Entitled

Dear Eugene,

There is something about loving Jesus that is different from loving anything else.

Now you know how I am; I can get needlessly philosophical and start to dissect the above statement, define every word, validate the choice of a particular preposition, etc.

But no, I must resist doing this.  There is a place for strenuous exegesis, but it is not here and not today.  I am going to let it come out of me and risk being ridiculed.  God help me to talk like a child.

So here it is: When you love Jesus, you want to keep giving this love away, like you're totally surprised by the reckless gift and would love to see everyone else falling in the same love.

Pretty unimpressive, right?  I am glad it is not impressive.  I am glad it sounds stupid.  It is so silly that like an Adam Sandler movie there must be something deeply truthful (and disturbing) about it.

It goes like this: When I start to think about things and people that I love, stuffs I love to do, demigods I worship, everything that makes my life worth bragging about, I realize to a degree big or small I must claim possession of them and find ways to keep them mine for as long as I can.

Things as simple as the ability to walk,  to read, to write, the smell of first spring flowers and my ability to smell it.  Youth.  Daylight.


Say, the test is really simple.  If I take a picture of a beautiful flower and post it on Facebook, I am saying to the world more than one things simultaneously, having commingled motives with fifty shades of gray.  I am saying:
  • I appreciate the flower. (Do you know how to appreciate it like I do?)
  • I take good picture. (Do you?  Come on, try harder.  My phone is only mid-range, but look at what I can do with it.)
  • I am cultured, profound and refined.  (Try it.  You might get here too some day.  Poetry helps.)
  • God is good.  (Too bad all you Godless people can never love life the way I do.)
  • God loves me.  (I actually mean likes, as in a thumb-up that I wish you too will have the good sense to give this post, following the footstep/thumb print of the biggest thumb of all.)
  • I love life.  (Can you say that?  Come on, look at all them people you meet and hang out with everyday.  Can anyone genuinely say that?  I got a lust going on here!  One can't be so aroused if he doesn't mean it!)
Falling in love with Jesus does not feel anything like this at all.  You want to find ways that please Jesus to keep giving his love away.

Not that my death-seeking tendency might not creep out from time to time (frequently!) to privatize this love.  This love has a self-correcting "mechanism" to sound an alarm right away when it becomes untrue.  (I feel so bad to call the Holy Spirit a "mechanism.")

The warning alert screams: "Entitlement!"

That's right.  The moment I feel I am entitled to Jesus and his love, the moment I love him less truly.  And with that, a downward spiral to take everything and everyone else for granted begins.  When it gets low enough we give it a name, where some think a literal eternal fire burns.  But it is worse, worse than the most merciless metaphor can suggest.

It is a dark place where I can no longer love anything at all.

The love of Jesus, Alex

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