Pre-Occupied with Self or Other Directed

A few weeks back I asked my congregation what the opposite of love was. I got different responses - hate, fear, indifference, etc. However, I think the opposite of love is sin. That's right - sin.

Why do I say that. Well, it has something to do with how I define sin. I don't look at sin as primarily bad behavior, breaking the law, immorality, or broken relationships - though they have something to do with the working out of sin in our lives - but for me sin is a preoccupation with self. It is about thinking about ourselves first, thinking about ourselves before we think about another.

As human beings into our own thing we are indeed people preoccupied with self.

Too often we confess “our sin” too easily. We may acknowledge that our lives are screwed up – but that still does not get to the heart of the matter – our confessions are still self-focused. Do we realize that this preoccupation with self is not just screwing “me” up, but it is also screwing up others, that it is screwing up the world.

This in my mind is the exact opposite of love is. We ask - as Foreigner sang - "Do you know what love is, I want to know what love is."

We have a difficult time understanding, experiencing what love is – because love is not preoccupied with self, but other-directed. We have got to get out of our preoccupation with self to begin to “know what love is.”

The problem is that we are not all that successful in dealing with our self-preoccupation by ourselves. We need help!

Love is more than a feeling, more than emotion – it is a choice we make!
But not the kind of choice we think.

In fact in reality “choosing to love” is a choice

· to be open to the Spirit of God,
· to be open for the Spirit of God to create Jesus’ nature into our lives
· to be open to God’s intervention to deal with our self-preoccupation
· to be open to the Spirit to cultivate in us a perspective of being other-occupied, of being
world-directed – just as it is the nature of God’s love to love the world – John 3:16.

And so when we are open to the Spirit to work in our lives – our lives are opened to be other-directed in the same way that the nature of God’s love is other-directed toward all humanity.

I say it this way because there are other things that are other-directed but not selflessly. War is other-directed, hate is other-directed, prejudice is other-directed – but these are other-directed through a focus or preoccupation with self. We think we are protecting ourselves, our way of life by engaging in war, hate or prejudice.

But love in the way of God, love which exemplifies God’s nature is selflessly other-directed.

As the Spirit of God develops love in our life – we too learn to love in ways which are selflessly other-directed. A way of being that:

· gives love to those who do not love us back,
· keeps loving when someone does whatever they can so that we might hate them,
· shares in their suffering, walking alongside with people not leaving them alone in their pain,
· loves all – even those whose behaviors or beliefs are contrary or adamantly opposed to our
own.

This is the way Jesus acted in love towards others – in the story of the Good Samaritan or washing his disciples feet – and we hear Jesus saying to us: “Go and do likewise” (Luke 10: 37; John 13: 17).

That's what I am trying to do. Join me?

What Does the Ground Feel Like When You Walk in the Spirit?

I was in conversation with a friend yesterday over a cup of coffee. We got talking about life and how walking is a metaphor for how we journey in life. What does the ground feel like under our feet on the pathways of life? Often we walk on hard paths - the same paths everyone else has walked on before, pathways that have been packed down - and so walking seems pretty easy. But from the Jesus' metaphor of the soils, not much grows on hard paths.

When our walking is frustrated it is often because the soil beneath our feet is not hard anymore, its soft and so every step takes an effort to move forward. We get frustrated when our forward movement is impeded and we try to get out of this kind of soil as fast as we can in order to find a hard path again. But this kind of soil in the parable of the soils (cf. Matthew 13) Jesus says is the kind of soil in which life takes root.

As followers of Jesus we are called to walk in the Spirit. I think this is difficult because we want to do the walking and walking in the Spirit requires our being sensitive to the leading of the Spirit. When we are cruising along the hard pathways, we're in control - who needs the Spirit. But when life slows down, moving forward is bogged down, step taking requires effort - maybe then we can be most open to the Spirit in our lives. The soil we most despise because it slows us donw, is the soil that something can take root in, we can take root in, soil in which the Spirit of God can produce something in our lives.

We talk alot about making a living and we often think about our being Christian while we make our way in the world, while we make a living. But I am beginning to think differently about what it means to follow after Jesus. Could it be that our primary calling is to be persons who are open to the Spirit of God, to be instruments of the Spirit working in the world and our jobs, etc are secondary to that calling. Could it be we are called to be the people of God in such a way that our jobs, careers are merely the contexts in which we live out lives which are open to the Spirit of God. So for example, if someone was a plumber, maybe it is not about them going to their job and do what they do, and then also think about how they are to be a Christian in this context, but rather in all of life they are called to live/walk with a sensitivity to the Spirit's leading and it just so happens that plumbing provides the context in which they walk in the Spirit in the presence of other people.

This has implications for the way we live. We are to be primarily those who walk in the ways of Christ in the power of the Holy Spirit, and our careers, or whatever we do, provides the context in which we do our walking.