Have you ever got one person stuck in your head and it’s like they’re the only one in the world? And it doesn’t matter who else comes along, or how perfect they are. It’s like your eyes, as good as they are, can only see one person. Or maybe it’s your heart.
I just saw Superman Returns for the second time, and I have to say it’s one of the best movies I have ever seen. So many allusions to God and Jesus and the gospel. I found myself in tears several times. I’m sure I will have to write more about it, but the thing that’s been rolling around in my head since the first time I saw it (in fact since the first time I saw Superman I) is Why Lois Lane? Lois was never the prettiest. She was not the smartest. She was not the wisest. She was not the bravest. She had some issues that would drive anyone nuts, she smoked, she was self-absorbed, and she was terribly farsighted (not to see that Clark was Superman despite his antics). You would have to say she was stuck somewhere between plain and unimpressive, which is right where Superman was stuck. I mean, Superman was Superman! Superman could have had any girl he wanted. Any girl. But it was Lois. And there was nothing for it. To him, everything she did was beautiful. Kind of like,
Something about you now
I can't quite figure out
Everything she does is beautiful
Everything she does is rightCause it's you and me and all other people
With nothing to do, nothing to prove
And it's you and me and all other people
And I don't know why I can't keep my eyes off youYou and Me, by Lifehouse
Have you ever got one thought stuck in your head and it’s like it’s the only thought in the world? And it doesn’t matter what other thoughts comes along, or how perfect they are. It’s like your mind, as good as it is, can only see that one thought. Or maybe it’s your heart.
I’m around people all the time that have issues. Do you know anyone like this? For the most part they are perfectly normal and have so much going for them, but they have one issue and it’s like kryptonite for them. They love God and quote the Bible and care for people, but then they say that they don’t believe in God because they cannot believe in a god who would send someone to hell. Or they can’t believe in a god who would wipe out entire civilizations because of their systemic sin, or would wipe out a lot of people because their king sinned. Or they’re sure God hates them. Or they can’t forgive God for not healing them. And the list goes on. I mean the list is as long as there are people. Except of course that I don’t have any issues. When people leave me they don’t say, “Wow, Steve is really a great guy, but what’s up with that one thing?” Yeah, right.
Or it could be the other way around. Someone lays hold of a dream and there’s nothing for it. The facts don’t count. Then we hear their incredible story, like Mark Inglis, the double amputee who climbed Mount Everest!
It’s like every human being has this uncanny ability to get stuck on one thing, or on one person, and nothing else matters except their one.
And lest I think it’s a fallen humanity thing, I read Song of Songs or Hosea or John 3:16 and come away thinking that God himself has this same weakness. He gets you stuck in His head, and then it doesn’t matter what you do or how bad everything gets messed up, He is going to pursue you. And He will continue to pursue you and rescue you because “The king is enthralled by your beauty” (Psalm 45).
But to suggest that God the All Powerful has a weakness? If this must be called a weakness, this ability to get stuck on someone and forget the facts, even to the point that you would die for her, then I guess I am saying that. We must have inherited our weakness from God. It’s part of His image.
It really doesn’t make any sense, but it’s really sweet how Superman loves Lois. And honestly, it’s not the incredible special effects or our worship of a super-man who is faster than a speeding bullet, more powerful than a locomotive, or leaps tall buildings in a single bound that keeps us coming back to this story. It’s not that he fights a never-ending battle for truth, justice, or the American way. It’s the love he has for the world, and the special love he has for Lois Lane. And He goes all the way. He loves her enough to let her go, to change his identity and hide, even from her, to protect her from those who would hurt him by hurting her. She's the one.
That’s the most endearing thing to me about Superman and about God. It’s like he’s got a world to save, but he’s always around for me.
7 comments:
The only thing that has been swirling in my head the past few days is "why is God all about mercy and none about justice."
I know He is just, but I just don't see it.
All I see is teddy bear God, fitting the bill of feminist Christianity as sweet, warm and cuddly.
No God in the fire. No God speaking through thunder. No God be feared.
Why would we FEAR God, when He is nothing but love?
Funny how when you hear people talking about God, they are heard talking about "sharing God's love to people", to the world, etc.
Really?
Why isn't it talking about God's overall nature instead of just His (primary?) characteristic of love?
I've heard different theories on this. Apparently a few decades ago it was hell fire and damnation preaching, and the Body has kneejerked way too far over to the other side, where it's now all about grace, grace, grace and love, love, love.
I read in the Old Testament of God causing enemies of His children to fight each other and slay themselves.
I read in Psalms of God vanquishing enemies.
I read Jesus words where He says we are given power to trample on scorpions and snakes.
I read Jesus saying "I will come to them and will fight against them with the sword of My mouth."
And I wonder where this God is?
God doesn't pattern Himself after human beings. And yet has He molded Himself to what He is being portrayed: nothing except ooey-gooey love?
My Bible must be different from others'. In mine I read of God being angry, and powerful, and displeased. He's loving and compassionate too, and has age-enduring lovingkindness.
In my Bible God says there is a time to love and a time to hate. Oh my gosh! God saying it's okay to hate?
I've just had it with the skewed portrayal of Him, about His love (alone) instead of about His many-faceted nature.
Or maybe it's that because of life circumstances i currently don't like the New part of New Testament.
Or maybe it's that I'm struggling with dying to things I am being asked to die to.
I think the reason we have to set love apart is because "God is love." Not "God is justice", not "God is hate". I don't see love being an attribute of God as many fundamentalists claim, but rather the very essence of God. Really, I hear plenty of people promoting the just god theory, and I doubt you want to hear the rest of what they say.
If there is a time to hate then hate is a face of love. If there is a time to be born and a time to die, then birthing and dying are faces of love. Mercy and justice are faces of love. Heaven and hell are faces of love. God is love.
I think the problem is not that people are stuck on love as the only one of God's many faces they'll accept, but that they have seized love, made an idol of it, twisted and distorted it, and shrunk it down to a size and shape they like better.
There is indeed room for all of the emotions and actions of life within love, even rage, regret, revenge, jealousy, anger, and hatred. It's really not debatable. God has expressed all those things, and God is love.
For me, the tricky part is that I fell and crashed hard at the bottom when sin threw me overboard, and I was mutated like a child of Chernobyl. God has since healed and set me free with a new heart, one that is capable of being in love again, but to display all the faces of love, and to display them in truth, I have to be filled with and follow the Spirit of Love--not just to display hate and revenge mind you, but even love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control. All of the faces of love can only be made by the Spirit of Love, not the spirit of self.
It is the spirit of self-preservation, the spirit of anti-Christ that has gotten hold of love and made it for so many such a mutation.
Love is not our problem. The taming of love is.
hear you on love being God's essence, not an attribute that is sometimes showing itself and sometimes not.
It's just like our own fatherhood. Love is at our core, our essence--regardless of which face is present. All faces have love in them.
And that seems to be the big rub against American churchianity. Its overkill with and idolization of "positive" emotions and the attribute, not essence, of love.
I think that ties into part of the pseudo-charisma that is rampant.
God's love is being seen and portrayed as an emotion, and to experience that love means a mountaintop experience during "worship".
And then the 'trick' becomes the dead-end attempt of pursuing "how do I keep in this mountaintop state of emotion with God?"
Funny how some of the same who decry the world's pursuit of happiness (through worldly things) are the same who pursue 24/7 happiness through "holier" means.
That's a post of its own. Sparrows, not geese.
"People stuck on love as the only one of God's faces they'll accept." Dude, you hit that on the head.
Yes, love makes a lousy face, but a great heart.
Once the notion of love as a facet of God then everything else you read about Him gets skewed. God is love. But what is love? John wrote elegantly, "This is how we know what love is: Jesus Christ laid down his life for us." There's a great post about this over on mythicreality.
To receive love or to give love, better yet to be love, you have to get past all the faces and receive the heart.
God said, "Man looks on the faces but the Lord looks on the heart." (1 Sam 16:7)
James said, "My brothers, as believers in our glorious Lord Jesus Christ, don't take faces." (James 2:1) but instead "keep the royal law found in Scripture, 'Love your neighbor as yourself.'" (James 2:8)
Paul said, "Serve from the heart in sincerity, and if you do somebody wrong, wrong will be done to you, because God isn't looking on the face of it." (Col 3:22-25)
Even Jesus got in on the face thing when he said, "Stop judging the face and make a right judgment." (John 7:24)
The heart is love, no matter what the face is showing. So it's vital that we see with the eyes of our heart, not our face.
So back to ONE. I wish we could so lock on to God is love that it consumes us as Lois did Clark. I wish we could silence the silly debates over what the right thing and wrong thing to do is based on 1000 situations and factors, and ask, "Is this love?" I wish that Christians would mean what Christ meant when they talk about love: not simply one factor, one facet, one face, but the heart, which is everything. I wish that when someone said, "We know what you did was out of love" that the conversation was over and there was no "but..." coming. I wish we could so train the eyes of our heart to the heart of God, which is love, that all the parodies of love would look as pathetic to us as they do to God. I wish we really could experience the love Violet talked about in Shakespeare in Love, "No, not the artful postures of love, but love that overthrows life: unbiddable, ungovernable, like a riot in the heart and nothing to be done, come ruin or rapture. Love, as there has never been in a play." I wish we could get everyone to stop deciding what to do (to stop playing) and just let love do to them what it would. I wish we could have a theological bonfire and watch all the shyster's cheap imitations go up in smoke. I wish we could see love as the essence of reality not just a random offshoot of it that we wish we could find more of. I wish there was a people you could count on above all to live in love and to demonstrate what love is really like, to demonstrate what God is really like.
I apologize for coming on here and taking a dump on your blog.
Life hurts. God hurts.
I'm sorry, man.
No apology required.
"I wish we could get everyone to stop deciding what to do (to stop playing) and just let love do to them what it would. I wish we could have a theological bonfire and watch all the shyster's cheap imitations go up in smoke. I wish we could see love as the essence of reality not just a random offshoot of it that we wish we could find more of. I wish there was a people you could count on above all to live in love and to demonstrate what love is really like, to demonstrate what God is really like."
Oh, me too!! I don't think I have a greater wish. All I want in life is to do this, to be this kind of love. I have been about all the other bullshit and it is so lacking. It is so hard to attempt this though because as soon as you put your timid little foot toward love, something comes up to pull the rug out from under you. Your first instict is to say "Well that's what I get for trying to love, I'm never doing THAT again." I will not lose faith in love, no matter how many times I land on my butt. I will not. I am going to love on my butt then. Being tenderhearted toward people can hurt so terribly, But my desire to be that kind of love you describe, it usurps the hurt. It is a "riot of the heart."
I am not blowing sunshine up your behind. Seriously. I really think you say really amazing things. I just send everyone to this blog. I love that you can be critical of things without getting pulled into disdain. I love that you can speak the truth and that as much as it isn't pretty at times, it never descends into arrogant ranting. It is still loving and hopeful in the midst of disappointment and frustration. I hope that my work reflects the same. That has been the best thing I have garnered from reading you...I have given up on reading a lot of the blogs I was reading because they just want to whine and complain about stuff and there is no good fruit there, or none that I can see. I just see Jesus here. I see the heart of Jesus and it is really awesome and it just blesses me and I learn or am validated by what you say. Your words have really blessed me a great deal.
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