I've been reading this book lately called Blue Like Jazz by Donald Miller, and it's absolutely blowing my mind. The thing is, the book is nothing abstract. Don is just telling us experiences that he had in his life and what he thinks of them. It's not deep, complex writing. It's simple, but so profound, honest, and real. And that honesty, that Christ-likeness I have seen so rarely in books.
If there's one thing this book has taught me, it's what love is. I haven't finished it yet, but I have been so profoundly impacted by how Don teaches us to love. One of his great insights is in grace. Don always has this sense of wanting to do the right thing, but he can't truly do that until he accepts God's love. He writes, "Rick says that I will love God because he first loved me. I will obey God because I love God. But if I cannot accept God's love, I cannot love Him in return, and I cannot obey him. Self-discipline will never make us feel righteous and clean; accepting God's love will." That's so relieving. Self-discipline isn't going to make us feel any better, but just by experiencing God's love we can obey, because we love Him.
Just today I read his section on romance. Don is honest about his selfishness and fear of intimacy, but still has some amazing insights to share about romance and marriage. One thing he talks about is the limits of love in marriage. Don's best friend Paul says about his wife, "… there is stuff I can't tell her, not because I don't want to, but because there aren't words. It's like we are separate people, and there is no getting inside each other to read each other's thoughts, each other's beings. Marriage is amazing because it is the closest two people can get, but they can't get all the way to that place of absolute knowing. There are places in our lives that only God can go." Marriage can't replace our relationship with God. Only He can be ultimate fulfillment.
Yet this confusion is why marriage is so incredibly beautiful. Paul talks more about his marriage to Don, about where he sees God in it. Paul tells Don that God shows his love for Paul through his wife Danielle, and because she loves him and teaches him that he is lovable, he can better interact with God. Paul says, "To be in relationship with God is to be loved purely and furiously. And a person who thinks himself unlovable cannot be in a relationship with God because he can't accept who God is; a Being that is love. We learn that we are lovable or unlovable from other people. That is why God tells us so many times to love each other."
That's so beautiful! By loving other people, I'm letting them know that they are lovable. Then they can more accept God's ferocious love for them. Even better, by passionately loving your spouse, you are the best human teacher they have of God's love. How important is that!
But we have a problem. A very, very bad problem. What if a husband and wife do not love each other? What if they have come to the place where they want to be divorced, where they do not offer unconditional love? The realest that you get with someone is in marriage. "And the scary thing about intimate relationships, is that if somebody gets to know us, the us that we usually hide, they might not love us; they might reject us." So when your spouse experiences all of this reality of who you are, and refuses to love you, how painful must that be? What kind of torment is it to think that the closer you get to someone, the less they love you? And what does that make you think about God? Am I… unlovable? Am I so useless?
No. No, no, no, no, no. This is a tragedy. This might be the biggest tragedy of modern day culture. Think about our conception of "love": a feeling, a novelty. Think about the 41% divorce rate. How many people have come so close to other people only to be thrown away? How many people think that they are unlovable and disgusting to God? That's not true! They are so loved.
And so I find this to be true: "To love another person is to see the face of God." In marriage, to experience deep intimacy is to experience the greatest imitation of the love of God.
But, in marriage, to deny a person the love that you have committed to give them is, from what I can see, to tell them God doesn't love them.
And that is so untrue.
"For I am convinced neither death nor life, neither angels nor demons, neither the present nor the future, nor any powers, neither height nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God that is in Christ Jesus our Lord." (Romans 8:38-39)
…so what's the solution? Here's what Don writes from the perspective of the unloved:
"I want desperately for you to be my friend. But you are not my friend; you have slid up warmly to the man I wanted to be… Should I show you who I am, we may crumble. I am not scared of you, my love, I am scared of me….
I am quitting this thing, but not what you think. I am not going away.
I will give you this, my love, and I will not bargain or barter any longer. I will love you, as sure as He has loved me… I will love you like God, because of God, mighted by the power of God. I will stop expecting your love, demanding your love, trading for your love, gaming for your love. I will simply love.
God risked Himself on me. I will risk myself on you. And together, we will learn to love…"
(Picture from the Blue Like Jazz movie)
~Sam
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