Re: Much Ado About Nothing Essay On Love
Matt Dreher
Emotions are not primitive impulses to be controlled or ignored, but cognitive judgments or construals that tell us about ourselves and our world. In this understanding, destructive motives can be changed, beneficial emotions can be cultivated, and emotions are a crucial part of morality.3
Emotions are cognitive: they reflect our values and judgments, and they are vital in relationships. Far from being merely the caboose, emotions appear to be more important than an optional feature to our humanity. But how do we go about understanding them? This is where good, biblical theology can help us.
God is the transcendent Lord of the covenant who is never a passive victim but is always the active judge and justifier. Even if God is revealed in Scripture (analogically) as responding to the world and especially to human beings in a covenantal relationship, it is not in the same way we respond to each other.5
God does feel, but not as one who depends on the world for his joy. God responds to our sorrows with compassion, to our sin with anger, and to our obedience with delight. Yet he does so as a generous rather than a needy lover.6
The schoolmen, and often the philosophical theologians, tell us that there is no feeling in God. This, they say, would imply passivity, or susceptibility of impression from without, which it is assumed is incompatible with the nature of God. . . . Here again we have to choose between a mere philosophical speculation and the clear testimony of the Bible, and of our own moral and religious nature. Love of necessity involves feeling, and if there be no feeling in God, there can be no love.8
We shall not stop to dwell upon this somewhat abstract discussion. Enough for us that a God without emotional life would be a God without all that lends its highest dignity to personal spirit whose very being is movement; and that is as much as to say not God at all.9
My point in briefly bringing up this hot topic is to demonstrate that in the Bible human emotions do not simply arise out of our physical bodies, nor are they the result of the Fall. Our emotions are a dim reflection of the image of God. While acknowledging fundamental and profound differences, we can also affirm that our emotions are a legitimate and good part of our nature, because they reflect the image of God.
Our emotions received the fatal infection of original sin and a fallen human nature. Like a few drops of dye into a pitcher of water, every molecule of our nature has been colored by the toxic dye of sin. Emotions, which were designed to be good and work in tandem with the mind and will, now either dominate or become dormant. On the one hand, they can dominate our thinking so that what controls us is how we feel, how we determine what is true is based on how we feel, and how we relate to others is based on how we feel about them. The chaos of such life can be painful. On the other hand, trying to ignore or repress our emotions (and be like a Star Trek Vulcan rather than a human) is also a recipe for disaster. Truth and beauty in God and in life become black and white, and we fail to be whole people. What we need in our mangled humanity is full restoration.
I recently did a sermon series on joy and was surprised to see how many Bible scholars and theologians want to eviscerate all affection from joy, since we are commanded to have joy and obviously God cannot command the way we feel. In this thinking, joy is stripped of all its emotional elements and reduced to a quality or an action! This kind of logic must be rejected.
Truth comes to the mind and to the understanding enlightened by the Holy Spirit. Then having seen the truth the Christian loves it. It moves his heart. If you see the truth about yourself as a slave of sin you will hate yourself. Then as you see the glorious truth about the love of Christ you will want it, you will desire it. So the heart is engaged. Truly to see the truth means that you are moved by it and that you love it. You cannot help it. If you see truth clearly, you must feel it. Then that in turn leads to this, that your greatest desire will be to practice it and love it.14
Brian Borgman (MDiv, Western Seminary; DMin Westminster Seminary California) is founding pastor of Grace Community Church in Minden, Nevada, and the author of Feelings and Faith: Cultivating Godly Emotions in the Christian Life (Crossway, 2009).
Hey, Baby Girl, I was just sitting here thinking about how much I love you. I love you so much that if I tried to really write how much I love you, I would be constantly writing for the rest of my life.
You bring out so much in me that I'm just beginning to see. It's like when we are together, the rest of the world disappears, and nothing else matters but us. I hope I feel this way forever. I want to spend the rest of my life loving you with everything I have to give. Sometimes I feel like I don't deserve someone as loving as you are. Do you know how long I have waited to have someone like you in my life?
It wasn't luck that brought us together. You are a blessing to me and I wouldn't trade the way I feel about you for anything in this world. You are the reason why I smile. You are the first thing on my mind when I wake up every morning, and you are the last thing I think about every night before I close my eyes, but our time together doesn't end there because you are the only thing I dream about. I really do want to spend the rest of my life with you if you will allow me to. Nothing is too much to give you. I feel that if you're not happy, then the world needs to stop until you are!
Baby, I just want to thank you for loving me like you do, and I am forever in your debt, just for you being good to me. You know, it is strange how I had to go through so many bad situations before you came into my life. I guess it really is true when they say good things come to those who wait because I've waited for someone like you all my life, and you really are the best thing that has ever happened to me.
You have been elusive to me in so many ways but, because none of my objects of infatuation turned out to be you, I feel as if life sometimes may have fooled me, yet I know you are out there. I mean, how could I have seen your face and still overlooked you? Or how could I have heard your voice utter words and not have found anyone that sounded like you? Are you in the stars every time I look up? Of course you are. You are the clouds in the skies, the songs the bird sing every morning. You are everywhere, really. I know you are real. I just constantly wonder why I have not found you yet.
Why haven't I been able to say all that I want, show you all that I am, and give you all I have now? Why is time making us wait so long? We don't know, because this is a factor beyond our control. I will always love you, Darling, and when we finally find each other, it will be God's greatest reward.
So, wherever you are, know that I love you and you will be the one that lurked passionately in my dreams. Know that I am always longing for you and your presence. Know that you will always be everything to me. Even though I have not yet met you yet, I love you, my spirit lover.
Too many days go by without my saying how incredibly fortunate I feel to be with you--but it's true. When we're together, my life takes on new meaning and new freshness. Each morning, each night, and each moment beside you contains all the beauty and vibrancy I could ever hope for.
Thank you for filling my days with love, and for making my toes squirm and my heart flutter. Thank you for always listening to me, for sharing your thoughts with me, for supporting me, and for giving me the chance to support you. Thank you for enriching every aspect of my life, and for continually inspiring me to do better and to be a better person.
When I try to describe your beauty, your smile, your kind heart, I find that my words only begin to scratch the surface of my love for you. You are too amazing, too much of a wonder for language to describe. When we are together, and with each gesture you make, and each word that you utter, I realize, more and more, how special and caring you are, and how lucky I am to be with you. When we are not together, the very thought of you brings me more fully to life.
How can I express my feelings when those feelings take my breath away? How can I measure my love for you when that love compares to nothing else, and when that love exceeds all categories and all expectations? No words can express these realities. No words can express my love for you because you are indescribable, and my love for you is immeasurable.
Simply looking into your eyes sends me through a whirlwind of intense emotions. Just one brief smile from you fills my life with radiance and joy. Until the day I met you, I had never before felt so full of hope and passion. I want you to know, I am forever grateful to be with you. You have given me a heart full of love and days full of laughter, and I will give myself to you always.
Like being with W last spring. The sweat collecting on his forehead like diamonds. Better than diamonds. I didn't know then that beauty never needs a metaphor. But anything worth writing about is also worth writing badly about. And failing in love does not mean failing at love.
Nights in X's bed with the white curtains around his windows. Strength and patience rising off him as he sleeps. His chest. His shoulders. The fine dark hair of his stomach. God he's so lovely that just looking at him makes my chest hurt slightly. I never want to forget this.
And the guy from the math lounge wasn't my type, I don't like loud talkers, but he was so committed to his notions of symmetry and continuity, when I heard him talk about stochastic homogenization I wanted to press my mouth to his, my life to his life. Am I poly? Am I bi? Wrong questions. Here's a slightly less wrong question: How to kiss a poisson process?
I met the first boy I ever had sex with at camp in May where I was the best writer in the workshop. If I had been just a little bit better, I would have realized that there were people my age, many people, producing work of a caliber beyond my comprehension. On one of the last days of camp he asked me if I wanted to be his girlfriend. I said no. I thought, people don't just date other people because they're there and you are too.
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