Whether you listen to a good Christian teaching or a self help guru they seem to agree that the aim of life is to come to a place of unconditional love. The trouble is getting there is not easy! One of the greatest problems with being a radiator of unconditional love is that you cannot give from an empty cup!
One great picture is to imagine a love tank. This represents the love that we receive (or should receive) from different people at different stages in our lives. Essentially, on the way to adulthood we need to get love (unconditional) from our parents, from the fun we have with family and friends and the identity we receive from our peers. However, all too often we arrive at adulthood with tanks less than full. We then enter a relationship with our love tank empty hoping to get it filled. The chances are they also have less than empty tanks and want you to fill theirs!
The answer is that we can fill our own tanks! I have met some pretty block headed thinking on the idea of loving one's self. Some have the opinion that we do not need to be told to love ourselves because we do that anyway. The problem is, call it loving yourself or despising yourself, it isn't healthy! The way we tend to love ourselves isn't love at all (although some see it as such!) The idea being that if you sit around all day in self pity you are indulging yourself! But that is screwball love! As I have said before, love means wanting the best for the object of that love. If we take an objective view of "best" then we will want for us what God wants for us. We will not want to indulge in self pity, we will want to give ourselves what we need to thrive in Him.
The verse I cling to for this is, "love your neighbour as yourself!" The command requires that we are already loving ourselves in the kind of healthy way that others need to be loved. But we cannot arrive at the second commandment without first going through the first. Part of loving ourselves is to love God with all.
By loving God we receive what He has for us. For example, Should we allow those who do us no good crush our spirits? Jesus said, not to cast our pearls before those who bite us and trample what we value under foot. He gave us the right to self preservation. It is not Christian to allow others to crush us. By loving God enough to trust His word we are given ways to grow in self-respect and self-esteem and self-acceptance.
When we learn to fill our tanks we are not being selfish we are being self-filling! When we learn to fill ourselves, to give ourselves what no one else has given us, we are able to give. We can give out to our partners, our children, our community and eventually reach the place of unconditional love.
Another picture is of a house. Those who live in the basement live in the place of abuse. They say, "That's just the way it is!" They are numb to pain and switched off.
The people on the ground floor see that it is everyone else's fault. "You're the reason I'm like I am!"
The people on the next floor realise that it is up to them. No one is coming in to rescue them. There is no magic wand. It is up to them to change what needs to be changed.
The people on the next floor are realising their life's purpose.
The people in the attic are givers of unconditional love.
As we move through the floors of the house, we grow in our ability to be loved and to love. We do not have to go from the basement to the first floor, we should go straight to the next floor the place of realising it is up to us.
It was clearly against the natural order for Jesus to be crucified. In the garden He prayed three times to not have to go through with it. Jesus suffered not because we are called to be doormats but because it was required to fulfil the law. Those who God calls to suffer He gives the grace to suffer. I also believe that unless there is some kind of persecution that only those who are already strong enough are called to places of such personal sacrifice.
When Jesus was about the be stoned He just walked through the middle of the crowd. When He heard that John the Baptist had been beheaded He went to be alone with His disciples. Jesus frequently spent time alone recharging Himself in God.
When Jesus said that Christians would love others as themselves He was giving the world a warning! If you want to know what you will get look at how they treat themselves! You wont get any better! The person who works themselves into the ground will not love anyone else any better. The one who thinks that laws do not apply to them will not be honest when the crunch comes. If we want to witness God's love to the world, they have to see God's love in us. We should not need to be knocking on doors being told, "No thanks!" at the idea of loving them as we love ourselves! We should have them queuing up to get what we've got!
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
3 comments:
I've tried to read post this three times today and kept getting interrupted (the phone, the oven timer, etc.). But I finally got the whole thing.
I'm reminded of two books. One is one you've hinted at before, the love languages book, I forget the actual title, by...oh, I just forgot his name, too. I think it's Chapman. I could Google it, but it's so much more fun taking a blind stab. The guy lives in my area in North Carolina. Haven't met him personally, but drive by his church occasionally.
Anyway, that book has been very helpful for me. I have never thought about filling my own tank!
The other book I thought about is one that I'm reading right now called "A Step Further" by Joni Earikson Tada. Awesome book about suffering. I think you echoed some of what she says in her book.
Hope you don't mind all the comments. It's fun to have someone else to "talk religion" with. :)
Hi Alice,
Of course I don't mind all the comments. It is nice not feeling like I am just writing into a void, for one. I find your comments are very positive and encouraging.
I don't really do books. I wish I did but I have a reading difficulty. I tend to listen to talks and sometimes audio books.
I don't know if you have noticed but I have started another blog based on our life in Kent! you can link there through my profile obviously.
I have put some stuff on to get it going but will try and up date it occassionally as you say.
I think getting the point about filling my own tank was one of my biggest life changing break throughs. This is what annoys me about those who poo poo it. They either obviously are self filling anyway and realise how hard life is when you aren't. Or they prefer to be empty!
I am a bit of a Bible nut. It annoys me when a liberal evangelical holds up the Bible and glibly calls it "the maker's manual for life" and then laughs at you when you try and apply it!
Years ago I got most of the help I needed from people that weren't Christians. People like John Gray, Phil Mcgraw, Yanla Vancant (an African witch!) Since then I have been trying to find the out why the stuff I got from non Christians that was so helpful wasn't being taught by Christians. Later, I came across John Maxwell who led me to Dale Carnegy. Again Dale isn't a Christian, yet I have heard RT Kendal say that every Christian should read his book on winning friends and influencing people.
All of this stuff is what I really enjoy. I have been chewing it over and trying to understand scripture more in the light of love, mercy, grace, humility and so on (especially as Jesus gave them such a high profile!) I spent the last 2 and a half years in a evangelical fundamentalist church, and although I was free to share every week. It was still really hard to teach this stuff. Evangelical fundamentalists seem to have their own ideas about what the Bible says and don't want to hear from anyone else!
I created this site to help to get to grips with some of the stuff in terms of scripture.
It is quite possible that I will come out with some very chalenging stuff at one point or another. Please take it with a pinch of salt if needs be! Sometimes I have said or written stuff that has repelled people because of how challenging it was. But I am only looking for objective truth. None of us can measure up to objective truth!
The overall aim of what I want to achieve is not to repel people but to knock off my edges so that I can feel more whole than I do.
On the enneagram, I was thinking about what my question is! My question is, do I stop being a 5 as that can only ever be a part of a whole, or do I become a really good well balanced 5? What type was Jesus? I believe that I will be a 5 until I am with the Lord. But objectively, are enneagram types part of the fall or part of the plan? The enneagram institute give the high performance profiles of each type and they aren't too bad!! I'd be happy with one of those! But, if we are to put off the old how can we break free completely from what seems to be hard wired?
Richard
I'm back! Almost headache free. Homebound today since workers are coming to repair the roof. I love days of being homebound. It feels like a snow day.
You said, "It is quite possible that I will come out with some very chalenging stuff at one point or another. Please take it with a pinch of salt if needs be! Sometimes I have said or written stuff that has repelled people because of how challenging it was. But I am only looking for objective truth. None of us can measure up to objective truth!"
Me: I'm okay with being challenged! We don't have to agree on everything. I think we both would agree that getting to a conclusion means we have to consider many options and ideas. While we're considering one option, we have work it out "on paper". Sometimes people come in in the middle of our "working it out" and assume we've made our conclusion. Anyway, I'll try not to do that and try to remember that sorting through things is sometimes messy, and sometimes we come to conclusions that aren't comfortable, and sometimes we don't come to any conclusions at all. And that's okay.
You said, "The overall aim of what I want to achieve is not to repel people but to knock off my edges so that I can feel more whole than I do."
Me: Cool.
You said, "But, if we are to put off the old how can we break free completely from what seems to be hard wired?"
Me: Again, cool. I think this is a very good question. I have struggled with my "sensitivity" all my life. Hearing people say, "You shouldn't be so sensitive." And I want to reply, "You shouldn't be so tall." or some other thing that a person can't change.
One of the things I like about the enneagram site was how it explained how you are doing in a healthy state, and also in a not-so-healthy state. That kind of helps me keep perspective on what feelings I should perhaps embrace, and which need to be repented of.
I do feel more emotional pain (sensitivity) than many other people. But is that's God's gift for me or something I should repent of? Both I think.
I'm going to post a poem on my site that I wrote about the subject. Let me know what you think.
Over and out.
Post a Comment