My friend posted these things:
http://twoconmen.blogspot.com/2009/04/self-ishlesslove-1st-movement.html
I have left a short message, but I feel this requires a full blown response.
Using the "Brother's" quote, I will write my own conclusions, related or unrelated to the post blog post that followed it. I hope to come to my own conclusions and shed light on the topic for myself and anyone reading my meandering words.
Here's the quote:
"The more I love humanity in general, the less I love man in particular, that is, spearately, as single individuals. As soon as anyone is near me, his personality disturbs my self-esteem and restricts my freedom. In twenty-four hours I begin to hate even the best of men..."
This quote reminds me of a statement my friend, the one who wrote the blog post, said when I saw him last. to paraphrase, he said that since we, as friends, are separated by distance he is free to wish the best for me. Instead of a jealous love or one with hidden agendas he can wish and pray for the best and find an outside type of happiness form good news in our world.
The Brother's quote takes that idea a step further. When we are around people, we have a vested interest in their lives; what they do affects us in mundane or profound ways. For example, the way my sister chews food with her mouth open is irritating and affects me in a mundane way while a friend who is getting married profoundly affect our intrapersonal relationship.
However, anyone who is not around us does not affect our lives directly. As another example, the sea captain who was rescued in know way affects me directly becuase I am not around him and don't even know him at all. This leaves a different kind of relationship where we can chose to be affected by their circumstance or not. I can follow the career or Phillip Seymour Hoffman (an actor I admire) or chose to ignore him. I can follow friends on facebook or twitter or forget they even exist.
I have jumped around mainly becuase I am posting as I think, but I wan't to focus in on this:
The indirect relationship is easier to endure becuase we have complete control.
Anyone around us cannot truly be controlled by us so that creates many different variables for better or worse. The choice to love someone near to you is difficult becuase is requires risk and a lessening of the self.
To choose to love someone far away (or a people group or celebrity) is easy becuase our relationship can be controlled and variables can be limited. There is no risk is following Gary Vaynerchuk on twitter and there is no lessening of the self when you are enjoying the career sucess of a friend from high school.
It all boils down to our personal control over our lives. We don't want to surrender that control to risk and humility for the most part.
I suppose that is the real beauty of marriage and of the spiritual relationship with Jesus.
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1 comment:
I sat down to write you a proper response, but realized that I have to work on some revisions to a paper I'm presenting at Trinity. Two quick things will have to suffice, for now. First, I have more to write on the subject, as the title implies. I don't plan on responding directly to your blog right away, I think I'll save that for later, if you wish to keep responding to mine you'l give me more to write about. Second, you hit the nail on the head. I'm headed toward what we were talking about back then, just trying to circle around and approach more thoroughly. Honestly, I'm not entirely sure where this will go. Though, as always, I greatly appreciate your thoughts.
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