Jouissance
And He said to him, “You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your mind.” Matthew 22:37 NASB
You shall love– This is a commandment. It was stated first in the Torah (Deuteronomy 6:5). Yeshua only reiterates what every observant Jew already knew. The great commandment had been on the lips every morning for hundreds of years.
But why? Why should God command us to love Him? And can any person actually command such a thing. If you and I don’t make an internal, emotive and volitional decision to love, then we don’t love no matter what our outward compliance seems to be. Why does God think He can demand that we love Him? Isn’t that an oxymoron? To demand love?
Luzzatto made the point long before Zornberg. “Desire for pleasure is the force that moves human beings.”[1] If loving God doesn’t bring us pleasure, then we simply will not do it no matter what is demanded. So the real question seems to be: “How does loving God bring me pleasure—greater pleasure than loving myself?” Zornberg’s analysis is correct. Loving or not loving God is about direction, not virtue. “This is not a choice between good and evil in the moral sense. It is a turning aside, an aversion from one source of bliss and its substitution by another.”[2] Essentially, loving God seems to be a selfish act. Why? Because unless there is some fulfilled desire in the act, unless it does something for me, love cannot be commanded. I love because it is worthwhile and valuable to me. The fact that it may be valuable to the other is secondary. If the act of loving does not produce a fulfilled desire in me, then I simply won’t do it. And this is not immoral. It is human!
It may be that my choice to love God causes me to experience “the fellowship of his suffering,” but that does not mean I choose something against myself. It simply means that loving is a higher value, a greater pleasure, even if it involves suffering. When I act for the welfare of my child even if it means sacrificing my own desires, this loving choice simply means that I value my child and my relationship to my child more highly than I value myself. Pleasure is not simply indulgence and gratification. It is also delight, joy, gladness. There is a deeper delight and joy in saving my child than any personal indulgence can match. So I choose.
Can we say the same thing about loving God? Is there a deeper joy, gladness, delight in honoring and serving Him than there is in caring for our own desires, gratifying ourselves? The answer should be instantaneous. In a moment of crisis, you might be willing to sacrifice yourself for God’s purposes, but moments of crisis are not the best measure of loving God. “The test case of ‘fear of God’ is one where no outsider can detect one’s true intentions and therefore truth becomes a matter of God awareness.”[3] When I act in ways that are fully aware of God’s presence and honor Him in that awareness, I am loving Him. When I pretend He is not around, my choices betray Him. The key is training myself to be aware because:
“Sensual pleasures offer themselves as substitutes, filters, defenses against that bliss [i.e., jouissance, the primordial, infinite desire for absorption, bliss, joy and ecstasy]. This may be a necessary regression. But it nevertheless represents a loss: the true wine of existence, the love of God, has been replaced by sensual pleasure, the bread and meat of life. Love of God, or oneg with God, cannot be reduced to what usually passes for love.”[4]
Topical Index: jouissance, desire, love, Deuteronomy 6:5, Matthew 22:37
[1]Avivah Gottlieb Zornberg, Bewilderments: Reflections of the Book of Numbers, pp. 69-70.
[4]Avivah Gottlieb Zornberg, Bewilderments: Reflections of the Book of Numbers, p. 71.
There have been topics, titled rewiring your brain, author Caroline leaf neurosurgeon, I think she still on YouTube, from Australia, she has focused on spiritual principles from scientific realities. On how the brain works. When she first started she actually she showed imagery of alive and dead brain cells. And how the dead ones become alive again.
Staying on topic for today. It has been said that man was meant to walk with his creator. I like the fact of rewiring the brain. I’m saying the soul is very close to the brain, and that is why there’s much confusion between the two, but as for me let’s keep it simple the most direct path between any two points is a straight line doesn’t the word repent mean to turn around? We need to have a starting point to do that. Going back to the garden, is that place for me. Adam had his chance and blew it. But then the Lord came as a second Adam. So we could all start over again. And using the Lord as a guide. No matter how far back we go into scripture, it always shows the the Lord, walking with his people. Even if it was only one person. So no matter what the, difficulty, or circumstance, or place in history I go to. In history in the scriptures the possibility is always there to walk with him.
Miqreha… and it happened that these considerations have been in my thinking and on my heart for the past several days now…amazing grace; how sweet it is!
I think we lost much when we lost the understanding that all goodness came from divine ordering. In a kingdom, the king is responsible for granting goodness to his subjects. I imagine it was relatively easy for the subjects (when they had a good king that actually did that) to extrapolate from there that God, as our true king, operated similarly. This idea that my desires THEMSELVES are the ‘source’ of the goodness desired is the very basis of humanism. This is like saying the effect (goodness) is its own cause, or, source. I want: therefore it is. Or something like that. We left the king idea behind somewhere in there as what we look to for goodness and scribbled our name (desire) on the throne.
When dogs are trained for tasks they must be trusted to do (such as K9 work) they must be trained to accept food only from their master’s hand. They cannot be trusted or even protected from harm if they can be bribed or poisoned. I have thought often that we are like the dogs. Any perceived good that does not come directly from the hand of God is either going to entice us to follow another ‘source’ or it is going to destroy us; either by our own hand (costing us more life than we are gaining or other self destructive behaviors) or setting us up to be vulnerable to harm from elsewhere.
Love IS the goodness of God in us. I think when we are commanded to love, we can hear it through our humanist filter and conclude that we are to be the source – the generator – of our love for God. Not true. Love happens in between. How do we get that love channel open, then? Trust. Trust in God returns us to vulnerability to His desires (will) worked out (through our obedience to that will) in our lives. Love happens THROUGH us when we obey. I cannot conjure up (be a source of) warm fuzzies about God (love feelings), which is how I think a humanist could interpret that command, but I can make a decision to trust Him to tell me only good things to do, and then do them.
I have found (to my consternation) that I can read my Bible and the 10 Commands all day long but still not know how to apply them in any given minute. I need His Spirit telling me in my spirit HOW to obey. Trust opens up my ears to that Voice and my heart to the ability to discern which voice is true, but trust also opens up my hand to act. My actions are a result of what I am putting my trust in. May I accept (trust) goodness only from His hand today!
Amen…Well said.
I’m stuck on the loving others as an expression of my love for YHVH. Last night I was almost asleep when for some reason I woke up and found myself thinking about a family conflict that has been going on for about a year. I had decided in December to let it go, but recently one of the family members decided to point the finger at me about something else. This is three times this individual has shut down communication with me in that I have not been allowed to explain myself. And the assumptions they have made about my comments are wrong. I owe another individual an apology for losing my temper, but this person has lied about me and was very disrespectful to me. I apologized to this person for hurting their feelings in another exchange because that was all I did. They never acknowledged this apology. I find that I don’t want to make the apology even though it is owed. I am willing to acknowledge my part in a conflict, but it appears others are not. It is funny to me that drug addicts are said to live in denial, but I have found there are lots of people besides drug addicts that enjoy living in their denial. So how to love these people that I don’t feel particularly loving towards right now. I know forgiveness doesn’t mean condoning. But I know also that I am tired of pretending. I talk about my family a lot on here, but that seems to be where I am at. How would YHVH have me love these people? Today I don’t even want to be around them.
Sin in others requires us to sin to ‘justify’ their sin – in the name of love, no less. But we are not called to let sinners define or demand our love. I found that when I quit ‘letting’ them ‘make’ me love them by their terms I had many new choices as to how to love them. One of them is to quietly insist on their respect for me. I do that by respecting myself first and then asking others to do the same IF THEY WANT RELATIONSHIP with me. A lot of times, so many times, they decide I am no longer fun or essential when they don’t get to call the love terms. When I quit feeding their sin they were the ones to start avoiding me. We are called to be the head, not the tail. When we figure out how to love others correctly, we don’t have to run and hide: sin will run and hide from us. Or at least be ashamed.
That’s exactly what I am finding out, Laurita! Thanks for putting it all out there in the words for me. Itwas a real confirmation to me after an incident I had with one of my buddies this weekend. He’s always pushing the limits with me and I finally “laid down the law” so to speak! I was very kind about it but firm and clear. Really seem to bring a good response out of him because he values the relationship. How can others have respect for us if we don’t have respect for ourselves. So I appreciate your experience. I’m doing the same thing in regards to family. I’m no longer “driving the bus for everyone”. Maybe it’s a little bit like God, he offers but he doesn’t intrude and he lets us live with the outcome of our own decisions. He’s real good at boundaries according to Psalm 104 !
So enjoy reading your input. Keep it coming.
“ For it is God who works within us, both to will and to do of his good pleasure “. Also, we love him because he first loved us. Also, I am reminded that the fruit of the spirit is…love. My love for God grows out of the garden of his love for me. He originates everything. So much of our struggles are with ourselves. Even our attempts at loving him, however that looks to us We want to ‘be God’in a sense because of our yetzer ha ra. We love the credit that we think our love for God gives us. …..not of works, lest any man should boast or take credit. It seems inherent in our nature! We get frustrated with ourselves because we are trying in ourselves to be godly, loving, kind and affectionate and when we don’t display these virtues we get discouraged with ourselves, because our eyes are on ourselves. The branch can only bear fruit as they abide in the vine, for
without me, you can do nothing. Christ becomes to us, all of these virtues. They are not separate from him, they are him! So I go back to the original verse I quoted at the start… for it is God! Outside of our connection with him there is nothing. Clanging brass, tinkling cymbals….