UP CLOSE AND PERSONAL
(A continuation of the articles in series The Emotional Mind)
Most people say that they believe in God. Most people pray to God when their lives start coming apart. Most people invoke God when they get married or when they are near death. Most people find some room in their lives for God when circumstances permit it. Unfortunately, most people have no idea that God just doesn’t relate this way.
Just consider the logic of this situation. You say that God exists, or at least you believe that God exists. That’s interesting. I recall that Jesus made a comment about this level of belief. He said something like this: Even the demons acknowledge that God exists, and they are afraid. But you say you believe and don’t even understand what it means. The logic of saying that you believe God exists should propel you on the most important journey of your life. If God exists, then what could possibly be more important than to know what He expects from you? If He is God, He has some thoughts about you. How can you imagine that you can live as though it doesn’t matter?
The Bible never makes any attempt to prove God exists. There is a reason for this. The Bible does not care about arguing for the existence of God. It merely assumes God’s existence. From the first sentence to the last, the Bible places all of its history, teachings, poetry, dialogues and letters within the framework of a living, dynamic, intimate connection with God. God’s involvement with human beings is like the canvas that supports all the paint in the picture. God’s sovereign rule is like the mortar between all the bricks. Nothing in the Bible makes sense without this. The real test of our willingness to see what God has to say is not to follow arguments about His existence. The real test of our willingness to understand is to put ourselves within the framework of the Bible’s point of view about the world and see how it fits.
Before you go crazy with all sorts of objections, let me explain. In order to understand what the Bible is all about, you have to get a much bigger picture than critical reviews of its component parts. Think of it like this. If you want to understand the Impressionists period of painters, you can’t just look at the canvases of Monet. You have to look at Cézanne, Degas, van Gogh and many others. But to really understand why the Impressionists did what they did, you will also need to understand the trends in painting before they came on to the scene. You will need to know what they reacted against. You will need to dig into their thinking to see how they used light, shadow, color and shape. No single piece will give you the whole picture. You’ll have to get up close and personal with these great artists before you can say, “Now I understand the Impressionists”. If you want to be a great artistic critic, you need to do a lot of serious work. However, you don’t have to do any of this to appreciate the beauty of these paintings. All you have to do is look. And the more you look, the better they get.
That’s sort of the same approach you are invited to take with the Bible. If you really want to understand what is happening in this text, you need to dig into the background, the words, the stories, the poems. You need to look for the themes and the nuances. You need to remember that there is a big picture being played out in little dramas. You have to put yourself into the mind frame of those people who were experiencing God in their midst before you will see how it all fits together. If you want to be a serious Biblical critic, you will have to do a lot of real work. But, just like the Impressionists painting, you can take a different approach. You can just look. You can feel your way into the Bible.
I believe that for most of us this is the appropriate method. The Bible is a great love story. It is a story about God’s undying, unrelenting passion for us. God is the Great Hunter, seeking relationship with us over and over again. This is a story of incredible beauty. It is filled with joy and sorrow, excitement and boredom, rejoicing and pain. It is about real people who lived lives just like ours. They had their good moments and their bad ones. They were victorious and defeated, saints and sinners, humble and humiliated. The stories of their lives, and of God’s interaction in their lives, are as beautiful and deep as any Impressionist masterpiece. But we will never see them for what they are if we don’t look.
Once I visited the Louvre in Paris. Some of the greatest art treasures in the world are housed in this museum. I passed from hall to hall, observing magnificent canvases hanging on the walls. Exquisite sculptures adorned the foyers and walkways. But I was in a hurry to see it all, so I moved from room to room, observing. I saw many things, but I never looked. These fabulous creations simply passed in front of my gaze. I did not look into them to see what they were trying to tell me.
Years later I visited another museum. As I walked through the gallery, I came across a man who was sitting in front of one of the paintings of Rembrandt. I moved from one canvas to another, but I noticed that he did not move at all. He sat still, his eyes traveling across the picture. He saw the play of light and shadow. He followed the turn of a hand, the direction of a gaze in the face painted there. He stared into the background, finding details hidden in the half-light. While I observed many paintings, he looked into this one, and discovered its true beauty. He felt the scene before him, the emotions of the figures, the interaction portrayed in oil. He entered into that canvas and let it touch his life. I just passed by.
One more example will help you appreciate what I am trying to convey. My wife is a one hundred percent Sicilian culinary expert. Her meals and recipes are fabulous. People who visit us rave about her cooking. Other wives want to know what ingredients she uses, how she prepares the food, what cooking secrets her employs. They are seeking to understand how these marvelous meals are put together. They want all the details. But I don’t have to take cooking lessons to know something good is on the plate. All I have to do is taste. I can appreciate the results by savoring each bite. I don’t have to be a chef to know that these meals are wonderful. All I have to do is eat. Once I commit myself to eating the meal, I am rewarded with the pleasures of all her efforts. If I want to know how it’s done, I can watch her do it. I will begin to understand the complexities and skills she has. But I need to taste in order to know that something wonderful is happening. If I just watch the preparation, if the read the cookbook, even if I cut up the garlic, I will never know what it is all about until I open my mouth and take a bite.
More often than not, our approach to the Bible is like my visit to the museum or my observation of my wife’s cooking. Until I let these verses reach into my life, until I feel them connect with me, until I look into them or take a bite from them, they will have no more affect on me than all those pieces of colored canvas hanging on the walls or the pasta in the jar. In order to see what God has in mind for me, I have to open my eyes and look into His message to me. I have to take a bite and see how it tastes. Just passing by, just watching from the sidelines will never let me feel God’s interaction with me.
Oh, I know. You object because you have tried to read the Bible and you just don’t get it. It isn’t alive. It’s just all these old words that just don’t seem to make sense. List of names you can’t pronounce. Places you can relate to. Speeches that don’t connect with your world. And all that nonsense about rules and miracles and stuff. Who needs it?
Let me help you. Sit down. Look at this picture with me. Enjoy a meal from God’s table. Let God get up close and personal. See if He doesn’t connect with you. Just try it, openly, seriously. Savor the delight of letting God speak to you or show you a painting of His plan for you.
Let me guide you through just one meal. We will look at only part of one verse, a verse that most of us have heard many times, especially at weddings. The verse is “Love is patient”. This verse is from Paul’s letters to the church at Corinth.
Love is patient. Just the sound of that feels good. It’s like seeing a great looking desert sitting on the kitchen counter waiting to be served. When I think about the people in my life that I love, I want them to be patient. I know that I am often not as good as I should be. I don’t always treat them like I really want to. I need them to be patient with me. And I want to be patient with them. After all, if I love someone, I want to give him or her the benefit of the doubt. Love is about making the other person feel good too. What would love be like if it wasn’t patient? I know what snap judgments are like. I know what it is like to be impatient. I know how uncomfortable it feels to me when someone is short tempered with me. I know how much I regret being short tempered with someone I love. So, it makes sense for Paul to say that love is patient. Love should be patient.
All of this is true, but it’s like seeing the desert on the counter. We haven’t really experienced the wonder of this desert until we take a bite. So, let’s dig in. Take a big bite with me and let’s see what else Paul is saying. Get ready to put yourself into his framework. God exists. God has a lot to say about love. And the first thing that God says is that love is patient. Now, let’s see just what that tastes like.
The Greek word for “patient” is makrothumia. It comes from two older words, makros meaning “long” (i.e. temporal duration) and thumos meaning “passion”. Love has a passion that lasts. That seems very nice, the sort of thing we like to hear at a wedding. But if we think that this phrase of Paul’s is only about marriage, we would be greatly mistaken. Maybe we will find something interesting if we relate this concept to virtue. After all, patience is a virtue that few of us have difficulty understanding. Most often we know patience through our actions of impatience, saying to ourselves, “I should have been more patient.” We generally see patience as something that we do, by obligation or commitment. To be patient is to take active steps that overcome our natural response of self-protection, defense or revenge.
But the particular word chosen by Paul is not quite so transparent. In the Bible, the crucial emphasis of the Greek usage is the notion that makrothumia is a gift of God. It is the gift of the postponement of judgment, always with a view toward repentance. In the New Testament, this notion of God’s gift of forbearance is expanded as an indication of His generosity of grace. But here the idea is that such a gift always hopes for a corresponding answer. Whenever there is a free offering of pardoning love there is also the hope of repentance. This kind of patience is not swayed by emotion but is rather a deliberate choice in response to God’s generous offer of pardon. Forbearance or patience becomes a necessary quality of service to God. Its exercise leaves all of the results in God’s hands, expressing the confidence that God will act as the divine judge. It does not demand repentance as a condition of performance but rather shows the gift of graceful forbearance as a worshipful response to the pardon given by God. It always allows a space for repentance. In this form, it is passive. Love is patient does not mean active perseverance. It does not mean that I exercise my mental and emotional muscles to attain some higher plane of ethical action. It means that I wait – that I accept what comes, I allow whatever befalls me. Of course, this can only be done because God is love and what befalls me is ultimately in His hands, under His control and within His power. Love is patient is another glorious way of saying that I am not in control, that my world is not up to me.
If makrothumia meant active perseverance, it would mean taking steps to meet the challenge, to prepare against the onslaught, like consulting with an attorney, creating emotional hideaways, protecting assets, running to outside support. In themselves, none of these actions would ever be considered wrong. But love will have none of it. Love is the expression of God’s character and that means living out His providential care of His children. Someone who loves lie this is a conscientious objector to the ways of the world. Love is waiting for God.
One of the most powerful implications of this description of love is its demonstration in God’s actions toward us. This word implies that love surrenders its own desires to the will of another. The best example is in the life of Jesus but it is also embodied in God’s surrender to us. Imagine that the God of all creation actually surrenders His will so that He allows us to exercise our will, to have our desires, even when they are not compatible with His or with what is best for us. God’s long suffering means that He Himself accepts what comes to Him because of our choices. He accepts our sinful behavior without taking steps to prevent it. He surrenders the authority of His desires to our desires. And then, Jesus surrenders who He is as God to become like us in order to rescue us from our lack of surrender, from our impatience, from our active resistance. Love suffers, accepts, surrenders long.
In an important sense, then, this kind of patience is not a virtue. It is certainly virtuous, but it is not something that can be actively achieved. It is not developmental work, planned steps or rewarded discipline. There are no self-help books for this kind of patience. An active approach would nullify the passive dimension of love’s long suffering. For love to be patient is for love to simply reflect God’s character. God’s patience is the archetype. We reflect that archetype when we, by choice, decide that His will be done, on earth as it inevitably is in heaven. This is not patience as a measure of self-control. It is surrender to God’s control. Love is patient. The verb here expresses a state of being, not of doing. If we love, patience is the result: a result that comes about only because we model the long-suffering passion in the character of God Himself.
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We have tasted only a single word. This desert was much more complex than we imagined. This single word linked us to all sorts of other concepts found within the framework of an active God intimately connected with our world. This single word brought us to face God’s sovereignty, God’s judgment, God’s surrender, the concept of free will and its consequences for us and for God, the concept of love as a gift and the obligation that such a gift places on me. Wow, there was a lot in that bite!
Imagine what it must be like to eat a whole meal!
