Opening Our Souls to God, Part II

III. 2^nd Condition for Spiritual Growth: Discipline

First Timothy 4:7 says to "train yourself to be godly." "Train" translates gymnazō, which referred to the intense discipline of exercise and training to prepare an athlete for a contest. Paul observes that "physical training is of some value" (1 Tim 4:8a). Many of us seek to improve our physical health and self-image by walking, jogging, playing tennis, doing aerobics, or lifting weights. Such physical discipline shows respect and appreciation for the body that God has given us.

Paul is calling us here to be spiritual athletes. He reminds us that "godliness has value for all things, holding promise for both the present life and the future life" (1 Tim 4:8b). How much more value is there is strengthening our spirits so that we become more like God. Godlike character and conduct affects every area of our lives—not just our bodies but also our relationships, our thoughts, our emotions, our moral actions. Godlikeness improves our lives in the present and also prepares us for eternity in fellowship with God.

The spiritual disciplines are the means by which we train ourselves in godly thoughts and actions. They are spiritual exercises that prepare us for when we are tested. At first these spiritual disciplines may seem awkward, difficult, even meaningless. We are not used to being alone with God. We are not used to dealing with the spiritual world. We are not used to examining ourselves honestly and deeply.

But over time the disciplines become easier and more natural. This is true of any learned skill. I did not pick up the game of golf until I was in my early thirties. Although I consider myself a reasonably athletic person, I found it very difficult just to get that confounded little clubhead on that tiny white ball. First, I would totally whiff. Then I would overcompensate and dig my club into the ground. Even the overlapping grip on the club felt awkward and left sores on my fingers. And what was the deal with keeping that left elbow straight during my backswing? How is that physically possible?!

With time, practice, and repetition, my golf swing became easier and more fluid. By no means have I ever become a good golfer because I do not practice and play enough. But I cannot remember the last time that I whiffed when I swung at the ball.

Almost everything worth doing in life is difficult at the beginning (Willard, 1990, p. 121). I have seen this with my two boys as they have recently learned to ride bicycles without training wheels, write the alphabet and then words and then sentences, read a book, and add two-digit numbers.

Spiritual discipline means that we will study the Bible even if we understand little of it at the beginning. We will pray to God even though it seems like he is not listening. We will meditate even though we never hear God speak to us. Tom Landry, the famous coach of the Dallas Cowboys, said: "The job of a football coach is to make men do what they don't want to do in order to achieve what they've always wanted to be" (Whitney, 1997, p. 18). If we want to grow spiritually, we will make ourselves do things that we would not naturally do, such as get up on Sunday morning and go to worship service, or get up early in the morning to read a chapter in the Bible. We are willing to put forth the effort and make the sacrifice because of the greater good that will come from it.

One of the greatest barriers to spiritual growth is laziness, the deadly sin of sloth. Too often we think that spiritual growth is something that just happens to us because we have been saved. We are like the playwright George Kaufman, who was enduring a sales pitch from a gold-mine promoter. He said: "Why, it's so rich you can pick up the chunks of gold from the ground." "Do you mean," Kaufman said, "I'd have to bend over?" (Whitney, 1997, p. 19). Similarly, we may think that we should grow spiritually without having to expend any effort.

Dallas Willard warns against passivity in the spiritual life: "The general human failing is to want what is right and important, but at the same time not to commit to the kind of life that will produce the action we know to be right and the condition we want to enjoy. This is the feature of human character that explains why the road to hell is paved with good intentions. We intend what is right, but we avoid the life that would make it reality" (1990, p. 6). The fact that spiritual growth is the work of God is no excuse for passivity and laziness. It is not enough to intend to grow spiritually. We must do what is necessary for God to give us growth.

IV. 3^rd Condition for Spiritual Growth: Time

The greatest enemy of spiritual growth is busyness. Carl Jung once said: "Hurry is not of the Devil; it is the Devil." By filling up every available waking minute with frenetic activity, we avoid intimacy with God, and we avoid confronting our own inner demons.

If we want to get to know the God who dwells within us, we must focus attention on his presence. We can do this only if we detach ourselves from the outer world and attach ourselves to the inner world. It is a scientific truth that the human mind cannot focus on more than one thing at once. Therefore, in order to focus attention on God, we must intentionally disengage our attention from outer concerns and focus it on God instead. Any relationship develops and matures only with an investment of time, and the same is true of our relationship with God.

We can find so many excuses to fill up our time with busy activities. As Parkinson's Law states, "work expands so as to fill the time available for its completion." Why do we fill up our time with outer activities so that we neglect our inner life? Because we are afraid to be alone. We are afraid of ourselves. We are afraid of what God might tell us or show us about ourselves.

For positive growth and change to occur in our lives, we must stop running from the truth about ourselves. We can never really get away from ourselves anyway, so why not slow down and deal directly with the aspects of our self that need work? By refusing to deal with garbage within us, we allow it to pile up so high that it begins to burst from within us, spoiling every aspect of our lives and contaminating those around us. We need periods of time in which we allow God to perform a spiritual housecleaning.

The person who thinks he or she does not have time to spend in silence with God should consider this analogy. If your car was not working properly, would you ask a mechanic to crawl under your hood and work on the engine while you continued to drive 65 miles per hour down the highway because you did not have time to slow down? If we really want God to work on the dysfunctional parts of ourselves that are not functioning properly, we need to pull over to the side of the road, shut off the engine for a while, and let him repair us.

We always make time for the things that matter to us. We may say that we believe it is important to grow spiritually. We may say that it is important to get to know God. But our actions show what we really believe. If we neglect quiet time with God, either we do not believe that a personal God who cares about us really exists or we do not believe that we can actually experience his presence with us.

To grow spiritually, to be transformed into the image of Christ, to plug our souls into the power source, we must set aside periods of time on a regular basis to spend in silence, speaking to God and listening to him speak to us. If we do not do this, we will be like the schoolteacher with twenty-five years of experience who applied for a promotion but instead a teacher with only one year of experience as hired. When she asked the principal why someone with less experience was hired, he responded, "I'm sorry, but you haven't had twenty-five years of experience as you claim; you have had only one year's experience twenty-five times."

In conclusion, Ephesians 3:16-21 provides a rich picture of the process of spiritual growth: "I pray that, according to the riches of his glory, he may grant that you may be strengthened in your inner being with power through his Spirit, and that Christ may dwell in your hearts through faith, as you are being rooted and grounded in love. I pray that you may have the power to comprehend, with all the saints, what is the breadth and length and height and depth, and to know the love of Christ that surpasses knowledge, so that you may be filled with all the fullness of God."

Reflection Questions

1. Think about a skill or sport that felt awkward when you were first learning it. How did you overcome the awkwardness? How does this apply to our spiritual life?

2. In what ways do you need to become more disciplined in your spiritual life?

3. How much time do you have available to spend with God in silence? How can you make more time?

Sources:

Whitney, D. S. (1997). Spiritual disciplines for the Christian life. Colorado Springs: NavPress.

Willard, D. (1990). The spirit of the disciplines: Understanding how God changes lives. San Francisco: HarperOne.

Next Topic: Worship: Looking Up to God

 

Opening Our Souls to God, Part I

Inner transformation is God's work; it is not something that we can produce by our own effort. That does not mean, however, that we do not have a role to play. We cannot simply sit back and wait for God to transform. In previous posts, we have seen that we have a role to play by surrendering our thoughts, emotions, and desires to God so that he can transform them in positive ways. The power of God enables us to put away those desires and actions that hurt us and replace them with desires and actions that promote health and growth.

How can we tap into the power? How do we prepare ourselves for God's work of renewal? I want to discuss our role in renewal in a series of posts, but in this post I want to lay the foundation by discussing how we can open our souls to God and let him do his work within us.

I. The Goal of Spiritual Growth: The Image of Christ (Rom 8:29)

First, let's remind ourselves of the goal of spiritual growth: "For those God foreknew he also predestined to be conformed to the likeness of his Son, that he might be the firstborn among many brothers and sisters" (Rom 8:29 TNIV). Spiritual growth is the process of being transformed into thte image of Christ.

In the late 15^th century, the Florentine sculptor Agostino d'Antonio began work on a huge block of marble with a view to producing a spectacular sculpture, but after a few futile attempts, he gave it up as worthless. The badly disfigured block of marble lay idle for forty years until Michelangelo came along and saw its potential. Out of that block, he created one of the most outstanding artistic achievements of all time, the statue of David. As he was working on the sculpture, a passerby asked him what he was doing, and he replied that he was releasing an angel from the rock.

God sees within us the image of Christ, and he can release that image into view if we allow him. Although it is God's work to make us like Christ, we must decide that we want to change and grow. We must make an effort to allow God to change us from the inside out.

John 15:5 says that a branch produces grapes by being connected to the vine, which is the source of life. We bear fruit when we are intimately connected with Christ. He provides us with spiritual nourishment and strength. But we must make the effort to attach ourselves to the source of life and to remain attached to him. If we try to grow on our own as a solitary branch detached from the vine, we will wither and die.

We create the environment in which God can bear fruit in our lives by meeting three conditions: belief, discipline, and time.

II. 1^st Condition for Spiritual Growth: Belief

Hebrews 11:6 says that we cannot get close to God without faith. If we want to get close to God, we must believe that he exists. Many people follow false forms of spirituality because they do not accept the reality of God. They do not believe there is a spiritual Being who is the Creator of the universe, the Redeemer of all people, and yet personal enough to desire to know each of us individually. To grow spiritually, we must believe in the reality of the spiritual dimension, and we must believe that at the center of that spiritual dimension and pervading all of reality is a personal God whose primary characteristic is love.

Hebrews 11:6 says that we must also believe that God rewards those who earnestly seek him. There are many who profess belief in God, but it is merely an intellectual assent to certain facts about God. They do not believe that they can truly encounter God, experience him, relate to him, or get to know him on a personal basis. They do not believe that God really hears when they speak to him, and they believe even less that God is able to speak back to them.

The first step of spiritual growth after becoming a Christian is to believe that God cares about us and is intimately involved in every aspect of our lives. One of the greatest advances that I have made in my spiritual progress resulted from reading an author (perhaps Morton Kelsey?) who reminded me that God is not way off somewhere. God is not out there and up there, far beyond my reach, so that I have to grope blindly and struggle to find him in some desperate effort doomed to failure.

Actually, God is as close as my heart. When I was baptized into Christ, God's own Spirit entered my heart and my spirit and now dwells within me. So if I want to be close to God, I do not have to shout upward to him in prayer, hoping that my fervency will catch his attention. Instead, I simply become silent and turn my attention within to experience his presence with me. James 4:8 expresses this idea succinctly: "Come near to God and he will come near to you." Believing that it is possible to be close to God and to know him personally is the first requirement for spiritual growth.

In the next post, I will finish discussing the second and third conditions for spiritual growth.

Reflection Questions

1. What have you been doing to keep yourself attached to Christ? What can you do in the future to stay connected to him?

2. Examine your beliefs about God. Do you doubt that he exists? Do you believe he cares for you? Do you believe he wants you to know him?

3. How would it affect your relationship with God if you understood that he is as close as your heart?

Next Topic: Opening Our Souls to God, Part II

Is Change Really Possible?, Part III

In the last couple of posts, I have been considering various types of determinism. These are reasons that people offer for why it is impossible to change. I will finish by considering two more types of determinism.

V. Situational Determinism

Many people feel that they are victims of circumstances beyond their control. They are locked into a situation they cannot change. They are imprisoned in a dead-end, meaningless job, and they have no opportunities to better themselves. Their marriage is unfulfilling, and there seems to be no way to improve it. They suffer from an oppressive economic situation, such as high unemployment or high inflation, and they suffer the consequences of it.

Of course, it is true that there are times that we cannot control or change our circumstances. Some people will have physical disabilities their entire life. Some people will have personality defects or mental disorders that may never change. Many things in life happen to us as a matter of chance, and sometimes these accidents or mishaps leave lifelong scars, both physical and emotional.

On the other hand, sometimes circumstances do change. One of the facts of life seems to be that, if you wait long enough, it will eventually change. Doors do open up; new opportunities do come along; the economy does improve; our spouse may respond to our attempts at reconciliation.

But even when our circumstances do not change, we can control how we react to them. We are all dealt a certain hand, some worse than others, and we do the best we can with what we have received. You know the old saying: "If life hands you a bunch of lemons, make lemonade."

Within any situation, no matter how restrictive it may appear, there are always some choices that can be made. The key to responding healthily to our circumstances is to avoid self-pity. Self-pity robs us of motivation to change. It paralyzes us because we think we are stuck and there is nothing we can do about it.

When we decide not to play the victim but to take control of our lives, we often find that we can make some changes that help us feel better. We can begin with changes in our attitudes and thinking patterns. If we can change our unhealthy intepretations of difficult circumstances, we can change how we feel about them.

History is full of examples of people who rose above their difficult circumstances to accomplish great things. In fact, it seems that most great figures of history suffered difficulties and tragedies early in life. George Washington's father died when he was eleven years old, and his surrogate father, his brother Lawrence, died when he was twenty. Abraham Lincoln's mother died when he was nine years old. He had a difficult relationship with his father throughout his life, and he did not even attend his father's funeral. Franklin Roosevelt was stricken with polio at the age of 39 but went on to serve four times as president. Many more such examples could be given.

We might be tempted to say that such people accomplished great things in spite of their circumstances, but it may be more accurate to say that they accomplished great things because of their circumstances. Their difficulties, and the way they responded to them, created qualities in them that bore fruit later in life.

Of course, this does not happen for everyone. Many people in such situations give themselves over to despair and believe that they can never rise above their circumstances. They feel trapped and victimized, and so their circumstances become a crushing burden they carry their whole lives.

The Apostle Paul encouraged his readers to reject the idea that they had to change their circumstances in order to serve the Lord more fully: "Let each of you lead the life that the Lord has assigned, to which God has called you. This is my rule in all the churches" (1 Cor 7:17). He goes on to say that if you were not circumcised when you came to Christ, don't feel that you have to be circumcised to serve him more fully. If you were a slave when you came to Christ, don't feel that you have to become free in order to serve him. If you were unmarried when you came to Christ, do not feel that you must become married.

This is consistent with Paul's teaching elsewhere that we should be content in all circumstances. Paul himself had experienced difficult circumstances, but he had learned to be content and to serve the Lord in every situation: "Therefore I am content with weaknesses, insults, hardships, persecutions, and calamities for the sake of Christ; for whenever I am weak, then I am strong" (2 Cor 12:10).

Sometimes circumstances do improve if we are patient and wait long enough. Sometimes our circumstances will never change. But we can choose our attitudes, our thoughts, and our character in responses to them.

VI. Emotional Determinism

Many people feel that they are slaves to their emotions. Emotions are viewed as external forces that seize possession and cause them to act in ways that they cannot control. If they are angry, then they must lash out at others. If they are depressed, they cannot change how they feel.

In most cases, this is simply not true. Schools of psychotherapy, such as rational-emotive therapy and cognitive-behavioral therapy, have been developed for the purpose of teaching people to control their emotions. These approaches teach that emotions are caused by our thought patterns. Our self-talk affects how we feel. If we can change how we interpret events, we can change how we feel about them. If we replace faulty thought patterns with healthy ones, our emotions will change.

Of course, there are some emotions that result from chemical imbalances in the brain. Fortunately, we have medications today that can help with that. An open question is whether those chemical imbalances are caused by faulty thought patterns or whether the chemical imbalances cause faulty thought patterns.

In an earlier post, I addressed the issue of changing our emotions, so I will not say more about that here.

Reflection Questions

1. How have you felt like the victim of circumstances? What current circumstances do you find difficult to deal with?

2. In what ways you have responded in positive and healthy ways to your circumstances?

3. How can you learn to be content in all circumstances, as Paul was?

Next Topic: Preparing Ourselves for Renewal

Is Change Really Possible?, Part II

In the last post, we considered two types of deterministic views held by people, astrological and genetic. In this post, I will discuss two more, psychological and sociological.

III. Psychological Determinism

Sigmund Freud and his followers popularized the notion that our experiences in childhood affect our psychological state as adults. Mental disorders, such as schizophrenia, were blamed on the mother's treatment of the child. The key to resolving neuroses and other psychological disturbances was to dig deeply into one's past and resolve issues that still lingered from our childhood.

Certainly, there is plenty of evidence to support the idea that our childhood experiences affect our psychological well-being as adults, but do those experiences determine how we feel and think as adults? This view can be taken to extremes. For example, in highly publicized criminal trials, defendants have justified their criminal behavior because of things that happened to them in the past. They claimed to have no control over their actions because their psychological health had been impaired by neglect and abuse when they were younger. One of the most prominent and sensational of these trials involved the Menendez brothers, Lyle and Eric, who slaughtered their parents with shotguns on August 20, 1989. In the televised trial in 1993, they defended themselves by arguing that the parental abuse they had suffered made them incapable of distinguishing right from wrong.

On a more common level, we often excuse many of our bad habits or failures in life by blaming our parents for how they treated us. We feel that we are who we are because of how we were raised, and we think there is little that we can do to change that.

But this viewpoint involves a major misunderstanding of the field of psychology. The science of psychology was not developed in order to give people the right to refuse to change or to control their actions. As I mentioned in the last post, the industry of psychotherapy is based on the supposition that it is possible, and necessary, for people to change. Knowing how the past affects us in the present was never intended to relieve us of the responsibility for the choices we make in the present. That knowledge is intended to help us understand the influences on us so that we can modify our thought processes and change our behavior. Psychologists have continually sought ways to help people change their harmful thoughts and behaviors, resulting in a variety of approaches such as behaviorism, hypnotherapy, and cognitive therapy. The field of psychopharmacology has developed drugs to adjust the chemistry of the brain so that dark moods can be lifted and impulsive thoughts can be controlled.

A major study of how psychotherapy promotes change was conducted by Michael J. Mahoney (1991). He showed that scientific research indicated that it was possible for people to change but that the process is "rarely rapid or easy" (p. 18). He also found that core areas were more difficult to change than peripheral areas. Core areas included things like "a person's experience of reality (order), self (identity), value (valence), and power (control)" (p. 18). Change is not easy, but it is possible, a view which seems consistent with biblical teaching.

The psychoanalyst Allen Wheelis also recognized the difficulty of changing the personality: "Personality is a complex balance of many conflicting claims, forces, tensions, compunctions, distractions, which yet manages somehow to be a functioning entity. However it may have come to be what it is, it resists becoming anything else. It tends to maintain itself, to convey itself onward into the future unaltered. It may be changed only with difficulty" (1973, p. 100).

And yet Wheelis believes that change really is possible. He expresses the tension between viewing ourselves as the product of our upbringing and believing in the possibility of change:

Being the product of conditioning and being free to change do not war with each other. Both are true. They coexist, grow together in an upward spiral, and the growth of one furthers the growth of the other. The more cogently we prove ourselves to have been shaped by causes, the more opportunities we create for changing. The more we change, the more possible it becomes to see how determined we were in that which we have just ceased to be (1973, pp. 87-88).

He goes on to warn against viewing either determinism or freedom to change as absolutes exclusive of the other:

Sometimes it will be necessary to see behavior, individual or social, as the product of preexisting conditions, for we are indeed pushed and pulled, and if we are to increase our authority in reference to these forces we must examine them as causes. Sometimes, likewise, it will be necessary to see behavior, individual or social, as the product of unconstrained will, for we are truly free, even in situations of extreme coercion (1973, p. 96).

So, while many have distorted the findings of psychological research to excuse their bad behavior and deny the possibility of change, psychology actually assumes the possibility of change, as difficult as it may be.

IV.Sociological Determinism

This excuse for avoiding change is similar to psychological determinism. Many people feel they cannot improve themselves or their situation because of the country they were born in or the area in which they were raised or the race they belong to. This view was prevalent in the 50s and 60s: If we could change social structures, people would become better people. This excuse, along with psychological determinism, was mocked in the musical West Side Story when the gang members, in the song "Gee, Officer Krupke," try to explain why they are the way they are. The song begins with these lyrics:

Dear kindly Sergeant Krupke,
You gotta understand,
It's just our bringin' up-ke
That gets us out of hand.
Our mothers all are junkies,
Our fathers all are drunks.
Golly Moses, natcherly we're punks!

Gee, Officer Krupke, we're very upset;
We never had the love that ev'ry child oughta get.
We ain't no delinquents,
We're misunderstood.
Deep down inside us there is good!

Later in the song, A-Rab complains:

Officer Krupke, you're really a slob.
This boy don't need a doctor, just a good honest job.
Society's played him a terrible trick,
And sociologic'ly he's sick!

Undoubtedly, our social background does affect who we are to a great extent. A person who grows up surrounded by racial prejudice will naturally be influenced to hold those views, but many people have broken out of their sociological straitjackets and altered their ways of thinking and relating to people.

Reflection Questions:

1. How have my childhood experiences affected me? Have I used those experiences as excuses for refusing to change?

2. In what ways have I moved beyond my past experiences to become a healthier person?

3. What unhealthy influences have I experienced from my social upbringing? How can I continue to rid myself of those?

4. How has Christ helped me to move beyond my past into a healthier future?

Next Topic: Is Change Really Possible?, Part III

Sources:

Mahoney, M. J. (1991). Human change processes: The scientific foundations of psychotherapy. New York: Basic Books.

Is Change Really Possible?, Part I

Certain types of change are inevitable in many areas of our lives. For example, we know that we will all change physically. A man attended a college reunion thirty years after graduation, and he remarked to a friend, "See that fellow over there? Well, he's gotten so bald and so fat he didn't even recognize me." We know that physical changes will occur as we get older, as much as we try to ward them off.

But what about other aspects of our lives? Is it possible to change our personality? Our habits? Our talents? Our character? Our inner person? The famed psychiatrist Martin Seligman wrote a book with the catchy title What You Can Change and What You Can't: The Complete Guide to Self-Improvement. In this book he details the aspects of ourselves that research suggests are subject to change and those that are resistant to change. This topic is of interest to psychologists because the entire counseling industry is predicated on the possibility of change. One of the best-known books on this subject is Michael Mahoney's Human Change Processes: The Scientific Foundations of Psychotherapy.

The psychoanalyst Allen Wheelis, in his little meditation on How People Change, expressed optimism that change, although admittedly difficult, is always possible: "We are wise to believe it difficult to change, to recognize that character has a forward propulsion which tends to carry it unaltered into the future, but we need not believe it impossible to change. Our present and future choices may take us upon different courses which will in time comprise a different identity. It happens, sometimes, that the crook reforms, that the coward stands to fight" (Wheelis, 1973, p. 13).

Many people think that it is not possible to change. This view is expressed in some of our cultural proverbs, such as "an old dog can't learn new tricks" or "a leopard can't change its spots." Such a pessimistic view gives people the excuse not to try to become better people. Skepticism about the possibility of change can cause a person to become lazy, complacent, self-satisfied, and resigned to their fate.

The view that people cannot change can be termed "determinism." "Determinism is the "a theory or doctrine that acts of the will, occurrences in nature, or social or psychological phenomena are causally determined by preceding events or natural laws" (Merriam-Webster's Collegiate Dictionary, 2007, p. 340). People espouse various types of determinism. I want to examine these reasons why people deny the possibility of change.

I. Astrological Determinism

Astrology teaches that our fate is determined by the position of the stars at the time of our birth. Earthly events are influenced by heavenly movements. The connection between the two is based on the principle of sympathy. The day-to-day events in our lives are determined by the changing positions of the stars and planets, which are in turn controlled by gods and other spiritual beings. This view originated among the Chaldeans and then spread from Babylonia to Egypt and then on to Greece and Rome.

According to Franz Cumont, "the most essential principle of astrology was that of fatalism" (1956, p. 179). He also says that "the postulates of astrology imply an absolute determinism" (Ibid.). He describes the outcome of the view that fate determines all things:

Following the example set by the Stoics, they made absolute submission to an almighty fate and joyful acceptance of the inevitable a moral duty, and were satisfied to worship the superior power that ruled the universe, without demanding anything in return. They considered themselves at the mercy of even the most capricious fate, and were like the intelligent slave who guesses the desires of his master to satisfy them, and knows how to make the hardest servitude tolerable (p. 181).

By the time of Jesus and Paul, astrological determinism pervaded the ancient world:

Soon neither important nor small matters were undertaken without consulting the astrologer. His previsions were sought not only in regard to great public events like the conduct of a war, the founding of a city, or the accession of a ruler, not only in case of a marriage, a journey, or a change of domicile; but the most trifling acts of every-day life were gravely submitted to his sagacity. People would no longer take a bath, go to the barber, change their clothes or manicure their fingernails, without first awaiting the propitious moment (Cumont, 1956, p. 165).

This pessimistic view caused despair among the ancients who felt themselves "dominated and crushed by blind forces that dragged [them] on as irresistibly as they kept the celestial spheres in motion" (Cumont, 1956, p. 181). People felt hopeless to change their situation. They were powerless to change their destiny. They were robbed of motivation and devoid of responsibility. Of course, many people today follow the popular form of astrology but ignore the logical and dismal implications of it.

Paul roundly rejects this view. First, he asserts that Christ actually created these astrological powers: "For in him all things in heaven and on earth were created, things visible and invisible, whether thrones or dominions or rulers or powers—all things have been created through him and for him." Second, he asserts that any of these powers, both earthly and heavenly, that have strayed from God's will and sought to dominate people have been subdued by Christ's death on the cross: "[Christ] disarmed the rulers and authorities and made a public example of them, triumphing over them in it" (Col 2:15). Christ's death has stripped, disarmed, exposed, and unmasked these pretenders to his sovereignty. Paul lets his readers know that their destinies are not controlled by impersonal spiritual beings or by heavenly bodies. Christ has set them free to choose their own destiny.

II. Genetic Determinism

This fatalistic view is of more recent origin. Since the discovery of genetic heredity by Malthus and others and the more recent discoveries of genes, chromosomes, and DNA, many scientists have propagated the view that our lives are largely determined by genetics. Genetic research is identifying certain genes that result inevitably in certain physical conditions.

For example, the genes identified as BRCA1 and BRCA2 are known to be tumor suppressors. If a woman inherits one of these genes in a mutated form, her risks of breast cancer and/or ovarian cancer greatly increase. Tests are now available to identify these mutations so that bearers can taken preventative actions.

We understand that many of our physical characteristics (eye color, skin tone, hair texture, etc.) are largely determined by genetic endowment. But how much is genetics responsible for our personality? Our preferences? Our likes and dislikes? Our vices and virtues? And is it possible to overcome any of these genetic influences? This raises the nature-versus-nurture debate that has raged for the past century in psychology. Is who I am today determined more by how my parents treated me in childhood or by my genetic heredity? Studies of twins who were reared together and apart have shown that many aspects of personality, such as IQ, are inherited. These studies have suggested that perhaps parents do not have as much influence on the development of a child as psychotherapists have often assumed.

Perhaps our genes can provide explanations for some of our behaviors, but many people use them as excuses for their behavior so that they don't have to accept personal responsibility for their actions. Like the followers of astrology, they seem themselves as victims of cruel fate. Such excuses have been offered for alcoholism, homosexuality, other sexual aberrations, obesity, and the list goes on and on.

A cartoon in the New Yorker showed a father scowling over a very bad report card while his little boy stood by, asking, "What do you think it is, Dad? Heredity or environment?" Whether we blame our problems on how were conceived or how we were raised, we often absolve ourselves of responsibility for our actions.

Using genetics as an excuse for irresponsibility, addictions, and immoral behavior brings human beings down to the level of animals. Animals are driven by instincts. They do not have the consciousness that enables them to control and manage their instincts. Their behavior can be modified by a superior intelligence utilizing positive and negative reinforcement, but they cannot modulate, regulate, or modify their own behavior. For example, I recently read a tragic story about an 85-year-old woman in Etowah, Tennessee, who had owned a pit bull terrier for nine years, and it never showed any signs of aggression. One morning she walked into her house to check on the dog and without warning it attacked her and killed her. The dog would not let go of her until the police dragged it off of her and shot it. The dog's genetic inheritance kicked in, and it could not control itself.

I used to see this genetic influence in my Norwegian Elkhound, who would prepare to lie down in the living room by first walking sideways in a circle about six times before lying down. This strange behavior was how his wolf ancestors prepared their beds in the tall grasses of the savannah. He would also rub his nose around his food bowl as if he were trying to bury it because dogs in the wild knew to bury meat in order to cure it so that it would not spoil.

Humans possess inherited instincts also, but we assume that humans are able to control them, and even change them, because we have higher thought processes than other animals. For example, we are genetically programmed to eat until we are filled to capacity because our ancestors often did not know when their next meal would come. But we must learn to control this instinct in order to remain healthy. We are genetically programmed to copulate with just about every member of the opposite sex who passes in front of our vision, which was an instinct necessary for survival of the species. But we know that such instinctual behavior is damaging to us, so we try to control it.

Francis Collins, who headed the Human Genome Project, does not view his faith in Christ as incompatible with his studies of genetics (Collins, 2006). He was raised an atheist, but the key argument that drove him to belief was the fact that human beings have an innate sense of right and wrong that other animals do not have. And this moral sensibility cannot be explained by genetics. He came to believe that right and wrong are grounded in the character of God and instilled in us because we are created in his image.

Some Christian theologians beginning with Augustine have argued that people inherited original sin as a genetic endowment. In their view, babies are born already guilty of sin and therefore must be baptized to cleanse themselves of original sin. However, Paul seems to suggest he was born spiritually alive but then reached the age of awareness of sin and chose to rebel against God, at which point he died spiritually (Rom 7:9-10). Paul does talk about the "flesh" that makes it difficult for us to choose to do the right thing. I side with those interpreters who think it is more accurate to say that we are born with the propensity to sin but not the guilt of it. We have a genetic disposition to sin, but we are still responsible for own choice to rebel against God.

Reflection Questions:

1. What aspects of yourself do you feel that you cannot change? What aspects do you feel are open to change?

2. When have you felt like you were the victim of circumstances or fate?

3. What aspects of your personality and character were inherited from your parents?

Next Topic: Is Change Really Possible?, Part II

Sources:

Collins, F. S. (2006). The language of God: A scientist presents evidence for belief. New York: Free Press.

Cumont, F. (1956). Oriental religions in Roman paganism. New York: Dover.

Mahoney, M. J. (1991). Human change processes: The scientific foundations of psychotherapy. New York: Basic Books.

Seligman, M. E. P. (2007). What you can change—and what you can't: The complete guide to successful self-improvement. New York: Vintage Books.

Wheelis, A. (1973). How people change. New York: Harper & Row.

How God Renews Our Selves

As we have seen in previous posts, spiritual renewal results in a change of character. When God restores us to a love relationship with him, he produces righteousness in us. Obedience flows from our love for God. Spiritual renewal involves an inner transformation.

Some people resist spiritual renewal because they do not want to change. They don't want to give up their old harmful habits. They don't want to try to control their thought patterns. They don't want to replace their negative emotions to which they have become addicted. They don't want to start watching their words. The motto of many people is "Come weal, come woe, my status is quo." They are like the Duke of Cambridge who said: "Any change at any time for any reason is to be deplored."

We should not fear the changes that God will produce in us because they will improve our lives. Yes, we may have to give up some things, but pruning is necessary for growth. I want to describe the process of inner renewal by focusing on its possibility, its process, its goal, and its agent.

I. The Possibility of Renewal (2 Corinthians 5:17)

Paul writes: "Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, there is a new creation: The old has gone, the new has come" (TNIV). When we receive Christ, God re-creates us. He restores us to his original intention for us. Imagine commissioning an architect to draft plans to renovate your house. When he meets with you to go over the plans, he begins by saying, "First, we are going to have to tear down the existing house. Second, we will need to dig up the foundation. Then we can rebuild the structure in the right way from the gound up." That plan would probably be more than we bargained for!

Some people imagine that, if they surrender to Christ, he will simply remodel their lives in some minor ways. They just want a few drapes hung up and some new paint slapped on. Maybe fix up their marriage problems here. Give them a good job there. Nothing too drastic. Not too many changes. Just spruce things up a little bit.

Paul says that Christ is not interested in partial remodeling projects. He is in the demolition and reconstruction business. When we surrender our lives to him, he performs a complete overhaul.

This comprehensive transformation was prophesied by Ezekiel 36:26-27: "A new heart I will give you, and a new spirit I will put within you; and I will remove from your body the heart of stone and give you a heart of flesh. I will put my spirit within you, and make you follow my statutes and be careful to observe my ordinances" (NRSV). When God renews us, he gives us both the desire and the ability to obey his commands. He performs major spiritual surgery on us, not just a spiritual bypass but a total spiritual transplant. He removes our old sinful desires and replaces them with new holy desires. He puts his own Spirit with us, and that Spirit gives us the power to obey his commands.

Often we do not realize what God can do with us if we would just let him. Two caterpillars were crawling across the grass when a butterfly flew over them. They looked up, and one nudged the other and said, "Man, you couldn't get me up in one of those things for a million dollars." We may doubt that God can do very much with us because we are too far gone or too set in our ways, but Jesus said, "Nothing is impossible with God."

II. The Process of Renewal (2 Corinthians 3:18)

Here Paul says: "And all of us, with unveiled faces, seeing the glory of the Lord as though reflected in a mirror, are being transformed into the same image from one degree of glory to another; for this comes from the Lord, the Spirit." The Greek word for "transform" is the word from which we derive the English word "metamorphosis." This word was used to describe the changing of a caterpillar into a butterfly. Paul describes this inner metamorphosis as continual and gradual. It is a lifelong process that never ends in this life.

The transformation that occurs initially when we are born again should continue throughout our Christian lives. Theologians use the biblical term "sanctification" to describe this never-ending process of becoming more and more holy. Theologians have identified two types of sanctification (Moody, 1981, pp. 322-325). "Positional sanctification" or "possessive sanctification" refers to the change that occurs when we are saved. We are made righteous in God's eyes. Other terms for this initial change are justification, redemption, salvation, regeneration, or baptism in the Spirit. The fact that all Christians have been sanctified explains why the most common term in the New Testament for Christians is "saints."

"Progressive sanctification" refers to the ongoing process of spiritual growth by which we actually become righteous. One's moral character is brought into conformity with one's legal status before God. Because we are justified, we are righteous in God's eyes. Then God works within us so that righteousness is displayed in our thoughts, words, and actions.

"Positional sanctification" (or "justification") and "progressive sanctification" can be contrasted in the following ways: what Christ has done for us vs. what the Spirit does in us; instantaneous vs. progressive; finished vs. continuing; all or nothing vs. degrees; changed relation vs. changed character; same for all vs. varies person by person.

III. The Goal of Renewal (2 Corinthians 3:18)

The "same image" into which we are transformed is that of Jesus Christ. The goal of spiritual renewal is to become like Jesus Christ. In Romans 8:29, Paul says something similar: "For those God foreknew he also predestined to be conformed to the likeness of his Son, that he might be the firstborn among many brothers and sisters." Jesus is our pattern, our mold, our blueprint. We become more like him as we grow in faith.

A well-known story about Gutson Borgium, the sculptor of Mount Rushmore, says that he once was asked how he was able to produce those four massive likenesses of four presidents, and he replied, "Those figures were there for 40 million years. All I had to do was dynamite 400,000 tons of granite to bring them into view." Within each of us is a Christ-image just waiting to emerge if we would give God permission to chip away and blast away all the parts that do not belong to that image. Over time, that Christ-image comes more and more into view.

So if we are going to become like Christ, what does that mean? It means that I will become a person who loves righteousness and hates wickedness (Heb 1:9). Like Jesus, I will love fairness, equity, justice, and honest dealings with others. I will also hate any thought of rebelling against God. Like Jesus, I will desire to do the will of God rather than my own will (John 6:38). Like Jesus, I will always do what pleases the Father (John 8:29).

Now, some believe that it is possible to achieve perfect resemblance to Christ in this life, but I side with those who believe perfection is not possible while we are in these fallen bodies and we live in the present evil age (Erickson, 1998, pp. 983-986). Although we may never reach the goal of Christlikeness in this life, that is the goal that we are constantly moving toward.

Christopher Columbus faced many obstacles as he attempted to reach his destination, such as homesick sailors and mutiny. He experienced trouble most of the trip. But every day in his log the last entry he would write was: "Today we moved WESTWARD!" Every day we need to remind ourselves: "Today I moved Christward." Christ is our ultimate destination.

V. The Agent of Change (2 Corinthians 3:18)

In this verse, Paul also reminds us that it is the Holy Spirit who produces this progressive change in our character. The word "transformed" is in the passive. It is not something that we do to ourselves. It is done to us by the Spirit. Paul makes this point elsewhere. In 2 Thessalonians 2:13, he refers to "the sanctifying work of the Spirit" (TNIV). Peter also says that we are sanctified by the Spirit so that we will be obedient to Jesus Christ (1 Pet 1:2). This sanctifying work of the Spirit has both a negative and positive aspect.

A. The Spirit kills our sinful desires (Romans 8:5-8, 12-14).

In a negative way, the Spirit sanctifies us by killing our sinful desires (Rom 8:5-8, 12-14). The Spirit implants a desire for God's holiness in us, and that desire to be like God battles against sinful desires that are deeply ingrained in us. Even though our old self has died in Christ, the memory of its desires remains with us, and those desires still hold great attraction for us.

A humorous story illustrates this. A preacher once mentioned in a sermon that there were 789 different sins. A few days later he received in the mail 94 requests from members of his congregation for a list of those sins. Although this story may not be factual, it points to the attractiveness of sin.

This inner struggle is reflected in the application a young man sent to a university. When he was asked to list his personal strengths, he wrote: "Sometimes I am trustworthy, loyal, helpful, friendly, courteous, kind, obedient, cheerful, thrifty, brave, clean, and reverent." When the form asked him to list his weaknesses, he wrote: "Sometimes I am not trustworthy, loyal, helpful, friendly, courteous, kind, obedient, cheerful, thrifty, brave, clean, and reverent." I think we can all relate the inner struggle of this young man.

The Spirit helps us win this inner battle by putting our sinful desires to death so that we are no longer controlled by them.

B. The Spirit produces righteousness (Galatians 5:22-25).

As we walk by the Spirit, he produces Christ's own character traits within us. In Galatians 5, Paul refers to these traits as "fruit of the Spirit." Our part in this process is to remember that we have already died to the flesh and it no longer has power over us. Our sinful desires have no right to control us.

Abraham Lincoln was walking into town one day when he was overtaken by a man in a wagon going in the same direction. Lincoln hailed him and said, "Will you have the goodness to take my overcoat to town for me?" "With pleasure," the stranger replied, "but how will you get it again?" "Oh, very easily; I intend to remain in it." As long as Lincoln kept the overcoat on, he would have a free ride into town.

If we remember that we are clothed with Christ's righteousness, then we will walk the path of righteousness. Conversely, when we sin, we are acting contrary to our nature as renewed people. Sin is temporary insanity for the Christian. It is acting in a way that violates who we are.

C. The Spirit requires our cooperation (Ephesians 5:18-21).

The Spirit does the work of sanctification, but we have to let him work. We must yield more and more of our lives to him so that he can take control and shape them according to God's will. When we surrender control of our will to his will, we are filled with the Spirit. As we rely on the Spirit's supernatural power, we resist that undertow that seeks to drag us back into slavery to sin.

There is an epigraph on a tombstone that reads: "How sad the story of Jane McCleek/ Her will was strong, but her won't was weak." The Spirit makes our "won't" stronger.

As we follow the Spirit's lead, he leads us to Christ. Rather than losing control of ourselves as people do under the influence of alcohol, we gain self-control so that we have a healthier relationship with God and healthier relationships with other people.

VI. Conclusion

When we see what God can help us become, it is amazing that we would delay allowing God to transform us. This reluctance to be delivered is illustrated by Pharaoh's actions during the Ten Plagues. One of the plagues was a plague of frogs. Pharaoh summoned Moses and asked him to get rid of the frogs. Moses asked him when he wanted him to do it, and Pharaoh said, "Tomorrow!" A famous sermon on this text was entitled "One More Night with the Frogs." It seems incredible to us that Pharaoh would not want to be delivered immediately from the plague of the frogs. But we often choose to live one more night with the frogs. We stall God and say that tomorrow we will allow him to change us, and so we spend one more night with the frogs.

I began by observing how some people resist change, but there are also those who believe this kind of deep change is not possible. Against this view, Don Shelby wrote: "When we tell ourselves 'I can never change,' or 'That will never happen,' we presume too much and believe too little. In Jesus Christ God renders all of our final conclusions premature and all of our talk of determinism as simply bad faith. In Christ, God opens all doors, brings resurrection, reveals possibilities, reclaims the lost, liberates the cursed and possessed, and changes the unchangeable."

Let me close with this benediction from Hebrews 13:20-21: "Now may the God of peace, who through the blood of the eternal covenant brought back from the dead our Lord Jesus, that great Shepherd of the sheep, equip you with everything good for doing his will, and may he work in us what is pleasing to him, through Jesus Christ, to whom be the glory for ever and ever. Amen" (TNIV).

Reflection Questions

1. What aspect of your self have you been reluctant to change?

2. What aspect of your self needs to be brought into conformity to Christ?

3. What can you do to yield more of yourself to the Holy Spirit?

Next Topic: "Is Renewal Really Possible?"

Sources:

Erickson, M. J. (1998). Christian theology. 2^nd ed. Grand Rapids, MI: Baker Books.

Moody, D. (1981). The word of truth: A summary of Christian doctrine based on biblical revelation. Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans.

How God Renews Our Relationships

In the previous posts, we have seen how God renews us in the major areas of our lives. He renews us mentally, emotionally, and spiritually. Now we will examine how he also renews the social area of our lives. Our experience of God's love renews our relationships with others.

When God lives in us and renews us, he causes us to love others (1 John 4:12). Because God has accepted us, we are freed to reach out to others and show them the love God has shown us. The infusion of God's love into our hearts changes how we relate to others.

In this post, we will examine how the experience of God's love makes it possible for us to relate to others in renewed, healthy ways.

I. The Experience of Alienation

I believe that in some way each of us feels like the Elephant Man. The Elephant Man is one of my favorite movies; in fact, when I watch it I can barely take my eyes from it because the story is so gripping. It is a true story about the life of Joseph Merrick, an Englishman who was born with a disease that disfigured his body so severely that people could not bear to look at him. He was displayed as a freak in a circus sideshow where his owner treated him like an animal and abused him.

He was rescued from that dismal existence by the kind doctor Frederick Treves, who took him to the London Hospital and cared for him. Beneath the grotesque exterior, Treves discovered a warm, sensitive human being who was intelligent and engaging. In one of the most moving scenes in the movie, Treves takes Merrick to his house to visit with his wife. While they are drinking tea, Merrick tells Mrs. Treves that he must be a great disappointment to his mother. He said that he wished he could find his mother because he had tried to be good and he would like to see if she could accept him just as he is.

Like the Elephant Man, each of us desires unconditional acceptance because we feel alienated from others. I agree with Gerald May, who said that there is "a fundamental human longing for unconditional love, one that affirms and supports people just as they are and does not demand that they make themselves different in any way." But he notes sadly that "unconditional love is a very rare experience in our society" (1983, p. 72).

Alienation from others began with the very first sin. When Adam and Eve sinned, they sewed fig leaves for themselves to hide behind (Gen 3:7). Then when God came to talk with them, they hid from him. Their actions illustrate that sin has disrupted our relationships. Because of our shame, we are so defensive and self-protective that we hide our true selves from others. We find it hard to let our barriers down so that others can come to know us; consequently, we feel alone and isolated.

The process of alienation for each of us begins in childhood. As infants, the world revolves around us because we are born helpless. Humans are unique among the mammals in that they are born incomplete, unable to take care of themselves, and subject to the dangers of the world. We are born prematurely because of our oversized brain. At birth, the brain weighs 350 grams, but at the end of the first year it weighs 825 grams (1/2 of its final total). Because our brain grows so quickly, we must be born while the head can still pass through the birth canal, but this means that our body is not developed enough for us to take care of ourselves.

Our helplessness makes us completely dependent on the care of others who love us. Our parents (or other caretakers) must love us unconditionally or we will die. Although we need love to survive, there is not much about us that is lovable:

• our eyes are out of focus;
  
• we have a bad complexion and are missing our teeth;
  
• we disturb others' sleep and exhaust their energies;
  
• we are demanding and self-centered;
  
• we break all rules of human decency with glee;
  
• and we leak various bodily fluids at the most inappropriate times.
  

But our helplessness and vulnerability bring forth compassion from others who must care for us. Infants are accepted, loved, and cared for even though they are self-centered, manipulative, uncivilized creatures.

When we are born, we are completely identified with our mother. Because we began life united with the mother's body, we feel identified with the mother once we leave the womb. Gradually, we become aware that we are individuals separate from our mothers. When we cry, sometimes she doesn't come. She doesn't always want to play when we want to play. Sometimes when we are sad, she is happy, and when we are happy, she is sad.

As we grow older, we are forced to sleep alone in our rooms while our parents get to share each other's comfort in the dark. We begin to explore the world around us, and we discover there is a lot out there that is separate from ourselves. By the end of the first year, we are aware that at a certain point, we end, and the rest of the world begins. Those boundaries are defined by our bodies. The rest of our lives is spent defining and developing our identity and individuality. We develop ego boundaries that separate us from others and give us a unique identity, but they bring a sense of loneliness that makes us long to return to the first year of our lives when we experienced union with all things.

The experience of being loved unconditionally as infants never leaves us, but we can never experience it again. As we grow older, we soon discover that acceptance is conditional. After the first year, the child discovers that love is no longer unconditional but is given only when certain conditions, requirements, and demands are met. Through the rest of our lives, we find that people love us only when we deserve it. They value us only when we can meet some need they have. They accept us only when we live up to their expectations of us. This lesson is reinforced by parents, teachers, ministers, and employers. But we always long to be loved unconditionally again and to love others unconditionally.

The loneliness that comes with individuality causes anxiety, shame, and guilt. Loneliness and alienation are the universal experiences of people, according to Erich Fromm: "This awareness of ourselves as a separate entity, the awareness of our own short life span, of the fact that without our will we are born and against our will we die, that we will die before those whom we love, or they before ourselves, the awareness of our aloneness and separateness, of our helplessness before the forces of nature and of society, all this makes our separate, disunited existences unbearable prisons.... Our deepest need, then, is the need to overcome our separateness, to leave the prison of our aloneness" (Fromm, 1956, pp. 8-9).

II. The Cure for Alienation (1 John 4:8-12)

How do we overcome our loneliness and alienation? Charlie Brown once walked up to Lucy who was standing behind her booth that said, "Psychiatrist, 5 cents." He asked her, "Can you cure loneliness?" "I can cure anything," she assured him. "Can you cure deep-down, bottom-of-the-well, black-forever loneliness?" "All for the same nickel?" she asked. Charlie Brown was looking in the wrong place for help with his loneliness.

Experiencing unconditional love is the only true antidote to our loneliness, as Erich Fromm recognized: "The full answer to the problem of existence lies in the achievement of interpersonal union, fusion with another person, in love. This desire for interpersonal fusion is the most powerful striving in man. It is the most fundamental passion, it is the force which keeps the human race together, the clan, the family, society. The failure to achieve it means insanity or destruction--self-destruction or destruction of others. Without love, humanity cannot exist for a day" (Fromm, 1956, pp. 16-17). Victor Hugo also said: "The supreme happiness of life is the conviction that we are loved; loved for ourselves, or rather, in spite of ourselves."

Some people try to satisfy their need for acceptance in marriage, but this rarely works. Soon husbands discover that, when they leave their dirty socks on the floor, the wife does not accept them unconditionally. When wives do not keep their house as spotless as Mommy used to, the husband does not accept them unconditionally. Trying to satisfy our need for unconditional love in marriage places an impossible burden on another human being.

Gerald May warns against attempting to satisfy our need for unconditional love from human beings: "If you grow to invest all your longing for unconditional love in me, if you truly come to expect it from me, then your pain will be immense when I fail to measure up—as I most certainly will. Then you are left to deal with that pain, and you have only two options. You can become depressed, hating yourself and feeling that you were somehow unworthy of my love, or you can hate me, reviling me for my callous insensitivity" (1983, pp. 137-8).

Only one person is capable of loving us in all the right ways in all the right amounts at all the right times, and that person is God. First John 4:8 says that God is love. According to Leon Morris, "love is the essence of his being" and "love is the basic fact about God's nature" (1981, pp. 136-7). Daniel Migliore says that "God is self-sharing, other-regarding, community-forming love" (1991, p. 64). God cannot stop loving because love is what he is. Love is not simply what God does; love is what God is. For God to stop loving, he would have to stop being God.

A farmer printed on his weather vane the words, "God is love." Someone asked him if he meant to imply that the love of God was as fickle as the wind. The farmer answered: "No, I mean that whichever way the wind blows, God is love. If it blows cold from the North, or biting from the East, God is still love just as much as when the warm South or gentle West winds refresh our fields and flocks. God is always love."

God proved his love for us by giving his Son to die for us: "God's love was revealed among us in this way: God sent his only Son into the world so that we might live through him. In this is love, not that we loved God but that he loved us and sent his Son to be the atoning sacrifice for our sins" (1 John 4:9-10). Leon Morris says that "we will never understand what love means if we start with human response." Rather, he says, "it is the cross that brought a new dimension to religion, that gives us a new understanding of love." Apart from the cross, there is no reason to believe in a God of love (Morris, 1981, p. 129). About this verse, C. S. Lewis says simply: "In God there is no hunger that needs to be filled, only plenteousness that desires to give" (1960, p. 175).

Only God can satisfy our deep-seated need for unconditional acceptance. We sometimes place this burden on other people (parents, friends, spouse), but, according to Diogenes Allen, "only God has unlimited abundance and to seek from a creature more than it can give is to lose even the good of which it is capable" (1987, p. 118). Morton Kelsey rightly concludes that "seldom can we offer to others much truly self-giving love until we have received it from the Divine Lover in one way or another" (1981, p. 27).

When we experience God's love, we cannot keep it to ourselves but must share it with others: "Beloved, since God loved us so much, we also ought to love one another. No one has ever seen God; if we love one another, God lives in us, and his love is perfected in us" (1 John 4:11-12). When we allow God to fill us with his love, it becomes impossible to keep it within. His love flows out from us so that we become channels of love.

Love does not require giving up the individuality we have struggled so hard to attain. True love means that we maintain our separateness even as we bind our lives together by our care and concern for each other. When we love, we stretch our ego boundaries to include other human beings. Our ego boundaries become permeable so that others are allowed in. By loving others, our self becomes enlarged so that we lead richer, fuller lives.

III. The Risk of Love (1 John 4:16b-18)

Love overcomes our fear of rejection by God and others: "God is love, and those who abide in love abide in God, and God abides in them. Love has been perfected among us in this: hat we may have boldness on the day of judgment, because as he is, so are we in this world. There is no fear in love, but perfect love casts out fear; for fear has to do with punishment, and whoever fears has not reached perfection in love" (1 John 4:16b-18).

This passage refers primarily to our fear of judgment and condemnation, but it also has a wider application. Our experience of God's love gives us the freedom, security, and courage to risk letting down our guard and reaching out to others in love. The more we take the risk of loving, the easier it becomes to step out of our isolation and make ourselves vulnerable to others by caring for them.

Many are afraid to love because they don't want to risk rejection and hurt. C. S. Lewis said: "To love at all is to be vulnerable. Love anything, and your heart will certainly be wrung and possibly be broken" (1960, p. 169). Elton Trueblood wrote: "This then is the advice to give anybody who never wants to be hurt: don't care! Don't care and then nobody can ever say, 'I told you so.' Don't care and you cannot be wounded because of the caring. If you don't want to be hurt, don't marry, then you can't lose. If you never want to hurt, don't have a child. A child whom you love so much could be a terrible disappointment. If you never want to be hurt, don't enter the church. Even this redemptive fellowship, on which Christ depends, can itself be disappointing and manifestly unworthy. Don't care and then you will be safe. But those who take the road to safety pay a heavy price, the price of turning their backs upon all of the best things in life."

Throughout our lives, we have found that people disappoint us, put their own interests before ours, and at times betray us. When we move out of our isolation toward another human being, we risk that that person will move away from us, leaving us more painfully alone than we were before. The price of love is pain: People will let you down, people will move away, and people will die and leave you alone.

We can easily become cynical like Linus who said, "I love humanity; it's people who give me problems." But we cannot love just in theory. Love is not just an abstract ideal. To love, we must become involved in the lives of others, and that means we will often become messy and dirty and hurt. Even in the church, it is a challenge to act in loving ways toward others, as one poem says: "To dwell above with saints we love, That will be grace and glory; To live below with saints we know, That's another story!"

We can fear being used and abused so much that we refuse to put ourselves in the vulnerable position of acting in a loving way toward another person. But the alternative is worse: to not live life fully; to adopt a paranoid stance that leads to a life of fear; to shut the door of our heart and lock it so tight that no one can get in and we can't get out.

To live without loving is not living; it is a living death. It stifles personal growth and reduces our world to the circumference of our selves. We may think we are safe and secure behind our locked doors and shuttered windows, but it is a very lonely safety and a fearful security.

The experience of God's love liberates us to let others through our boundaries so that we can bond with them in compassion and care. Our strength and security derives from the fact that no matter what anyone else thinks of us, we know what God thinks of us—and he thinks more highly of us than is humanly possible. Because we know he loves us, we no longer feel a need to compete with others or protect ourselves from them.

IV. The Community of Love (1 John 4:19-21)

When we take the risk to love others as God has loved us, our love will often call forth love from them: "We love because he first loved us. Those who say, 'I love God,' and hate their brothers or sisters, are liars; for those who do not love a brother or sister whom they have seen, cannot love God whom they have not seen. The commandment we have from him is this: those who love God must love their brothers and sisters also" (1 John 4:19-21).

Daniel Migliore stresses that the concept of the Trinity means that "in God's own life there is an activity of mutual self-giving, a community of sharing, a 'society of love' (Augustine) that is the basis of God's history of love for the world narrated in Scripture" (1991, p. 61). Because God himself exists as a community of mutual love, he desires those he created in his image to experience the community of love. Migliore observes: "The divine life is social and is thus the source and power of inclusive community among creatures" (1991, p. 69).

God's love can reach through us to break down the walls that others have built around themselves. They will answer God's love with their love. They will return love to God who will fill them with more love, which they will then share with us. This completes the cycle of love. Morton Kelsey says that, when two people share God's love with each other, "it appears as if the Divine Lover were communicating with himself, using two of us human beings as the occasion and lifting us up into his love at the same time (1981, p. 45). Paul Tournier said: "How beautiful, how grand and liberating the experience is when people learn to help each other. It is impossible to overemphasize the need humans have to be really listened to, to be taken seriously, to be understood…. No one can develop freely in this world and find a full life without feeling understood by at least one person."

Unconditional love is the deepest longing of people, but they rarely experience it beyond their first year of life. The church should be a place for people to experience unconditional love. I love this quote from Jerry Cook: "Love is commitment and operates independently of what we feel or do not feel. We need to extend this love to everyone who comes into our church: 'Brother, I want you to know that I'm committed to you. You'll never knowingly suffer at my hands. I'll never say or do anything, knowingly, to hurt you. I'll always in every circumstance seek to help you and support you. If you're down and I can lift you up, I'll do that. Anything I have that you need, I'll share with you; and if need be I'll give it to you. No matter what I find out about you and no matter what happens in the future, either good or bad, my commitment to you will never change. And there's nothing you can do about it. You don't have to respond. I love you, and that's what it means'" (1979, p. 13).

A church is a place where people should be accepted in spite of their faults, where the irritations and personality quirks of others are tolerated, where people learn to resolve conflict in healthy ways. In the church, God loves you through me, he loves me through you, and our common experience of his love binds our lives together. In the church, instead of isolation, people experience fellowship; instead of enmity, reconciliation; instead of rejection, acceptance; instead of hostility, peace; instead of division, unity. The church is a group of people with hangups, neuroses, addictions, and sins who have joined hands to form a ragtag band of travelers who accompany each other on the spiritual journey. As we journey together following Christ's guidance, we experience from each other forgiveness, acceptance, freedom, compassion, empathy, and caring.

V. Conclusion

According to Romans 5:5, God pours his love into our hearts through the Holy Spirit that has been given to us. God's love overflows from us to others. Our experience of God's love radically transforms how we relate to others. Self-centeredness is replaced by concern for others; coldness is replaced by compassion; fear is replaced by courage; and hatred is replaced by love.

At the end of the movie The Elephant Man, Treves and Merrick are talking, and Merrick says, "I am happy every hour of the day. My life is full because I know I am loved. I gained myself. I could not say that were it not for you." May God help us be the one who shows others his transforming love.

Reflection Questions

1. What does it feel like to be lonely?

2. Why is it so difficult to build healthy relationships with other people?

3. How would it affect someone's life to believe that God is love?

4. How does experiencing God's love affect us?

5. Explain the connection between God's love for us and our love for others.

6. Why do many churches fail to provide people the unconditional love they need? Where else will people find it if they do not find it in church?

Next Topic: "How God Renews Our Selves"

Sources:

Allen, D. (1987). Love: Christian romance, marriage, friendship. Cambridge, MA: Cowley.

Cook, J., & Baldwin, S. C. Love, acceptance & forgiveness: Equipping the church to be truly Christian in a non-Christian world. Ventura, CA: Regal.

Fromm, E. (1956). The art of loving. New York: Harper & Row.

Kelsey, M. T. (1981). Caring: How can we love one another?
New York: Paulist Press.

Lewis, C. S. (1960). The four loves. New York: Harcourt, Brace.

May, G. G. (1983). Will and spirit: A contemplative psychology. San Francisco: Harper & Row.

Migliore, D. L. (1991). Faith seeking understanding: An introduction to Christian theology. Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans.

Morris, L. (1981). Testaments of love: A study of love in the Bible. Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans.