Love?

If my life were a question it might be worded this way: “Is it in a man to love?” I want to believe in love with all my heart, with my whole life. But my personal history has hardly been an example of faithful love. Even as I have desired to be loved throughout my life and that desire has been left wanting, so my efforts at loving completely and with faithfulness have finally met with failure.

It’s been said that love is an overused word, that we really don’t even know what we mean when we say it anymore. It’s a code word for any number of things. For some people “I love you” falls so easily off the tongue that we question the depth of their sincerity. And it’s also true that words themselves fail to be taken seriously anymore as we humans drift in and out of relations with each other without thought for our proximity or the effects of any forms of language we encounter.

I also see people desperate for real relationships but unsure of themselves. There are few things more frustrating than a promise unfulfilled, and the ultimate promise is from God. The first part of God’s promise is that he himself shaped people in his image and called them (male and female)“very good.” He created them from earth so that in relation to creation and to himself they would be as he intended. God’s creation act is the first sign of promise. We are made for a reason. We are good.

Far from being exhausted with humans or fearful our weaknesses, God emptied himself and became a man to reconcile us to himself. Jesus set an example of love for his disciples in washing their feet, commanded that they love each other as he loved them, and then laid down his life in the Supreme act of love. This activity precluded one simple belief on God’s part. That we are capable of Love. That in spite of the possibility that we would choose otherwise God invests himself in us for a future joy, a future hope that he will right us.

Tags: proximity, love, humanity, fear, weakness, faithfulness, "Is it in a man to love?"

Selfhood and Destiny

Wolfhart Pannenberg "What is Man?", Fortress, 1970. pg. 55-56

Insofar as the direction of a man's life is toward God,

community with God is already actualized in this movement. To

that extent, the destiny of man already becomes effective and

becomes a reality for us in this life. This pre­supposes that

we remain in this movement and do not stop along the way.

The fact is, however, that men repeatedly interrupt their

course through the world toward God. They establish

them­selves in the world and, at least temporarily, forget

their quest for God. This is temporary, because it lies in the

nature of the question that it cannot be forgotten

indefinitely. Men do not forget God simply because they are

lazy. This forgetfulness has a deeper root, namely, man's

egocentricity. Left to their own initiative, men by no means

live in a constant movement beyond themselves in an open­ness

to the world. Rather, as they actually are, men strive to

assert themselves and to prevail. Each person seeks to attain

all the riches of life for himself. It is common for the

clever person to exercise moderation as a means to this end.

A person seeks to establish himself through his achievements,

and he basks in whatever recognition others accord him.

Whatever task a man might take on becomes a matter of his

concern by the very fact that he puts his hand to that task.

The more he spends himself in its service, the more he

establishes his own self along with accomplishing the task.

This is the source of the ambiguity of all human behavior.

Each person experiences time and space only in reference to

himself. Each person is the center of his world. Therefore,

the here and now is different for each person.

It is clear that such egocentricity does not stand in an

obvious harmony with man's openness to the world. On the

contrary, there is an inherent tendency in the ego to adhere

to one's own purposes, conceptions, and customs. Thus a

man not only has a tendency to break out into the open, but he

also has a tendency toward a certain self-enclosement.

However, even where a person breaks through into the open, the

ego is always involved in it. The person who thinks he can

move beyond his self only lives in a dream world. Wherever he

might move, he brings. his self with him.

A person does not escape his self either through diversion or

through asceticism. To be sure, that is not even worth

striving for. The wish to escape one's self is only a short

circuit in the whole enterprise. Aversion to one's self is

ingratitude. A person can overcome his self centeredness not

by throwing away his ego, but by incorporating it into a

larger totality of life. This actually happens, however, a

person actually transcends his egocentricity in this sense,

only at the boundary of actual human existence (that may

happen just by learning to be content). For it is just at that

boundary that what existed up to that point is abandoned. What

exists, however, is at all times and at all places an ego.

Even if it has just been abandoned, it is immediately there

again in the new situation. All human life is carried out in

the tension between self.

Tags: Theology, love, "Is it in a man to love?", Wolfhart Pannenberg, Community, quotes