on love and keeping alive.

The Robbers, Levite and Priest:

Love of Ourselves Keeps Us Alive

The first set of characters includes the robbers who beat the man and left him half-dead on the road, along with the priest and the Levite who passed by the other side when they saw the needy man. These three characters in the parable model the first paradigm of love and life: “my love of myself keeps me alive.” The robbers did what they did maybe because they were also destitute. Maybe they were doing what they were doing because society does not give them opportunities to work honest livelihood. Maybe they were the uneducated and the skill-less, who can only scavenge for food by taking them from others. As human beings, they needed to eat. They may have had spouses and children waiting at home for them to bring back food. It was because they love themselves and their loved ones that they were willing to do whatever it takes to keep themselves alive.

Both the priest and the Levite did not help the man because they also wanted to protect their own lives. In particular, they were afraid of violating the law of God stipulated in Numbers 19:11-13, “Whoever touches the dead body of any person shall be unclean seven days…  Whoever touches a dead person, the body of anyone who has died, and does not cleanse himself, defiles the tabernacle of the Lord, and that person shall be cut off from Israel; because the water for impurity was not thrown on him, he shall be unclean. His uncleanness is still on him.” This command is especially scary for those who serve in the Temple, like the priest and the Levite. Essentially, if they touched the man on the road—which may already have died—they would be cut off from the temple and their responsibilities as holy men for a week. In a sense, not touching someone who is bleeding and not moving on the road is the wisest and the most logical thing to do! They love themselves and their ministries at the temple, so they wanted to keep themselves clean. The robbers pursued their love interests, while the Levite and priest protected their love interests.

Loving ourselves is not essentially evil. We need an appropriate self-love and self-concern. We need to take care of ourselves, eat, shower, and sleep. Bernard of Clairvaux (1090-1152) stated that the highest and fourth degree of love is love of self for the sake of God. What is wrong is love of self for the sake of self. When we love ourselves because we want to honor God with our lives and continued service, then love of self is godly. What is wrong is love of ourselves at the expense of the lives of others. Love of ourselves becomes wrong if for the sake of keeping ourselves alive, we take advantage of and hurt others, and if for the sake of keeping ourselves alive, we willfully disregard the needs of others.

The Samaritan:

Our Love Keeps Others Alive

The second character is the Samaritan. He models the second category of the relationship between love and survival: our love keeps others alive. It was the Samaritan’s active and intentional reaching out to the half-dead man that saved the man. Without someone capable of loving, the man would have died.

The fact is this: there is always someone relying on our love for their continued existence: the parent who sacrifices his or her career in order to take care of their children; the parent who works double shifts or two employments just to support his or her children’s education or special needs; the parent patiently enduring back pain in order to care for the kids, and whose rewards are none other than sweet smiles; the family bread winner who works hard in order to bring food to the table; the son who continues to support and care for his weakening parents; or the daughter who puts off romantic relations to support her family.

What enables people to do these things? The answer is simple: love.

Love was why Schindler saved the Jews, why Mother Theresa helped the poor, why Bruce Willis chose to remain and detonate the nuclear warhead on the asteroid, and why Jack saved his beloved Rose from sinking. Whether we like it or not, and realize it or not, the lives of others are dependent on our ability to love and extend love to them. In I Wanna Know What Love Is, we discussed the fact that the world is full of unloved people; here, we must realize that the world is full of dying people. It is our capability to love that will enable them to live. It is when we are compassionate and merciful to others that we can help others to remain alive. The Dalai Lama once said, “Our prime purpose in this life is to help others. And if you can’t help them, at least don’t hurt them.”

The Half-Dead Man:

Others’ Love Keeps Us Alive

The final character in the parable is the half-dead man. He was a hopeless man, lying on the road, and was totally at the mercy of others. His survival depended entirely on the love that others might show him. He was a man with several counted breaths left, and only someone’s attention and help can prolong the function of his respiratory system. He was a man in deep need of pity and compassion. It was only someone capable of loving the unlovable who can save him from his coming demise. I can imagine that when he recovered from his near-death experience, his thoughts were simple: it was through the love of another that he was alive.

We are all recipients of love. One of the primary reasons we are alive right now is because we have been recipients of many people’s love, attention, and care. We are recipient of God’s love: “You clothed me with skin and flesh, and knit me together with bones and sinews. You have granted me life and steadfast love, and your care has preserved my spirit” (Job 10:11-12). God’s love keeps us alive, even when we deserve death. But more than just physical life, God grants us eternal life: “For God so loved the world, that he gave his only Son, that whoever believes in him should not perish but have eternal life. ¹⁷ For God did not send his Son into the world to condemn the world, but in order that the world might be saved through him” (John 3:16-17).

We are recipients of our parents’ love. We are alive today because our parents had sleepless nights when we were newborns. We are alive today because of their endurance and sacrifices. We are alive today because of their patience and understanding. We are alive today because they did not give up on us. We are alive today because they loved us so much. The parable of the prodigal son illustrates very well that even though children do hurtful things and break their parents’ hearts, they are still loved: “While he was still a long way off, his father saw him and felt compassion, and ran and embraced him and kissed him” (Luke 15:10).

           

We are recipients of others’ love. It is because of the love of others for us that we are alive. We are all recipients of somebody’s love, and we are alive today because of them. But we must also remember to love back. Our lives are dependent on others, but others’ lives are also dependent on us. In this world, we are not only meant to be loved; we are also meant to love. We are not mere recipients of love, we are also givers of love. There comes a point in our lives when we are just flickering lights, ready to be snuffed out at any moment, and it is at the mercy of others that we our fires are still burning today. But there are times when we see someone—a coal separated from the batch of burning coals—and what remains in him is but a tiny ray of light, just sufficient to catch anyone’s attention. This coal needs someone to stretch their hands to bring them back to the group to be rekindled to life.

Love will keep us alive, together, because we need each other. It is in loving and being loved back that we can both continue to live.


This is the third entry for the Love series. The first is The One that You Love, followed by I Wanna Know What Love Is.  

WHAT IF WE HAVE 'AN EMPTY FUTURE'?

First, an acknowledgment should be in order. My reflections in this essay are a response to Robert W. Jenson’s penetrating statement about modern culture’s attitude about the future in his book The Triune Identity (1982: p172). Because Jenson’s book is primarily on Trinitarian discourse, his analytic description of modern culture, however profound, is extremely laconic. This essay, therefore, seeks to expound Jenson’s argument.

Jenson critiques modern culture for espousing what he calls a “contentless eschatology.” In simpler terms, modern culture does not have a vision of the future. The world’s unbelieving population (which constitutes the vast and still growing majority) simply has an “empty future” (“future” in here primarily refers to the end times, or after death). There are two ways in which this can be explained. First, people do not have an intellectual grasp about their future. In a sense, this is true of all people, including Christians. Life after death is an unexplainable hope. Even the story of Jesus’ resurrection should be categorized as a “mystery.” There is a sense of and a need for a worshipful resignation of the human mind regarding life after death. It is simply a phenomenon that transcends human logic and technology.

Secondly, people have religious (or irreligious) unbelief about the future. Or more precisely, people do not believe or do not want to believe about life after death. In this sense, having no vision of the future is both an existential and a religious state. It is in this sense that an “empty future” or “contentless eschatology” applies only to the modern secular world. And it is this emptiness that I want to address.

What is the prevailing mindset about life after death? With the abandonment of religious belief prevalent in modern society is the concomitant disbelief in anything religious or supernatural. If religion teaches life after death, then the irreligious or non-religious does not believe in life after death, and so on. (It should be mentioned, however, that members of the Jehovah’s Witnesses believe in the annihilation of the soul of the wicked.) So in place of the belief in life after death is the belief in nothingness after death. In death happens the absolute termination of consciousness, joy, suffering, love, hate, and everything life-related. The present life on earth is all there is. After here awaits nothing but black nothingness. (It is interesting to note that in the science of neurology, scientists are taking interest in the human consciousness. But even within the field, there is still not a unified consensus about the state of human consciousness after death. Sure there are several theories, both for and against the idea of consciousness after death, but it seems that even the theories proposing the idea of consciousness after death has long ways to go, because some of them are intricately related to other unverified theories, such as the idea of the multiverse.)

The question is: “What does belief in future nothingness do to a person?” People might respond to this question differently, but apart from the loss of the sense of accountability to one’s own well-being, the greatest damage this view does is the loss of hope. Even from a sociological perspective, it is the people who have no sense of hope for their future that are the ones with high self-destruction tendencies. It is those who are born in poverty who have the tendency to be uninterested in education. It is those who are uneducated who have the tendency to take drug addiction and alcoholism as their life-long careers. Having a vision of an empty future is absolutely damaging to one’s morale. Of course, suicide is also the best option, because it is through dying that all sufferings meet their ultimate end. How many movies have we already watched portraying a deluded villain who wants to end the world because the world is getting worse? The logic is: “Why prolong agony, when non-agony is just a death away?”

If nihilism, or the belief in nothingness after death, is coupled with both narcissism and hedonism, tragic consequences follow. Narcissism and hedonism are philosophies that promote a self-gratifying and pleasure-seeking lifestyle. Horace’s dictum (interpreted through Ovid) “seize the day,” represents the best life motto. On the plus side, this aphorism teaches us that time is irredeemable, that each fleeing moment needs to cherished as unique unrepeatable events, and that we should make the most of the 86,400 seconds per day given to us. But the complete phrase is this: carpe diem, quam minimum credula postero (in Odes Book I). In English, it translates: “Seize the day, putting as little trust as possible in the future.” Imagine someone who has no vision of life after death making this as his/her life motto. The concomitant conclusion will logically be that “If the only life we have is this life, then it should be thoroughly enjoyed.” And so again, the person without hope of a better future will attempt to enjoy this life by all means possible. The poor, having no means to support a pleasurable lifestyle, will have to resort to stealing and taking advantage of others. The rich, having the means to support a pleasurable lifestyle, will continue in his/her hedonistic journey without regard of his/her health.

The Christian has a radically different view from the unbeliever. If for the unbeliever, it is nothingness that is eschatologically promised, for the Christian, in the words of Jenson, “it is love that is eschatologically promised” (p173). In short, the content of the Christian’s vision of the future is nothing else but LOVE. If the Triune God in his essential nature is Love; if “God so loved the world that he gave his only Son” (John 3:16); if God demonstrated his love by his Son dying for us (Rom 5:8); if the Holy Spirit is the nexus amoris or the vinculum caritatis (“bond of love”) between the Father and the Son and between God the world; and if the same Son, whose Love is everlasting, is he who judges the world, then our future consists of Love, of gracious Love. Our future is not a dark nothingness or a fiery ocean of eternal torment, but of eternal and loving communion with the Life and Love of God.

This vision of the future as Love offered by the Gospel of Jesus Christ is a better alternative to a vision of the future as nothingness offered by the gospel of modern naturalistic philosophy. Compared to understanding life after death as utter annihilation, a vision of a future filled with joy and fellowship is more comforting for the oppressed and suffering of today.  Ultimately, it is Life, not Death that is the best solution to pain and suffering.

It is for this reason that Christianity has much to offer to the modern world. We have a hope that is steadfast and sure. We have a future of Love to offer to a self-loathing and others-hating world. We have a beautiful vision to offer to an ugly-faced worldview. We have a Life secured in Christ to offer to our suicidal neighbours.

DOES LOVE WIN?

I could no longer ignore the ongoing debates surrounding the concept of universalism in my cyber life, so I hope to join the DIALOGUE (not the damaging skirmish among people with poisonous pens/keyboards). This is admittedly an initial, pre-emptive response, waiting for fuller development until Rob Bell’s book “Love Wins” makes it to my library. My only intention, for now, is to show how “Love Wins” can lead to universalism, in the general context of the relationship between love and salvation. I offer three models of understanding how Love is supposedly to win.

Firstly, there is a non-coercive Love leading to salvation. The liberal theologian Hastings Rashdall promoted this view, calling it Moral Influence Theory. Rashdall quotes Peter Abailard’s commentary on the epistle to Romans:

“Now it seems to us that we have been justified by the blood of Christ and reconciled to God in this way: through this unique act of grace manifested to us—in that his Son has taken upon himself our nature and persevered therein in teaching us by word and example even unto death—he has more fully bound us to himself by love; with the result that our hearts should be enkindled by such a gift of divine grace, and true charity should not now shrink from enduring anything for him.”

Basically, the argument is this: By dying on the cross, the amazing depth and width of Christ’s love is manifested, “with the result that our hearts should be enkindled,” leading for us to finally say “Yes!” to God. The rhetoric is this: “Who would not be moved by such a display of selfless love?!” Of course everyone knows that this model of “non-coercive, but powerfully persuasive love” winning the hearts of everyone is highly idealistic. The painful reality is that the world seems to be rejecting this wonderful display of affection, rather than being moved to following Christ. In short, this seems to be a failed model for love to win in the end. I hope this is not the model that Bell is promoting.

The second model is more of a coersive love triumphing over everything and everyone, but it could have two forms. The first variant of “Love wins” is strictly tied to the concept of God’s sovereign power, or of God’s Omnipotence. This means that in the end, it is the Will of God to save everyone that will be realized, with or without the consent of contingent human freedom. Because God is All-Powerful, his Love will triumph over all. Hmmmm… Need I explain the fallacy of this model?

The second variant is grounded in the nature of God as Love. This means that if God’s nature is Love, then to allow hell to exist or to allow people to eternally suffer is contrary to God’s nature; hence, God will ultimately be true to his nature as Love and redeem everyone. This model is a bit more difficult to refute, and I suspect that Bell’s main arguments are grounded in this model. But the weakness of this line of thought is that it compromises the freedom of God, and impiously imprisons God using God’s own nature as the limiting cage. What it misses is that God’s Love and Freedom are tied together, that is, that God’s Freedom is his Freedom to Love. Furthermore, this model seems to postulate an eternal higher moral principle called “Love” that God has no choice but to obey. Again, this model is self-contradictory.

(There could be other foundations for universalism, such as universal election, single predestination, Christocentricism, etc., but I only sought to discuss Bell’s two words: “Love Wins”. As I hinted, the two models above are self-collapsing. But if I discuss universalism in terms of the vicarious Person and Work of Christ, my responses would be radically different.)

IMMANUEL, "GOD WITH US"

The message of Christmas is extremely simple, and is encapsulated in the very name that was prophesied by the prophet Isaiah: Immanuel, “God with us” (Isa 7:14; Matt 1:23). The Name Immanuel has profound pedagogical implications, in that it summarizes the whole scope of theology in one simple Name. If theology is theo-logy—“the inquiry into the being, nature and work of God” simply put—with God as the primary Subject and Object, then theology cannot be summarized in a propositional sentence filled with abstract and complicated speculations, but is sufficiently articulated in this One Name: Immanuel. This Name drives home the fact that God’s Being and Nature is not abstract, or that the term “God” is not essentially ambiguous. Rather, the Name stresses that God’s Being is inherently relational, i.e. that God is a Person-in-relation or a Person-for-others. “God” can no longer be conceived as a metaphysical being, residing in isolation and aloofness in a dimension somewhere, as in the god of the philosophers, but should be seen as a relating God, a God who is dynamic and active.

Thus, Christmas is primarily about persons-in-relation. On the one hand, it is about God, the ultimate Person, becoming human and taking upon himself the very nature and limitations of finitude in order to relate with creation in the manner that creation is accustomed, i.e. physical interaction. On the other hand, it is about persons, us, humanity, whose very being and essence is personal. Our existence, because of the depersonalizing effects of sin, is completely fragmented, and its restoration depends upon the perfect human—the second Adam, as the Apostle referred to Jesus Christ. Concerning the relationship between these two persons—God as personalizing Person and humanity as personalized persons—Christmas shouts an important message: that whereas human logic dictates that “birds of the same feather flock together,” in the God-humanity relation, such is not true. God’s free and gracious self-relating presence abolishes human categories of worthiness and of moral status. Immanuel, “God with us” is not God-only-for-the-worthy, or those who, in one way or another, achieved or accomplished something that would make them qualified receivers of God’s presence. God in Christ came to the unredeemed world. To paraphrase the apostle Paul’s message: “while we were still sinners” (Rom 5:8) or “while we were God’s enemies” (Rom 5:10), He came in order to be with us and for us. Christmas, then, is a time of hope and joy, for it is the coming of God for everyone. No wonder the proclamation of the angels on Christmas day was “Glory to God in the highest, and on earth peace to men on whom his favour rests” (Luke 2:14).

In relation to the above, Christmas, therefore, is a miracle. It is not just one ordinary event that can just be placed alongside the many events that take place in history. It can be granted that like all other historical phenomena, the Christmas event happens within specific space and time coordinates, and as such is nothing special. We can say, on the other hand, that the characters in the event endow the Christmas event a special status. We categorize an event a “miracle” if it involves the supernatural, so that the specific involvement of the divine in the Christmas event makes the coming of the Immanuel a miracle. But Christmas is not a miracle primarily because of the divine involvement.

If a “miracle” is an occurrence of something extraordinary or extra-mundane, then the Christmas event is the best miracle involving God and humanity since creation itself. Its significance outweighs even that of the Exodus of the Hebrews from Egypt. Its significance can only be compared to the event of creation. If we interpret creation as the act of God in creating beings-other-than-himself for the sake of relationship, then Christmas is the re-creation of relationship between God and created reality. But this astonishing realization is not the miracle that I am speaking of. Could it be that the miracle lies in the meeting between the divine and the creaturely, or between Infinitude and finitude? Yes, but there is something else. Quite simply, Christmas is an event where the miracles of love, reconciliation, friendship, compassion, and forgiveness take place. It is God himself reaching out to humanity, making the compassionate and loving initiative to rescue humanity from its self-created and self-inflicted entropy. Christmas is Immanuel, God alongside us in our suffering—God as human in Christ experiencing the very experiences of fallen and suffering humanity—God condescending and emptying himself of his glory in order to be “God with us.” And God does this for us who are sinners, idolaters and enemies of God. This is the miracle—the unfathomable and logically impossible event—that God himself should become human, touching and becoming the very creature that He seeks to redeem, and experiencing human life with us while being one of us in the most literal sense.

Christmas, then, is a message of hope, comfort and love for everyone. It is the gospel, the good news, summarized in the Name Immanuel, “God with us!”