August 27 2024
Dear Friends,
No lesser a philosophical light in the 1970’s and 80’s than the great Henry John Deutschendorf Jr. (You might have heard of him by his professional name: John Denver.) put it this way:
“Sweet, sweet surrender; live, live without care, like a fish in the water, like a bird in the air.”
A more trained and recognized philosopher named Dallas Willard addressed the American Association of Christian Counselors at their conference in September of 2007, a conference with the theme: “No Greater Love.” To the conferees, in a speech titled ‘Getting Love Right,’ Willard said: “We should draw from these and similar statements by Paul and Jesus that that love of which they spoke is something (whatever it is, exactly) which arises out of certain prior conditions of the whole self, something which involves an orientation of the whole self toward what is good and right, and something which has amazing, supernatural power for good as it indwells the individual. (Compare Col. 1:9-12)” He went on to say: “Love, as Paul and the New Testament presents it, is not action—not even action with a special intention—but a source of action. It is a condition out of which actions of a certain type emerge.”
Most of us, if we’re a bit self-aware and honest, would admit that we could be ‘more loving.’ By that, we inevitably mean, performing more acts of love. We read 1 Corinthians 13 where Paul says, ‘Love is patient …’ and we think, “If I’m going to be more loving, I have to show more patience (usually to people that I can’t really stand to be around, to listen to, etc.). He writes, ‘Love is kind,’ and we think about how we can do more acts of kindness to others (and we wonder how we’ll ever find the time to do them!).
Paul is not describing how the Corinthians can be better disciples and more loving. He is literally describing God, who ‘is love’ according to the apostle John. You could literally replace the word ‘love’ with ‘God’ and end up in the same understanding that Paul illuminates.
“Okay, Doug,” you say, “come back to earth. What are you trying to say?”
I’m trying to say that if you try to be more loving without understanding how you are already loved and will always be loved, love (and loving acts) becomes an unbearable burden. If you learn to simply live in love the way a fish simply lives in water or a bird flies through the air (thank you, John Denver!), acts of love are no longer a burden or a duty; they simply manifest your nature.
The focus of all good disciple-making must be to show us first a loving God whose love for us is unconditionally and eternal. Then it must show us how we can give up our self-centred understanding, which leads us to believe that living in love is impossible, and actually begin to learn to be loved and to love from that reservoir of love. We cannot do it any other way. We will never get it right on our own. We must live out of the perfect love of the Trinity. We can learn to do all the things that Jesus commanded, ‘without care, like a fish in the water, like a bird in the air.’
Blessings!
Doug