Freedom is about choice, and there are two kinds of freedom. There is a freedom to choose to do whatever you want, and another kind of freedom to choose to live for others. One freedom leads in, the other out. One freedom is living with responsibility, the other with disregard except for self. One freedom is full of meaning and purpose, the other is ultimately empty and worthless. One freedom leads to heaven, the other to hell.
Love is a choice…
When I was younger, late high school and especially in college, I identified with Descartes’ “I think, therefore I am.” It was the motto for the Age of Rationalism. It is still often used in today’s postmodernism.
After finding faith, or rather faith found me, I believe that Descartes had it backwards—I am, therefore I think. My thinking, my thoughts and even emotions and such are part of me. They exist because I exists, not the other way around. You could make a case for that is what the original statements says, but either way, it causes one to over-identify ones being with their thoughts (and emotions). I am more than just my thoughts and emotions. (Perhaps over-identification with thoughts as being makes it easier to justify abortion and euthanisia?)
Today, I stumbled upon the title of book about an Eastern Orthodox archimandrite named Elder Sophrony, written by his grand nephew. The title plays off of Descartes famous saying while transmitting the real truth—I love, therefore I am.
I guess you could replace the word love with life and still mean the same thing, but love is a much more powerful word. It alludes to the very nature and essence of God, Being Itself (see 1 John 4:7-8). Love is the very essence of existence and being. Love is not a part of me; I am part of love. Life is not something I have; I am a part of life.
I love, therefore I am. When God whispers, “To be,” God is saying that your being is love; go and be and do what you are.
Love can wait to give; lust can’t wait to get.
Christopher West was on Life on the Rock last night to answer questions related to Pope John Paul II’s Theology of the Body. Someone asked if he had any prayers to resist sexual temptation. I liked his response because it opens the door to a way that I sometimes forget.
He said that sexual temptations, as with most other temptations, many people believe that there are only two possible responses: indulge or repress. You have these urgings, hunger, feelings, emotions, energy or whatever word you want to use. Indulging is what you are trying to avoid, so that leaves repression. Repression is no good because it will return stronger, and eventually explode. (The case can be made for the explosion of pornography in the 20th century after the repressive Victorian age.) And just “managing” or “getting by” or “just living with it” is not an answer either.
There is a third option. It is to open your heart to the gift of redemption. It is to realize (awaken) to the fact that our broken world has twisted and warped our desires and urges, and to open up to God so that our disordered desires may be straightened out, to be put in order. As West said, the hunger is not the problem; the problem is that we only know to eat out of the dumpster when there is this magnificent banquet table over here.
Here is West’s prayer to resist sexual temptation:
Lord, thank You for the beauty of this person.
Thank You for the gift of my own sexual desires.
Lord, I recognize this twisted, lustful desire in my heart,
and I ask You please Jesus,
by the power of Your death and resurrection,
to untwist in me what sin has twisted,
so that I might come to experience sexual desire
as you created it to be,
as the desire to love in Your image.
I like this prayer. It is a good model for prayer for almost any kind of temptation. It recognizes the desire or urge without giving into it or repressing it. It recognizes the other person as a person with dignity and respect, not as an object to be used and manipulated. It recognizes our powerlessness, our poverty to channel this energy properly, and offers it up to God.
But—there is always a “but”—be forewarned. Something must die in a prayer for redemption. What must die is that twisted desire. But it will be transformed (redeemed) into an honest and wholesome (holy?) desire that is ordered properly by respecting the other person, respecting you, and respecting God. That’s freedom, not the slavery of the temptations of your urges and desires. (Hmmm…that’s kinda like a little mini-Trinity—the other person, you, and God.)
Hunger is not the problem. The problem is where are you going to feed it, at the dumpster or the banquet table? As West said, get yourself in the shape of a cross and stay there until you have made the passover from lust to love.
(Note: The quote at the beginning of this post is a fairly good litmus test for lust or love.)
From the movie, Red Planet:
Chantilas: [Suppose] we just finished poisoning the earth and everyone was dead in a hundred years. Then what was the point of anything?
Art, beauty—all gone—the Greeks, the Constitution, people dying for freedom, ideas. None of it meant anything?
What about religion? Do we give up on God too?
Gallagher: You didn’t just give up being a scientist one day, did you?
Chantilas: I realized science couldn’t answer any of the really interesting questions. So, I turned to philosophy. I’ve been searching for God ever since.
Who knows, I may pick up a rock and it’ll say underneath, “Made by God.” The universe is full of surprises.
This scene jumps out at me since it is very loosely like me, except I am no longer expecting to find the “proof” Chantilas wants. And the word “searching” is no longer correct. I am seeking to be awake—to listen more intently, to be with and aware of God’s presence. Science cannot do that, not directly.
This scene also points to the essence of Existential despair—what is the meaning and purpose of it all, of life? Courage is needed to face this question. Science does not give me courage. It cannot explain sacrifice.
What did God whisper to the bird to make him sing?
What was said to the rose to make her unfold?
And to the tree to stand tall and spread its canopy?
What did the cricket hear to make him chirp all night?
And what word stirs the wind to blow,
Sometimes gentle, sometimes with might?
It must be simple and quite profound,
For all of nature listens intently
And reflects its possibilities.
But why do I seem not to recall
What God said to me?
In the stillness of my heart,
When all is quiet inside and out,
I can hear God’s word to me.
Indeed, it is simple and most profound.
It may be the hardest,
and yet easiest,
thing to do.
It is the very same word God says,
To the bird and to the rose,
To every living creature,
And to every created thing,
In each and every moment.
God’s word is simple,
And straight forward.
God whispers, be.
— iHermit of CowPi