But the greatest of these is love

"Love is patient, love is kind. It does not envy, it does not boast, it is not proud. It is not rude, it is not self-seeking, it is not easily angered, it keeps no record of wrongs. Love does not delight in evil but rejoices with the truth. It always protects, always trusts, always hopes, always perseveres." 1 Cor 13: 4-7

A month ago I posed some questions to myself on the topic of Self Denial. Today, whilst looking for something else entirely I stumbled upon the following passage from The Weight of Glory by C S Lewis:

If you asked twenty good men today what they thought the highest of the virtues, nineteen of them would reply, Unselfishness. But if you had asked almost any of the great Christians of old, he would have replied, Love. You see what has happened? A negative term has been substituted for a positive, and this is of more than philological importance. The negative idea of Unselfishness carries with it the suggestion not primarily of securing good things for others, but of going without them ourselves, as if our abstinence and not their happiness was the important point. I do not think this is the Christian virtue of Love. The New Testament has lots to say about self-denial, but not about self-denial as an end in itself. We are told to deny ourselves and to take up our crosses in order that we may follow Christ; and nearly every description of what we shall ultimately find if we do so contains an appeal to desire. If there lurks in most modern minds the notion that to desire our own good and earnestly to hope for the enjoyment of it is a bad thing, I submit that this notion has crept in from Kant and the Stoics and is no part of the Christian faith.

I'm not certain that I agree with Lewis' opening statement - I'm sure most Christians I know would say "the greatest of these is love" - but the essence of what he is saying strikes a chord. While I might say the greatest virtue is love, I act and measure myself as if it were unselfishness and the narrowness of that definition is no substitute for the wide open spaces of real love.

The search for self

I've been in a bit of a head-spin this weekend. My thoughts circling like fighting cats. I'm still not quite sure which tail to pull to unravel the mess. I'm not even sure I can adequately frame the issue.

It started with the section on Thomas Merton in Finding Sanctuary by Christoper Jamieson. He writes this:

The real task of being true to oneself is as slow and profound work; it is not a fixed way but involves search and change. And in the end being true to oneself can only be achieved by listening to God. Keeping busy is a way of avoiding being true to oneself. 'In order to become myself I must cease to be what I always thought I wanted to be.'"

The question which this raised in my head runs something like this: is the search for one's true self diametrically opposed to the concept of self-sacrifice and self-denial? Is it not self-indulgent to commit vast amounts of time to that search? In a sense this is purely an intellectual challenge. My instinct says otherwise. In giving my life wholeheartedly to God it seems fitting that I will be released to be all that God intended. God did not create me a certain way just so he could ask me to painfully become something else entirely. So maybe it is just the emphasis of the statement that I find hard to accept.

When I was at university I knew a guy who was very hot on self-sacrifice. He had given up a whole raft of things which he knew to be wrong, in order to be a better Christian. The thing was, he wasn't very happy. To an outsider it was pretty clear that he regretted the sacrifice. He'd placed a whole load of things on the altar, not because he wanted to, but because he thought he had to. As a consequence they weren't really dead, but they followed him around, snapping at his heels.

The Christians who I have most admired have always struck me as very humble, centred people. Their focus is on God. He is the core of iron that runs though their gentle lives. It's never really occurred to me to ask them about self-sacrifice and it is not something that they have talked about. Yet I bet if I did ask I would find that there had been sacrifice there. Silent, under the surface sacrifice; undertaken willingly, not regretted and not returned to.

I know it's jumping forward, but the picture I have in my mind comes from the two-sentence parable in Matthew 9: 44. "The kingdom of heaven is like treasure hidden in a field. When a man found it, he hid it again, and then in his joy went and sold all he had and bought that field." It brings me back to what I wrote a few days ago. Love does not spring from obedience, but rather the other way around. If there is no joy in the sacrifice, then maybe the real treasure is still to be found.

Transformation by service

Last November my mother was diagnosed with early-onset Alzheimer's. Over a period of a few short months she deteriorated from very tired and mildly forgetful to being almost incapable of looking after herself. In the early days before a care plan was established things became a little fraught at home. To help my father I spent some time looking after mum. Part way through this I found myself washing her (very dirty) feet. It was not a task that I would have naturally chosen.

It was not an easy few days. I had very little sleep and was emotionally and physically exhausted. Yet those moments stick out in my memory as immensely special times. In caring for someone I loved, I found myself able to do jobs which under any other circumstance I would have found distasteful and looked back on in horror. On reflection it was not really my mother who benefited. Certainly her feet were cleaner and her toenails cut. She would have been more comfortable for a few days at least. I doubt that she has any recollection of it now. The impact on me runs far deeper. I learned things about myself I never knew. It made me think in new ways about what it really means to love my neighbour.

Each evening after I had settled my mother to sleep I read a bit from The Jesus I Never Knew by Philip Yancey. One chapter talks of an encounter with Henri Nouwen. Yancey was staggered to find that Nouwen had given up a high-profile job to look after mentally handicapped patients.

Nouwen told me it took him nearly two hours to prepare Adam each day. Bathing and shaving him, brushing his teeth, combing his hair, guiding his hand as he tried to eat breakfast - these simple, repetitive acts had become for him almost like an hour of meditation.

I must admit I had a fleeting doubt as to whether this was the best use of the busy priest's time. Could not someone else take over the manual chores? When I cautiously broached the subject with Nouwen himself, he informed me that I had completely misinterpreted him. "I am not giving up anything," he insisted. "It is I, not Adam, who gets the main benefit from our friendship."

Now, nearly six months later I am still absorbing this. Nouwen was a well-known author and theologian. He had earned world-wide respect for the insight of his books, and yet he dedicated the last ten years of his life to the direct care of others. This takes me back to the idea of living sacrifice I started with. And yet losing his life to serve others Nouwen gained so much. Yancy goes on to write "He had learned to love Adam, truly to love him. In the process he had learned what it must be like for God to love us."

To die would be an awfully big adventure...

I love that quotation from Peter Pan. Like so much of the children's literature of its era it seems to communicate a great profundity. But I love it even more because it reminds me of Romans 12. The concept of offering our bodies as living sacrifices. The Message puts it so much better than I ever could.

So here's what I want you to do, God helping you: Take your everyday, ordinary life - your sleeping, eating, going-to-work, and walking-around life - and place it before God as an offering. Embracing what God does for you is the best thing you can do for him. Don't become so well-adjusted to your culture that you fit into it without even thinking. Instead, fix your attention on God. You'll be changed from the inside out. Readily recognize what he wants from you, and quickly respond to it.

This is scary stuff and I'm not entirely sure I know what it means, or that I've got what it takes. This is not dying on the altar, but living an entirely different way. Living for something bigger. Living for someone else.

Today I'm not so much starting on as committing to a journey. I've been meandering on this quest for many years. I suspect I will still be doing so for many years to come. But in searching for the kingdom I have concluded I need to track my progress. Hence the blog. It's really just for me - but part of the fun is seeing who else is travelling.

To die? Maybe. To live? That's harder. To live for God? That really would be an awfully big adventure...