Love Transcends

Only love does things that are impossible.  It alters what was unalterable.  It resolves every riddle and repairs the irretrievably broken.  Knowledge, prophecy, philanthropy, passion … they won't last.  But as my sister so eloquently texted me today:

- love transcends

Not in a rosy way

But it does

Everything of lasting good comes from love.  And love, when you get down to its core, is always between two actual people (often, one of them is God :)). It's not between two nations; not between two people groups; not between a person and an ideal, or a person and a place.  Real love is personal, because LOVE HIMSELF is a person.

Other motivations for good works put up good fronts and seem to have good results, but their fruit and their power will eventually fade (or rot). [1 Cor. 13:1-3] 

I was stunned when I read this morning that the High and Lofty One, who inhabits eternity, said "I dwell in the high and holy place, WITH him who has a contrite and humble spirit, to revive the spirit of the humble and to revive the heart of the contrite ones."

Who but Love Himself would take sinners (sorry ones) up to dwell in His high and holy place, so that He can revive their hearts and spirits?  He's not afraid we'll soil His pretty temple, or sin again in His holy place.  He's concerned to heal and comfort us, because He knows our fragility.  And its not just about being present with us, for He didn't just come to where we were (though He did do that) -- He's brought us to His high home to do the healing and reviving.  [Isaiah 57:15]

No "sane" human would do this.  Even a mother calls to the muddy child to stay outside on the doorstep, until she can rush to him with a damp cloth and shoe-removing hands. And she is the most loving of us all. 

Who but Love would carry me into His home, His land, without concern for himself or the mess I might make?  Love transcends—it is beyond reason and it overcomes every objection.  It is selfless, and it is powerful.

I realized tonight that of the very few men I've ever been seriously interested in, all had one thing in common.  Marriage to any of them would have necessitated, at some point, moving to a foreign country, learning a new language, and entering a second culture. 

This is rather shocking – I’m not an adventurer.  (Or maybe I am more than I think!)  There are perhaps practical explanations for this – I was always a fish-out-of-water, growing up.   Tall, white, intellectual … raised in the inner city.  I never fully “belonged”, except within the family unit and my relationship with Jesus.  So the in-between feeling of a whole new culture wouldn’t be all that strange to me.  But that’s not the real explanation for my willingness to embark on such life-altering, hazardous journeys. 

I know how to count the cost.  But I also know a few things about love. 

Song of Solomon says that a man could give all the wealth of his house to gain love, and it would be utterly despised.  But once he has gained love, once he loves, he will rightly give everything he has because of it.  God even gave His son. 

I couldn’t ever give my life in order to gain love, but I would give my life because of love.  The two are vastly different.  (Here is a most helpful analogy for understanding faith and works, by the way.) 

I know that my sister was correct:  love transcends.  It transcends the cost and it transcends the objections.  This is why I am willing for love to come with cost.  The value of the love will be greater than the value of the cost.  I know it would be that way in my “little story”, because it has already been proven through my part in His Great Story.  Love has already transcended all reason in the way God relates to me – He pulls me into His house, while I am still a potential liability, with an indisputable record of sin.  Why?  Because in His love He wants to revive me, and that’s greater to Him than the price He will pay for having me there.  And I have courage to go in, even when I know I’m a potential liability and completely unworthy…because I know that in the end His love will have (and already has—hooray for the cross!) transcended every objection to my presence in His home and my place at His table. 

This is the Great Story that overarches all other stories.  It defines our lives, and has determined our eternities.  May I live this Great Story in my little story -- the Love that never fails, never ends, and transcends all else. 

Esther and the Black Swan

One of the things I love most about Esther's heart is this…on the night she was sent to the king, "she asked for nothing except what Hegai, the king's eunuch, advised."  Where is the pride, where is the greed, where is the human trust (confidence) in one's own beauty and strength?  Our heroines today are smart, capable, and prepared for all possibilities.  They think on their feet and creatively apply their knowledge and experience to the problem at hand—eventually gaining mastery over it.  Heroism often consists of the bravery to creatively utilize and deploy resources (be they intellectual or physical) in the face of fear.  

Never, ever, do they step back and say: “I don’t know what to do here.  Will you, who I consider wiser, please make the choice for me?”  That, we all know, is not the definition of a hero.

But this Esther—she trusted one who was wiser than she, believing that he knew what would best please that king.  It's this kind of trust we exercise when we lay down our own self-lives in favor of what the Holy Spirit says (even when, and particularly when, laying it down means real felt-loss).  And it's this sort of trust that paves the way for Him to place us in positions of power (not only does it make the opportunity, it makes us the sort who could handle that power well).  And it's only this sort of trust that creates a woman who will fling her life into God's hands and abandon herself, when the stakes are so high, and everything she’s gained is on the line. 

I had forgotten today was Purim when my thoughts slipped to Esther this afternoon.  In fact, I had spent the last hour learning about Nassim Taleb’s concept of “antifragility” and wondering what God thought; was there scriptural basis for the idea that the best way to live is to benefit from stresses and chaos, rather than to just be resilient to them (which he calls being “robust”) or negatively impacted (which he calls “fragile”)?  That we need these stresses, in order to fully live?  And if he was on to something true, what was the full truth?  Even if extraordinarily intelligent and perceptive, he is limited to the scope of human sight.  What does Divine sight see? 

It seemed there is scriptural precedent.  This came to mind immediately: “For our light affliction, [referring, ironically, to our bodies being abused and dying!] which is but for a moment, is working for us a far more exceeding and eternal weight of glory,”  (2 Cor. 4)

That doesn't imply just surviving, but gaining.  How is it possible to actually gain from the “Black Swans” of history (unexpected and unprecedented events that change history) and the tragedies of life?  (Or, for that matter, from the smaller "tribulations" that history wouldn't call Black Swans, but that definitely rock our personal worlds!  Esther endured more of these than many of us ever will.)

Businessmen reviewing Taleb’s book pointed out one great flaw: it’s great philosophy, but how?  How were they to practically implement the concept of “antifragile” into their businesses and economics?  You can’t just become antifragile by wanting to.  You can’t just turn affliction into glory by wanting it.   

What is the how in the equation?  Esther answered me. 

Trust.  Humility and trust in someone outside herself made it possible for her to turn the worst genocidal event of her lifetime into one of the greatest deliverances ever.  The road to that victory was paved with small-scale personal-sized “Black Swans” of Taleb’s definition (improbable and unpredictable events), the “trials and tribulations” of ours, and it ended in a great upset (ethnically and economically) for that nation.  A great Black Swan.  How Esther responded each step along the way—with trust—is what defined the outcome of her predicament.  Her life has become the story of an unlikely girl who rescued an entire nation, rather than a helpless girl who endured the injustice of human-trafficking.  (After all, that’s how the first chapter of her story plays out—snatched from the possibility of a real life, to populate a pagan man’s sexual harem.)  And it was trust that made the practical difference.

That scripture I mentioned above—it doesn’t stop where I ended it.  It also gives a how:

“…while we do not look at the things which are seen, but at the things which are not seen.”

Anyone who’s ever done a trust fall will make the connection.  Looking at things you can’t see is technically impossible.  It takes faith.  It takes trust.  It IS trust.

Celebrating Esther and the great deliverance today with all my Jewish friends!  And may God use our trust to perform miracle after miracle in the coming days--to make us not just resilient, but anti-fragile, thriving in the middle of the world's chaos, and using every Black Swan we encounter (for we will encounter them) to display God's glory.

"I Love Jewish"

In honor of Labor Day I mowed half the lawn.  The front half, for the neighbors’ benefit (and mine too, I guess, as it sort of saves face, which has needed saving for about 2 weeks now).  Then off to more pressing and eternally important matters – attending a panel discussion with visiting theologian Avner Boskey about the roots of anti-Semitism and its fruit in the church.  I wasn’t sure if the questions were to be posed by the audience, and out of all the many that have flitted through my head over the years, only one kept coming to mind.  I didn’t get to ask it.  However, it was answered.

Let me backtrack.

One Sunday morning a visitor came to the church I grew up in.  In between songs and sermon we often invited testimonies, and this tall, beautiful woman stood.  She was dark, vibrant, and around her neck wore a cross and a star of David on the same chain.  She fingered these as she spoke. 

With a lovely accent, in fair but imperfect English, she haltingly told us she was from Iran, and had been saved very recently.  In her own language her words would have flowed like music.  Through the mask of the limited English vocabulary she had, I could still hear that flow of heart, tender and deep. 

She told how she had been raised to hate the Jewish people, and how she always had.  Her testimony was this, as she stood there in our Gentile congregation—that she knew her conversion was unalterable and profound, for the Lord Jesus, Himself a Jewish man, had done inside her heart a work that was impossible.  Tears and triumph and thankfulness in her voice, she clutched her star and cross, and exclaimed over and over:

“Now I love Jewish!  I love Jewish!  I love…I love Jewish!”

My heart was leaping like a dancing lamb; my eyes were weeping; my youth was struggling to keep both private.  Her proclamation was full of power—unexpected waves like electricity.  I felt true shock that I was given the privilege of hearing this on earth—me, a simple girl in a podunk inner-city church—to hear this former Muslim, shouting out her love for the Jews.  And yes, this was a proof of how real salvation and redemption and restoration, and JESUS, are: “I love Jewish!”

The English word, “Jew”, was just not in her vocabulary yet.  Still, her endearing phrase has stuck in my heart for many years. 

Recently I’ve been wondering about when to use the words “Jew” and “Jewish”.  One is a noun.  It implies a comprehensive definition.  The other is an adjective—one descriptor out of many possible. 

As I’ve made more Jewish friends, it’s become apparent that under the petticoat of culture and even orthodoxy lurks an anti-Semitism of which we are almost completely unaware.  It comes out in our speech and thought patterns, and it is this “outer-ring” anti-Semitism the panel was discussing (as opposed to the more familiar inner-rings, which would include things like Nazism or an overt dislike for the Jews). 

I didn’t ask my question about “Jew” versus “Jewish”, because it wasn’t really about words (word usage changes so over time, staying PC isn’t our goal) but was about collective definitions being applied to individuals, and whether that creates a barrier to the individual Jewish heart.  And the panel discussion went there pretty quickly, confirming what my heart had been saying.  Relating to a person through stereotypes, whether negative or positive, does not convey the heart of Jesus. 

I remember times I was labeled according to the college I went to, or the country I was from, and considered to embody the stereotypes of those places (usually good ones, mind you).  What I’ve found is that even a “good” stereotype marginalized me. 

For instance, in a discussion I cared very much about and which would steer the direction of a many-year endeavor, I once had a manager dismissively answer my opinion with: “Yes, but you’re from Wheaton,” effectively eliminating my point of view from the table.  He meant that my ideas would be too high-literature, too educated, to be useful in an attempt to reach the regular reading population.  His words worked – I realized later I could have left the conference table at that point, and the team’s decision would have been unaffected. 

Stereotypes are just that—assumptions that define each individual according to a group label.  While the Jewish people are certainly defined by God in particular and very beautiful ways, and corporately have been given gifts and giftings, to view individual Jews only according to that corporate identity is potentially a great injustice to the individual—it is to marginalize him or her.  We don’t realize how often we do this, and when we do (as Christians) we say with shortsighted relief, “well, at least my stereotypes are all positive ones.”

As we talk about how to avoid accidental anti-Semitism in our words and assumptions, the question doesn’t really come down to which words are correct/positive and which aren’t.  It comes down to which words are spoken with love and knowledge of individuals, and which aren’t.  As my father taught me: Love is always person-to-person.  One country might say it “loves” another country, and one Christian might say she “loves” Israel, but in the end, love is shown to be real when it can and does manifest on a personal plane. 

Is the individual seen?  Is the individual loved? 

I know the whole church should love me, and theoretically does.  But my heart is melted by those who take time to know more about me than that I go to the same Sunday service as them.  Do you love me because I’m a Christian, or do you love me because I’m Amy?  Every human heart cries out for the latter. 

Do we love them because they are Israel, or do we love them because they are Eitan and Fran and Avner and Sivan and Daniel and Hannah and Joshua and…  It’s not that I don’t know there are very special, very important promises made by God to all the Jews (promises that benefit me, too), it’s that I know those promises have been made specifically to Eitan and Fran and Sivan (et al.)!  And to their families.  And to their ancestors.  And to their children’s children… 

…and from one love of one person, I can love a whole nation. 

…and because I know Eitan has been promised the physical homeland of Israel, I can understand the implications of that promise in the lives of all his countrymen, too. 

…and when he embraces me like a father, and talks kindly, I suddenly know that I too will be welcomed there, that he will gladly include me in what he has been given.  That this personal love doesn’t just go one way, it goes two.  And oh, that is the best sort of love!

It all reminds me of what John the beloved said in 1st John 3:16-18:

By this we know love, that he laid down his life for us, and we ought to lay down our lives for the brothers. But if anyone has the world’s goods and sees his brother in need, yet closes his heart against him, how does God’s love abide in him? 

Little children, let us not love in word or talk but in deed and in truth.

P.S.  In college I had a friend from middle-America who had never met a black person.  It’s possible.  Lest you despair that you know no Jews, let me give you a hint: you do!  His name is Jesus.  Love that Man like this, then love His sisters and brothers and parents, then love His grandparents and His nieces and nephews…then love His whole people.  It’s as easy as it sounds.  Course, it’d be great to find a few of them and invite them over to dinner, too.  Remember, real love is person-to-person.