We humans want total control over our own life. We want to love God, but we also want to live our life the way we would like to, and we know that sometimes we can be possessed by our possessions, by our need for approval, by our need to build our castles. Jesus is saying that “both” doesn’t work. The reign of God demands our unconditional allegiance in how we live our life.
This is not easy, especially when the culture around us is telling us to take care of ourselves and let others do what they have to do—survival of the fittest, a social Darwinism, which is so contrary to the way Jesus lived and what he taught.
Several weeks ago, I mentioned an opinion piece by David Brooks, titled “The Wrong Definition of Love,” in which he reflected on how the way that many people understand love these days is very self-referencing. In the article he talked about the recent proliferation of self-help books which reinforces this notion that love is all about how the other person makes me feel, leading to a lot of people who are self-absorbed, fragile, and desperate for recognition.
Brooks says, rather, that falling in love is not a decision you make for your own benefit, but a submission or a surrender you make without counting the cost, not a gaining of power, but a submission to the needs of another, in effect, a loss of self-control.
“Love is patient. Love is kind….” (I Corinthians 13:4,ff.)
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