Dear Friends in Christ,
Kalu Rimpoche wrote: “Reason tells me I am nothing. Love tells me I am everything. Between these poles, my life unfolds.” I like the quote, so I tried to rework it from the perspective of Jesus and his understanding of love, and I came up with this: Whenever I think I am everything, I become nothing; but when, out of love for others, I make myself nothing, I become everything!
Liberal individualism in America (and elsewhere) went wrong because it thought that individual self-cultivation was its own End, but, in fact, self-cultivation is not an End, but a way of searching for my End. The wondrous irony is that pursuing the meaning of my individual life always ends up propelling me beyond my individual self toward others. The self-enclosed individual merely achieves a supreme loneliness and meaninglessness. Precisely as individual, I am nothing. The purpose of political liberalism is not self-enclosure. The purpose is to give each human person the inalienable right to pursue his/her own meaning without having it imposed upon him/her by any State or Church or other Power.
When Christianity threatened people with the Gospel, the Gospel is what was lost. The threats (“believe our way or go to hell”) exposed a great insecurity, a profound lack of self-confidence. You cannot threaten people into heaven, you can only love them into the Kingdom of God. I have such confidence that God is really essentially revealed to us in Jesus of Nazareth that I have ceased to worry about the insufficiency of my neighbors. They don’t go to church enough, or they aren’t Christian; or they are agnostic; or whatever. Gods’ love–Jesus’ teaches me–will find a way. I don’t have to worry about them in that regard. I do have to worry about their well-being in other ways…are they well? Do they have basic human needs met? Are they hungry? In other words, I do have to love them. No, strike that. It is not that I have to love them, it is that I get to love them. And as I love them the Nothing that I am becomes Something. This love fills me up and I become a real person.
Do you see this sublime irony? We need to be free to be individuals because only then will we be free to become more than individuals. I am not afraid of what will happen to me (with my weak, cowardly Christianity), nor am I afraid for them. Love has cast out fear. God’s love for me (and us) underwrites my love. Suddenly I am Everything.
Have a great summer!!
In Christ,
–Pastor
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