2023-09-02 A Meditation on Love For the Brothers

“16 By this we know love, that he laid down his life for us, and we ought to lay down our lives for the brothers. 17 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? 18 Little children, let us not love in word or talk but in deed and in truth. 19 By this we shall know that we are of the truth and reassure our heart before him; 20 for whenever our heart condemns us, God is greater than our heart, and he knows everything. 21 Beloved, if our heart does not condemn us, we have confidence before God; 22 and whatever we ask we receive from him, because we keep his commandments and do what pleases him. 23 And this is his commandment, that we believe in the name of his Son Jesus Christ and love one another, just as he has commanded us.” (1 Jn 3:16–23 ESV)

Accurately to assess, is accurately to be on a course of motion, towards making peace rather than towards suspicions and making war. We somehow mystically float, a cynic would say; but the truth is, that is exactly what is happening: there is no longer rhyme or reason, calculation or fairness, but instead a motion to preserve what shreds of peace do remain. We can do this only because we are versed in war, and are engaged in inside-out, front-to-back, reversed thinking. That is, we cease to try to adjudge: this one, a friend; that one, I’m skeptical; all these over here, I just never liked them. That is, we mystically float through a milieu called early war, yet the mystical part is that we are still standing tall as anti-belligerents.

We can’t explain it, just we can fight the dynamo that gravitates to trust’s limits reached and outright hostilities. Somehow this is possible when we have acknowledged, confessed, ourselves too arbitrary or compromised on some level, to be the one saying what time it is. This is sad: many are fully qualified, a better woman or man, than those sycophants who haven’t ever experienced that confessional thought, “I was wrong”; “I make wrong assessments”; “I warmonger”; “I can’t get my head around so-and-so, but the right thing to do therefore is to assume the best”.

That is, the Christian faith makes mystical floating success out of that delimbing, self-suspicious, agency curtailed. We curtail our agency, and find a living faith in regards to the basic questions of whom to trust. We trust, because we are Christians, because we prefer to say, “Tell me my job” to “How dare you be such-and-such”. We aren’t capricious, warmongering, in love with our pretty perch. We are solemn and convicted. We find entire avenues of defeated peace with our brothers and sisters or parents or friends. That is, we cannot afford any longer to be the calculating head of all things, but rather discover a self-sourced kind of information, the information that loves and that ignores hackles raised, ignores a certain instinctual distrust, and capitalizes, finds ample wellsprings, in that flipside thinking: so-and-so is, hey, a warm body but more, a fellow human being. Let us dispense with the flagrant wishes that do harm to the body and spirit, and let us desire for God’s created image to prosper, to find us in that vein called Love and called Understanding and called Personal Responsibility for our own erroneous judgments. Maybe they are better lovers, more attuned to peace, and maybe this is what causes sneaking suspicions from our inner heart.

Thus to reach bedrock, is to have our kit, our fighting stance one shared and learned in better times, times when we had a few moments to read a missive or discuss a theoretical faith position. And in that fog of war, in the hustle and the trenches, this better hour speaks to us, loves on us, and reminds us that there is ample room to stand up for something. There is ample room not to let our principles be a cause to kill others and fight others, but that our own modesty and humility does afford us the license to be no longer suspect for our theology, for our Cause, for our Morals, for our Principles.

Then the dream of no reverse to former good times, but even better times ahead, the chance to be challenged by the peace, whereas in former times we felt more comfortable in the existential angst of war than in doing right and good things by way of society’s cues and opportunities. Yes, we were signed up as those exasperated and frustrated by the thinking, or unthinking, masses, and desired to find a critical mass of fellow-minded soldiers, who would think on that duality: peace, yes, at one end of the baton, but peace in consequence of familiarity with war, the other end of the baton. The knowing glance, the heartfelt embrace, the ability already to be useful even as we labor to confess and know our deeper selves; all this is the soldier’s birthright and national inheritance. All this is the owned flag on the uniform, this-leads-to-that-leads-to-that deep reasoning as to what our flag exactly means.

And no longer to be banal, discomfited by the loserdom of any faith-walk, but rather courageous and stronger as men and women for our allegiance, yes, submission, to God Above. Submission that starts to chuckle at the ways we are tiresome and sycophants ourselves at times. Submission that believes vast gulfs of spiritual wealth do occur, we way out ahead of some, even if society doesn’t recognize that; sometimes we pray and seek for the right words to reassure even the reader who doesn’t have time or willingness to seek Nirvana and Born-Again experience, but does nonetheless by God’s will approve and bless. They are closer than we think.

So we are blessed. We are given shield and vest, sword and helmet, to face the mongrel unthinking hordes. We are to witness with our exuberant Love, just what our flag and position and side stands for. We are to leave the light on for each other, the last to leave remembering to turn it off at least so we can be honest as to which stations are manned, recipients of the blessed conversion sanctuary for our friends and those former enemies. Let them be first, if it spells peace. Let them be blessed, if it gives purpose to our own labors. Let them be served, if it recognizes hatred intentionally overcome, brother loving brother, a resolve in light of a mental onslaught that scarcely has time to stop and think or self-observe.

Yes, we are peace. Yes, we are grateful. Yes, we are willing to side with what seems at first boring or cause for complaint. Yes, all these things are ours through God who declared One Man dead for Many People’s peace, and raised Him so that we could hope beyond hope, believe in Tomorrow, invest in souls held in trust by their peers. Who would just as gladly be the ones to go to the Cross for their neighbors and peers.