The Love Chapter

Cindy and I have been reading through a book called "Love is..." by Les and Leslie Parrott. The book's 17 chapters break down I Corinthians 13--often referred to as the Love chapter of the Bible--and provide thoughts on each individual version, as well as 17 different translations of this most famous of scriptures.

Last week, we read the J. B. Phillips translation, published in 1958. I had never heard of J. B. Phillips, nor ever knew that he had written his own translation of the Bible, but I think I'd like to pick one up after seeing how he handled I Corinthians 13. Listen for yourself how artfully he captures a profound message that we perhaps know too well to fully appreciate.

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I Corinthians 13
Translation by J. B. Phillips

"If I speak with the eloquence of men and of angels, but have no love, I become no more than blaring brass or crashing cymbal. If I have the gift of foretelling the future and hold in my mind not only all human knowledge but the very secrets of God, and if I also have that absolute faith that can move mountains, but have no love, I amount to nothing at all. If I dispose of all that I possess, yes, even if I give my own body to be burned, but have no love, I achieve precisely nothing.

"The love of which I speak is slow to lose patience--it looks for a way of being constructive. It is not possessive. It is neither anxious to impress nor does it cherish inflated ideas of its own importance.

"Love has good manners and does not pursue selfish advantage. It is not touchy. It does not keep account of evil or gloat over the wickedness of other people. On the contrary, it is glad with all good men when Truth prevails.

"Love knows no limit to its endurance, no end to its trust, no fading of its hope; it can outlast anything. It is, in fact, the one thing that still stands when all else has fallen.

"For if there are prophecies, they will be fulfilled and done with; if there are "tongues," the need for them will disappear; if there is knowledge, it will be swallowed up in truth. For our knowledge is always incomplete and our prophecy is always incomplete, and when the Complete comes, that is the end of the Incomplete.

"When I was a little child I talked and felt and thought like a little child. Now that I am a man my childish speech and feeling and thought have no further significance for me.

"At present we are looking at puzzling reflections in a mirror. The time will come when we shall see reality whole and face to face! At present all I know is a little fraction of the truth, but the time will come when I shall know it as fully as God now knows me!

"In this life we have three great lasting qualities--faith, hope and love. But the greatest of them is love."

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I especially like the line, "[love] can outlast anything. It is, in fact, the one thing that still stands when all else has fallen."

To me, it serves as a challenge: when all else has fallen and only my love for others is standing, will I be proud of what I have invested in that most eternal of objectives?

For no matter what else I have earned and achieved in this life, if my investment in love has been small, I will be the poorest of souls.

My Testimony

Cindy and I just joined the South Shore Baptist Church in Hingham, and we were both asked to share out testimony on Sunday morning, February 17th. I was also baptized that day as I had never been baptized as a believer, which is something the baptists (even though SSBC is only historically connected to the baptist denomination) are pretty big on. I agree with the practice, actually, so long as no one thinks not being baptized as a believer somehow interferes with one's salvation. It's a nice tradition, as a full-bodied physical experience is entirely appropriate as a public expression of something so life transformational as accepting Christ's gospel. But that's a whole other discussion. Back to me sharing my testimony...this is what I read in front of the church, standing in the baptismal pool just before I got dunked:

It’s astounding when I pause and recall that God has worked in my life in a very personal and active way. Who am I that the creator of the universe should even consider my situation? But I know that if God didn’t get involved, I would certainly now feel that life is a mostly lonely, disappointing and dangerous experience.
God blessed me by bringing me into a family that trusted in Jesus Christ. What I observed most growing up was that my parents were big on service to others. I learned that the church was where you labored in love to serve in some capacity. Fulfilling the mission of the church meant tithing my allowance, always going to youth group, singing in the youth choir, and mowing the pastor’s lawn for free. It was a warm and comfortable place to be, and I felt like I belonged, but the message of the gospel was a bit lost on me until the summer before 8th grade.

When I was 14, I attended a summer camp where the counselors and camp directors were filled with something that was entirely new to me. Although I’d spoken to Jesus in prayer many times, I’d never considered asking Christ to take up residence in me, to be my savior, rescuer and redeemer. During that week, I decided for the first time that although I already had a relationship with God, I needed to declare for myself that my sins made me unfit to call on my God, except by accepting the sacrifice of Jesus’ life in exchange for mine.

It was a quiet moment with no fanfare, and yet I knew something profound had happened.

I continued to grow, excelling in some things while concealing shameful parts of myself from everyone around me. Putting on the good Christian face became such a natural act, that I eventually believed that what I had was as good as the Christian life could get. I seemed to be respected among many people, but life was burdensome, and I was always afraid of my darker side being found out.

I had no idea there was such a freedom in being authentic with myself, with God, and even with others. I had failed to internalize that accepting Christ as my savior meant he removed from me the stain of my sinful nature, removing also my shame as my story was not so different from anyone else’s. Resting on the grace of God meant there was no longer anything to hide, there was no longer any game to try to play and win.

I started to come to an understanding of these truths after college. In my 20’s and early 30’s, I endured a long, drawn-out battle with depression during which I finally gave up hope of trying to look good and appear as if I had it all together. It’s now clear to me that it was actually God’s great wisdom and even mercy that planned for me to walk through some of those very dark valleys, for the freedom and joy I finally came to experience from giving up my quest to be “a good Christian” is worth far more than all the difficulties and trials I faced.

Without those trials, I would not have learned that most important lesson, that my greatest efforts produce only disappointment, but that trust in the Lord and his sovereign ways frees me to live the way God always intended. Without the burden of trying to earn my worth, importance or righteousness, I can enjoy all that life has to offer, and more freely offer myself to others, whether in service or in simply being a friend along the journey.

For Cindy's testimony, visit our .Mac website at http://web.mac.com/cindylyle.

Relationship Problems - The Paradigm Shift

I'm quite sure most people would say they don't like problems in their relationships, and some may avoid them at all costs, even to the point of deterioration. I completely identified with this when I was dating. In a dating relationship, problems produced much mental processing mixed with angst and worry. This was because the problem consisted not only of itself, but raised larger questions of whether the relationship should continue or whether this issue was big enough to end the relationship entirely. Making a decision as big as "Do I stick with this person or do I venture out again in the hope of finding something better?" involves negotiations between the head and the heart that can be intense enough to induce headaches. It's a very difficult decision, and decisions are inherently tough on our minds because we spend so much time trying to work them out, considering all options, weighing the various outcomes and repercussions. So, the toll that a relationship crisis takes on a person and the relationship turns out to be much bigger than just the crisis itself. Even the hint of a problem induces a sense of foreboding because we don't like being in that state of having to figure out what we should ultimately do.

Marriage changes all of this. If Cindy and I have a conflict, I don't have to spend any mental energy considering whether this conflict is a relationship breaker. My brain never hurts from the intense speculation of whether my life would be better without her, and considering having to start over again in the next relationship.

In marriage, the issue is vastly simpler and the process much more straight forward.  It involves just a few things:

• Why is Cindy upset and/or why am I upset?
• What is the root emotion that underlies the tension of the present moment?
• What needs to be communicated to address this emotional injury?

Of course there is more involved in conflict resolution, but the point is it's all focused around the problem itself.

Resolving marital conflict is still not trivial, but it's infinitely better than also trying to decide the fate of the relationship. And because you are sure the relationship will survive the conflict, you are also assured the relationship will be stronger because of it; for every resolved conflict is a step closer to truly knowing the other person and sharing greater intimacy.

As a result, I no longer fear a crisis in my relationship like I used to; in fact, I almost look forward to them as I know they will produce good fruit in my marriage!

How's that for a paradigm shift?!

The Greatest Commandments, the first sins

Cindy and I were reading a book from our new member class and came across an interesting analysis I hadn't encountered before.

It's starts off with the greatest commandments (as declared by Jesus):

1. Love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, soul, strength and mind
2. Love thy neighbor as thyself

I don't think I would offend too many people by claiming that these two principles are by far the most important lessons in the entire Bible, and that if you're striving after these two, the rest of what God asks of us will more or less fall into place. That may be an oversimplification, but this is a blog, not a theological discourse.

The interesting part of the analysis was the juxtaposition of these commandments with the first two sins. In the Genesis account of creation, Adam and Eve are tempted to question God's prohibition on eating from the tree of life. They are told God was not being truthful with them when he said they would die from eating it. Adam and Eve trust the serpent rather than God. They failed the first commandment in that one act.

The second sin recorded in the Bible (side-stepping the question of whether Cain's less than pleasing offering to God was a sin) is that of Cain murdering his brother Abel. This is clearly a violation of the second commandment, and both sides of it at that. For in order to have loving thy neighbor as thyself be a good thing, one must presumably actually love thyself. Cain doesn't love his brother nor does he love himself. In my experience, in fact, very few of us love and accept ourselves, which makes it all the more difficult to love one another.

I liked this bit of parallelism as presented in the book our new member class was reading not because it's all that profound or terribly enlightening, but because it points to how the two greatest commandments are the very tools to combat the two greatest sins:

• failing to put our full faith and trust in what God is telling us is best for us, and
• failing to be comfortable with ourselves, and being able to love our neighbor, even when he shows us up

I bet if I took the time to think about it, the whole of the 10 commandments would be rendered moot if only we could truly live by the two most important.

I guess I shouldn't have been at all surprised to see that the greatest commandments simultaneously show us the right way to live, and shield us from the wrong way. God's good (and highly efficient) like that.

Why Fall is my Favorite Season

Holy Cow! Has it really been over a year since my last post? Well, meeting the girl of your dreams, proposing, starting a new job, moving to a new apartment, getting married, and moving Cindy's stuff to the new apartment can take up a bit of one's time. Also, Cindy and I are putting up a new website of our own, where my blogs (which will be much more frequently updated) will live. But that's not what this post is about...

Fall is definitely my favorite season. I love to camp, hike and bike, and the fall is just the best time of the year to do that. It’s dryer than spring, cooler than summer, and the colors are, of course, a visual feast. Plus, I actually enjoy winter and cold temperatures when you have to get all bundled up, so fall is the time when that is coming, but it’s not quite so cold that you can’t spend the day outside. I think it’s mostly about the colors, though. Especially if you happen to visit a lake and see the trees all around the shore reflected in the water. Finally, if spring is the season of new birth, then fall is the season of life receding. It’s not as if the natural world dies for the winter, but it retracts. And it does so with such glory and grace in the changing of the leaves. It’s nature’s last big show before the off season, and it’s a spectacular one.

DP's very cool posts on Creating Round Borders for web pages

Both of these posts on Dave Paroulek's blog are quite interesting and well written:

• Create Round Borders on the Fly
• Using CSS to Make Round Borders