Backsliding in Love

In our conversation Saturday we expressed our consternation at how often we fail to love, often because we react in passion to events that set us off. I related a disagreement I had with my dad, whom I love very much, but not then. Another discussed a similar altercation with a co-worker. The third observed that she was trying to learn rules of "dis-engagement:" Don't be judgmental; don't be drawn in; allow the person you are dealing with (trying to love) to be unreasonable.

As happens often enough, I soon after read a passage that helped me focus on this backsliding and its remedy. In a nutshell: Real love is participation in "divine kenosis." Here is what Kierkegaard says in Works of Love:

Christianly to descend from heaven means limitlessly to love the person, just as you see him. If, then, you will become perfect in love, strive to fulfill this duty, in loving to love the person one sees, to love him just as you see him, with all his imperfections and weaknesses, love him as you see him when he is utterly changed, when he no longer loves you, when he perhaps turns indifferent away or turns to love someone else, love him as you see him when he betrays and denies you.

Quoted from Oliver Davies, A Theology of Compassion, at p. 93.

It shouldn't be too hard to understand why Christian love is a command. ("A new command I give you: Love one another as I have loved you (John 13:34).") We are all backsliders. At this point we should ask forgiveness and, in surrender, try (yet again) to follow the path of kenotic love, the path Jesus walked, to which he beckons: "Follow me."

Listen to "She Drives Me Crazy" (Fine Young Cannibals)

Listen to "What is Love, Anyway?" Howard Jones

Listen to "Heaven is a Place On Earth" (Belinda Carlisle)

Chesed - kindness

Chesed, chen, rachamim – kindness, mercy, favor


Balthasar goes on to describe the nature of the OT covenant. He does it by using several Hebrew words that in some cases give the concept a flavor that has been altered or nuanced differently through translation. One of these words is chesed.

Quoting from pages 159 and 160:

“Chesed belongs primarily to the sovereign Lord who establishes the alliance, in this sense the word means … benevolence, grace, love; but following on from this, the inferior partner who enters the covenant must live in accordance with the favor which has been bestowed on him, he must … reflect it back and order his general behavior … in keeping with chesed.”

This conduct appropriate to the favor bestowed must be based on the root of the covenant being “a personal, benevolent, loving attitude that indicates and opens up a sphere of mutual trust.”

“Naturally, in the alliance between God and Israel, it is only God who can show chesed … God offers man his grace like a gift to a bride so that the only possible response of man to God is the free gift of his heart.”

“… chesed cannot be thought of without the idea of reliability and truthfulness, (emeth), and … salvation and pacification (shalom)” these are closely related to chesed. “To appeal to God’s chesed does not mean merely to cry out to his grace, but also to remind him of his covenantal fidelity by giving signs of repentance and conversion which allow God to see that one still stands by this covenant of faithfulness. One dares to remind God of his fidelity to the covenant and to depend on this as something that is already present by grace … the entire mutuality of the alliance rests on the originally one-sided initiative of God’s grace … especially when the man who has sinned has once seen that he has no right to God’s mercy (rachamim) … a new and free bestowal of God’s grace is necessary in order for the relationship of chesed and emeth to be restored.”

I find the warmth, protection and love offered by God in his covenant very comforting. Being a sinner though, I might be a bit sheepish about reminding God of his promised faithfulness.

Love as Dis-possession

In our Sat discussion we asked, "Where does compassion come from?" The three parables discussed (The Good Samaritan, Prodigal Son, Rich Man and Lazarus) all have a theme of awakening to true love, which includes compassion and forgiveness. Where does it come from?

If eros is possessive love, agape love, including compassion, is dis-possessive love. It is essentially the reaction to dis-possessive evil. "The assumption of another's suffering as one's own entails a radical decentering of the self, and putting at risk of the self, in the free re-enactment of the dispossessed state of those who suffer." Oliver Davies, A Theology of Compassion, at p. 17. This movement (or need for movement) can be seen in all three parables noted above. Mr. Davies cites Etty Hillesum and Edith Stein, both who decided to share in the physical fate of the Jewish victims of the Shoah.

Mr. Davies points out that compassion is recognized as a central element in a society:

The principle of self-denying or kenotic love, of which compassion is a particularly radical manifestation, appears to touch all levels of human existence and, indeed, to make harmonious social existence possible. Without such a principle of self-emptying for the sake of the other, enacted in some degree by a myriad people in countless different ways, most human societies could not keep at bay the violent and selfish tendencies of the human spirit. Despite all the ambiguities of human socialization and motication, the fact that a multitude of ordinary individuals do repeatedly subordinate their own interests to those of another in everyday situations of life can be construed as the very principle of civilization. . . . Such acts of exceptional self-risking love, motivated by compassion for another individual, constitute for many a point of unsurpassable meaning.

Ibid. at p. 21. It thus appears that sacrificial love takes its place at the top of the scale of values, in both secular and Christian traditions. Here there is a point of agreement. Dis-interested love is of the highest interest and value.

How different from the point of view expressed in an earlier post in which the most insignificant desire of an "actual" human being outweighs that of a "potential" human life, whose expectation is decreed to be zero. In fact, a "potential" human being becomes actual in relation to its mother and others who love him (her). As Davies puts it:

The very earliest contact of a child with the 'world' or non-self is in the form of the mother, or principal carer, who embraces the child in the field of an all-encompassing relation. . . . An open I-Thou relation of self to self provides the existential condition for the emergence of personhood. A child is constantly treated by adults as an adult human being in the making, with all the rights and privileges of adult personhood, and so an existential space is created into which the child can grow as a process of self-determination in personhood. The essence of self, as person, originates in the mutuality of persons therefore, a relation which is animated and quickened by the creative recognition of personhood by one self of another.

Ibid at p. 21. There is no point at which actuality emerges. All is potency moving into actuality, at whatever age, it seems. And so, rather than to be based on selfish autonomy, our social outlook should be founded on agape love, which is altruism and compassion. Only by such means are human beings made. And human beings are being made (or unmade) from the moment we experience them, born or unborn, young or old.

As Pope Benedict says, the way of love is love. To learn to love, love.

Listen to Kris Kristofferson, "Why Me Lord?"

Covenant - An Old Idea?

Quoing Vol. 6 of The Glory of the Lord

“The people will be granted admittance to God’s own royal realm, to the extent that it is willing to accommodate itself to the images and attitudes that hold good for the king.” This is the way Balthasar frames the covenantal relationship.


Balthasar continues, "Deuteronomy … separates the paradox of the living community that has been established into its two complimentary parts: the utter one-sidedness of the grace of God, which establishes the community, and the utter mutuality which is based therein: word and answer, love and answering love, directive and obedience.” P.155

This covenant is made:

With the election of this one people, for which no reason can be given:

For you are a people holy to the Lord your God; the Lord your God has chosen you out of all the peoples on earth to be his people, his treasured possession. It was not because you were more numerous than any other people that the Lord set his heart on you and chose you – for you were the fewest of all peoples. Deut. 7:6-7

Without any merit on the people’s part:

Do not say to yourself, “My power and the might of my own hand have gotten me this wealth.” Deut. 8:17

On the basis of love alone:

Know therefore that the Lord your God is God, the faithful God who maintains covenant loyalty with those who love him and keep his commandments, to a thousand generations, …. (Deut.7:9) … yet the Lord set his heart in love on your ancestors alone and chose you, their descendants after them, out of all the peoples, as it is today. Deut. 10:15

The only possible response to this love is unlimited love:

You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your might. (Deut.6:5) You shall love the Lord your God, therefore, and keep his charge, his decrees, his ordinances and his commandments always. (Deut. 11:1) “If you would only heed his every commandment that I am commanding you today – loving the Lord your God, and serving him with all your heart and all your soul … (Deut. 11:13)



To the Israelites this covenant would look like a pretty good deal. Rescued from the captivity of the Egyptians, being sheltered from the vicissitudes of the environment and protected from the many peoples who could ravage them, God’s proven protection was an offer that could not be refused.

What is the relevance to us? We are so sophisticated. Many of us have the necessities of life – food, shelter and clothing. We have established a civilization that for the most part protects us from famine, floods and other hardships of the natural world. We have established laws and ethical standards to safeguard our rights. So now we have become self-assured. That old concept of a covenant is out of fashion. We can protect and provide for ourselves.

This reminds me of the story of the business man on his way, and late for an important meeting. Arriving and finding it difficult to find a parking space, he begins to pray and offer to God all sorts of promises if he could just get a spot to park. After reaching desperation levels and promising much to God he finds an opening just where he needs it. With much relief he offers his final prayer, “Never mind Lord, I found one.”

Awakening To Love

Chapter 7 of Pope Benedict's book Jesus of Nazareth (this week's reading assignment) focuses on three parables: The Good Samaritan, the Prodigal Son, and The Rich Man and Lazarus. The Pope believes the theme of these parables and parables in general is "Wake up, Wake up to Love!"

A parable, the pope says, is a way to bring distant things to closer sight, or to lead the listener onto a journey. (p. 192). The story of the parable is a familiar image to invite listeners to "go beyond their existing horizons, to come to know and understand things previously unknown." Ibid.

Each of the parables discussed invites us to awaken to love. The Good Samaritan story invites the listener to compassion, to view himself or herself as neighbor to all, rather than to include or exclude others in the tribe or social group. The Prodigal Son story invites the listener to walk through the younger son's life history and to see that true freedom lies "in my father's home," rather than in selfish escapade. The primary love here is of the father's forgiveness, which heals. The story of the rich man and Lazarus at his gate invites the listener to see that true riches lie in love, first with God, then with our fellow humans, and never with material goods and hedonism.

In each case the parable also invites us to awaken to truth of love here and now. The eschaton is not an other-worldly existence, but is experienced now, in this world. Once we wake to reality as it is in truth, we can truly start to live.

The pope ends with a discussion of the rich man's demand for a sign. Why a sign? All men want reassurance that the asserted "better way" will indeed lead to the better life. The rich man is not gratified by yet another sign, but we readers of scripture know that "the sign of Jonas" is actually Jesus himself, who has been sent by the Father to invite us, in part via parables, to awaken to the truth of love, which is Jesus himself.

Listen to Bach, "Sleepers Awake!"

Why Not Abortion AFTER Birth?

Infanticide apparently has been around for all of human history. See here. However, Christianity has uniformly opposed infanticide. One could expect a culture receding from Christian belief to return again to child killing. That is the essential meaning of abortion, and explains why the Catholic Church has always opposed the practice.

With pre-birth abortion established, certain medical ethicists are now openly arguing for after birth abortion. According to these ethicists (following Peter Singer), overt infanticide is ethically permissible. The authors define a fetus or newborn baby as only a "potential" person and flatly state that:

however weak the interests of actual people can be, they will always trump the alleged interest of potential people to become actual ones, because this latter interest amounts to zero.

The differences between a secular, utilitarian mindset and Christianity become unmistakable at this point. Christianity views a fetus and a new-born as full and actual human beings, no matter their medical or health condition. They must be protected by law and society no less than any other "actual" person.

This issue came home to me on reading the Pope's discussion in Ch. 7 of Jesus of Nazareth, of the parable of the Good Samaritan (at p. 197).

The Christian perspective on the "neighbor" is that I become a neighbor to the other, whom I identify as myself. In other words, I think of the other person as another me. "The question is about me. I have to become the neighbor, and when I do, the other person counts for me 'as myself.'" Ibid. This is a stronger identification than when I consider someone in my own familial or social group to be my neighbor. To see myself in another, in all others, erases all social boundaries. If I identify any other as myself, I became neighbor to all; no restriction may properly be drawn as to the essential dignity of human beings, including the asserted distinction between "potential" and "actual" human beings. This is a core Christian truth.

We all need to pray that God may help us to maintain our grasp on this (Christian) truth in the face of the drumbeat that is sounding toward active infanticide and euthanasia. Otherwise, the killing of abortion, as horrible as it has been at 50 million strong, will mark just the beginning of our killing.

What's Happenin'?

In W.H. Auden's poem, "In Memory of W.B. Yeats," Auden writes (in stanza II) about the nature of poetry:

For poetry makes nothing happen: it survives
In the valley of its saying where executives
Would never want to tamper; it flows south
From ranches of isolation and the busy griefs,
Raw towns that we believe and die in; it survives,
A way of happening, a mouth.

These are well-known lines. "Poetry makes nothing happen" . . . nothing an executive [someone who makes things happen] would be interested in. Still, poetry (as the last line says) is a "way of happening."

We don't have to "make things happen" in order to experience the haps and mishaps, the fortunes and misfortunes, of life. After all, life does "happen"! Poetry is a "way" to make sense of life's happenings, to discover meaning, even though it doesn't change anything. The "mouth" of poetry can be a mouth to wisdom.

I think of "the way of poetry" as comparable to the "way" mentioned in the first Psalm (and others like Psalm 119). It is a way, not of sinners, but of meditating "day and night" on God's law, on the true things that bring good fortune. Auden likens the "way" to a river or stream; Psalm one does the same, asserting that the way of meditation on God's law leads to thriving and fruitfulness, because it unwinds under God's loving gaze.

Followers of Christ also thought of themselves as "people of the Way" (Acts 9:2), following in the footsteps of the Christ who went before, walking as disciples of love. What happens along this "way" is what matters most in life: love and its fruitfulness.