I wonder sometimes how it is that people can just never be happy.  No matter how much time you spend on that person, no matter what you give up for that person, no matter what you go out of your way to do for that person, or how many times you try to figure out what that person wants or what will make that person happy - that person always ends up disappointed in you.  And it doesn't have to be anything about how you interacted together or something you did toward that person.  It's just who you are and what you enjoy doing, or even your life dreams just don't measure up.  I've pretty much given up on the idea that anyone in the world could ever truly love "everything" about another person.

I know that God loves everything about the way he created me.  But the fact is, I don't always live that way.  Are there things about my life that I love doing that God "didn't create me to do"?  For example, I sin.  Clearly God doesn't love the fact that I enjoy sinning.  I love playing video games.  Is that another area that God "doesn't love" about me?  I enjoy watching various TV shows.  Is that an area that God "doesn't love" about me?

God created us with a specific mold because he has a desire for what we would do with our lives.  How much of my life has to fit that mold perfectly?  And I don't want the crap cop-out answer: "none of it has to because God loves you and lets you in heaven anyway."  Although technically true, there is no redemptive value to acting with that mindframe.  Jesus says, "Be perfect, therefore, because your heavenly Father is perfect."  And it's also a crap answer to say: "Oh, but he says that because he doesn't expect us to be perfect - he expects us to realize that we can't live up to the law."  Again, although technically true, once again it is a terrible idea to go into an action saying, "It's ok.  God doesn't really expect me to be perfect.  I know I can't live up to the law, so it's ok that I'm doing this."

Sometimes I just don't have the energy to keep doing the things I know are what I'm made to be doing.  People say that if you're living your life exactly as God created you to be that you'd always be happy and energized.  But either I'm terribly mistaken as what I'm supposed to be doing or that's just not true.  Because every time I'm happy and energized to carry on my work, someone else is upset.

What is love?  The Bible talks about love in 4 different contexts: heart, soul, mind, and strength.  But it also gives us an entire book devoted to love - not in the abstract as a concept, but in practice between two people: Song of Songs.  Oddly enough, the book is often looked at in the abstract anyway; people try to suggest, "Here is a perfect allegory for the theoretical love that people can have for God and God has for us."  Song of Songs has three Hebrew words for Love: Raya, Ahava, and Dode.  Raya is the friendship love that desires to do things together, to engage each other's interests, and the genuine fact that you get along all the time.  It has been described as a love that defines "soul mates."  Ahava is the committment form of love that says, "In all of this vast universe, no matter what the circumstancse are, good or bad, and no matter at what point in my life we're at - more than anything, I want to be right here with you."  Dode is the physical love that is concerned with the passionate kissing and fondling that lovers do.  And when we talk about love in teh heart, soul, mind, and strength contexts we can see how each of these has their place.  Let's see how the beloved (wife of Solomon) experiences each of the aspects of love in practice.

1. Heart

Heart is all about emotions.  Many people mistake this portion of love for the totality of it because it is the easiest to recognize and usually has the most control over our decisions.  In fact, it has so much power that the beloved warns three times: "Do not arouse or awaken love until it so desires."  There is no doubt that the beloved speaks many of her words out of passion.  This is not just because women tend to express their emotions more easily than men do, but because this expression of passion is her primary means of communicating to her lover how important he is.  Point 1: To love someone with your heart is to express your emotions in a way that shows how much you value that person.

She eagerly desires his kisses - the first thing she even says in this book.  She wants to be swept off her feet - taken away.  She wants to know where he is that she might run to him.  His love is more delightful than wine, as if she could get drunk on it.  But this emotion is not just for her benefit.  She uses it to make his heart rejoice (3:11).  She uses her emotions to drive her to pursue him while he is away (3:1-4).  She seeks to entice his emotions (4:16; 5:8; 8:5).  Point 2: Love is using your emotions for the good pleasure of the other.

2. Soul

Love of the soul is primarily a spiritual matter.  But the soul is also the source of what gives us our ability to choose.  Many people understand that marriage exists not only for the benefit of men and women, but also for God's benefit, which is rooted in the spiritual interactions among people.  Oddly enough, the beloved never once talks about God, nor heaven or hell, nor the spirit.  But the bond between a husband and wife is innately spiritual.  Twice, the beloved says "my lover is mine and I am his" (2:16;6:3)  In both contexts she talks of him going off to accomplish his heart's desire.  In the first instance (2:16) she urges him to flee and be as free as a young stag running along the hills.  In the second, (6:3) he goes off to browse among the lilies.  A third time does she say, "I belong to my lover," but this time it is that his desire is for her (as opposed to "my lover is mine").  On this occasion they go off to do their work in the vineyards together with her planning to express her love at that time as well.  Moreover, she spends a good portion of the book counseling other young maidens, which his way of life has left her the freedom to do.  Point 3: Love is giving the other freedom to choose and enabling them to accomplish the work God has set out for them, even personally helping the other in that task.

A. Raya

It seems rather plain that love of the heart and soul fits into the Raya form of love.  The way that they feel when they are interacting and the things that they do together demonstrate this perfect bond that we could expect from soulmates.  "My lover is mine and I am his" is the ultimate way of saying: "We're perfect for each other."  They are one in spirit.  They go out in the vineyards to work; they attend banquets; their hearts throb when in the other's presence; they feel a constant longing when one is missing.  This bond of friendship is not something to be taken lightly.  Point 4: Love is rooted in a deep friendship and cannot maintain without this foundation.

3. Mind

The mind aspect of love also contains much of a choice element, but is primarily focussed on a continuing drive to know the other.  The beloved is constantly learning new things about her lover that make her exclaim: "No wonder the maidens love you!" (1:3)  And she chooses to teach him of the things that she has learned from her time growing up (8:2).  All of her observations are things that she has learned of him and she longs to be with him to know him even more.  She says, "Many waters cannot quench love; rivers cannot wash it away."  It cannot be quenched because there is always more.  You can never know everything about a person; if you are curious of your lover, you will realize that there is always a wellspring of information about the other person that will continue to lead to deeper and deeper intimacy.  Rivers cannot wash it away because a committed mind is planted firmly in place and will not fail (1 Cor. 13:8).  Point 5: Love is a constant curiosity of the other and thinking often of what you can learn from and about the other.

B. Ahava

Beyond friendship, these two lovers have decided that they will always be committed to each other.  Most of their discourse is spent observing and learning about her lover.  But their committment goes beyond all.  She asks not only to be a seal over his heart - that he would always desire such intimacy with her until death, but also to be a seal on his arm that all could see his committment to her.  That is why we have a wedding.  People can very easily be married between only themselves, God and a Judge.  But we invite all others along not only to celebrate, but to serve as witnesses to hold us secure to the committment that until our dying day, this is still the person you want to be with.  Point 6: Love is a life-long committment.

4. Strength

The physical care takes its place here.  The lover goes off to pray for his beloved; he works to provide for her; he hears her desires and meets them; he takes care of his body so that she may enjoy him; and he pleases her physically.  Many of the things observed are not just to know about the other, but also because they physically desire each other.  The lover uses his strength for her, but she also uses her strength for him.  She watches out for foxes in the vineyards; she physically gets out of bed in the middle of the night to search for him; she endures beatings for his sake; and she prepares herself to sleep with him.  Point 7: Love is looking out for the other's needs and desires above your own.

C. Dode

This almost goes without saying, but these two are physically enamored with each other.  They're just looking for a chance to have sex.  There is no doubt about that.  But their desire is not for their own bodily pleasure, but out of a motivation to please the other.  She spreads her perfume to arouse him; she gives him choice fruit to entice him; and she says point blank: "there I will give you my love."  The first words she utters are a request for his kisses.  This physical passion is powerful and not to be underestimated.  While the emotion aspect of love is the most powerful of the 4 virtues, it is strongest when applied to the physical.  Separately these two may not hold much flair.  A woman who has no emotional connection to her lover will not likely care much for the physical interaction; nor would a man be able to truly connect with his beloved emotionally if not for the physical passion that drives him (again, not for his own good pleasure, but out of a desire to see her fully pleased).  But when you mix these two, fireworks go off.  Point 8: Love is the physical attraction between two people.

The Mixing

Love is
     using your emotions for the benefit of the other and not for self-pleasure
     giving the other freedom to accomplish God's work for their lives and helping in that task
     being curious about the other and wanting to know them more - beyond your desire to be known
     placing the physical needs of the other above your own and seeking to meet both needs and desires

You know when you are in love when
     you are able to interact in numerous areas of love and continue to want to spend more and more time with the other such that you would think of yourself as soul mates
     no matter what circumstances or place of life you are in, there is nowhere in the world that you would rather be than with that person - you are fully committed for life
     your desire is not only for your own physical pleasure, but also to see the other fully pleased.

Drop any one of these and you will see how things start to fall appart.  Ahava and Dode without the Raya creates couples who are miserable together except when having sex, but will remain that way because they are committed.  Raya and Ahava without the Dode creates frustrated lovers who have no way to express the overflow of their love for one another.  Raya and Dode without the Ahava creates couples who are prone to cheat on the other or leave when they experience better Raya or Dode with another.

Professor Dressler: a quote from Dostoevsky's The Brothers Karamazov.  In it, Ivan poses the following question to his brother Alyosha:
"Imagine that you are creating a fabric of human destiny with the object of making men happy in the end, giving them peace and rest at last, but that it was essential and inevitable to torture to death only one tiny creature---that baby beating its breast, for instance---and to found that edifice on its unavenged tears, would you consent to be the architect of those conditions?  Tell me, and tell the truth?"

Mr. Raju: In the novel, Alyosha comes to believe that we are all responsible for the sins of others, so it doesn't matter who committed the act, because all of us must deal with it, and so we must take unto ourselves the culpability of others. Society will not have reached its goal of "making men happy in the end", he believes, until men realize we are all guilty for the crimes of others. Therefore, Alyosha's question is a trap, for the killing of an innocent baby precludes us from being happy because all of us would have the guilt and culpability of killing that child. He cannot justify killing an innocent person because the social harm is our collective culpability.

Me: Mr. Raju's comments on communal responsibility bear a striking resemblance to "The Ones Who Walk Away from Omelas" by Ursula K. Le Guin, which was always taught as a Jesus-reference: http://harelbarzilai.org/words/omelas.txt  In this story (as I recommend everyone should read), there is a more than perfect society that is wonderful and good in every sense of the word.  It is not only happy (as at least one person said is not enough), but is also an improving society in every area of culture, science, philosophy, etc.  The catch is that there is a child locked in a closet, scorned and dying to get out.  Every person in Omelas knows that this child is there and also understand that if they let the child out of the closet their entire town's prosperity would be gone that day.  The story says this to partially answer the question:

"To exchange all the goodness and grace of every life in Omelas for that single, small improvement: to throw away the happiness of thousands for the chance of the happiness of one: that would be to let guilt within the walls indeed."

From there, what we are really asking is, are you willing to face your wounds and confront what you are hiding, or will you pretend you have no heart-wounds and live in a feigned blissful ignorance?

Though this question is very different, it stems from the same line of thought.  To explain the jump I made, the original question talks of a new universe where we get to play God.  Or, for all practical purposes, we can even talk of this universe under the Christian mentality, where a Christian, in theory, believes that God is the creator of this "fabric of human destiny."  Christians also claim that Jesus was a perfectly innocent being who was made to be tortured to death (supposedly theologically at the hands of every person in the world who ever lived, as Mr. Raju suggests the brother eventually understands) in order that those who accept his death as having paid the price for their wrongs will get to go to heaven (i.e. the ideal happy place).  I don't know if it is meant to be this way in the story, but it appears that Ivan is asking his brother: can you possibly believe in, or support, the God of Christians?

Now, we can't possibly expect to make judgments on any god at all, because if a god exists there is certainly no way we can condemn god when god's ability to reason, by definition, would be beyond our own.  But it does make a difference that the God of Christians did not condemn a random person for the greater good, but theoretically put himself to death (how that works, I have no idea), since Jesus is supposed to be fully God.  If this was Ivan's intent, the question now develops to: would you create a fabric of human destiny... ... ...but that it was essential and inevitable to torture to death yourself for the sake of all the others?  This seems more the appropriate question.

Not to get into a debate against Christian theology, what I see as the next logical step is the popular Christian saying: "Take up your cross daily and follow me" (which I believe was said by Jesus).  My understanding (which may be very flawed) is that those who have a cross to take up are expected to do as Jesus did and sacrifice their self-seeking nature (however moral and lawful this nature might be lived out) for the betterment of all others, as determined by the path Jesus leads them on for that day.

But as the years went on, people naturally skew good principles so that today we have people who have sacrificed to the closet every wound or insufficiency in their heart that they may live out what appears to be a good and perfect life.  I cannot count the times people have told me, "He/She just seems to have it all together and I feel like I'm falling apart."  Nobody has it all together.  We live just like those in Omelas, each on a personal, individual scale.  Collectively, we unspokenly agree to hang out with others in this context.  Surely there are sore, wounded parts of our hearts that are dying to be heard that we might be healed and rid of them from our town (i.e. conscious, soul, heart, whatever) forever.  But woe to the thought that people might think poorly of us if they saw what we were hiding in the closet.  We're all hiding something and we all know it.  Or, we pretend that we are not hiding anything, but instead nobody has asked the right questions yet and if they were to ask then we would talk.  Or maybe "I'm not hiding anything because I have my one or two friends that I tell everything to."  But until we feel comfortable wearing our deepest shortcomings, imperfections or wounds on our sleeves, we are like those of Omelas.  Note, though, that I am not talking about hiding the wrongs we have done, but wounds we have been victims of and imperfections inherent in who we are.

That is why the quote in the short story says that to let that child (i.e. our true selves, or at least part of) free would be to "let guilt within the walls indeed."  This guilt is not the guilt of what we hide, but the guilt of hiding it at all - treating a completely innocent part of our hearts like this child just because we perceive it as unbearable to face.  In such a case, it would be foolish to sacrifice this innocent piece of our lives because doing so only serves the purpose of making everyone else believe that they must do the same.  On the outside, everything looks perfect, but our hearts may be bleeding (and not in the ordinary way that hearts pour blood through veins and arteries).

Back to the main topic, in short, I tend to agree with the possible Christian standing on this matter.  While Mr. Slaybod would kill the innocent "even if it means sacrificing my freedom in the process," I would ONLY adhere to this rule if I were the one to be killed and nobody else's freedom is in jeopardy.  Under no other circumstances would I "consent to be the architect of those conditions" nor would I condone the actions of another or even a god who would.

I don't understand the mystery of emotions.  And that lack of understanding is inherent in their design.  Emotions are great for clouding judgment, knowledge and understanding until time gives those back to you.  I learned that lesson the hard way (a few years ago) - I'd bet even harder than most of you reading this.  I've felt emotions of all kinds - happy and sad, great and small, normal and weird; I've even gone through a period of several months with no emotions at all.  I've also spent many years doing all I could to hide my emotions and have only just broken out of that phase two years.

Sure enough, it was brokenness and depression that led forth the rebellion of my heart against its walls.  For just over a year, it was darkness and despair that ruled my life and brought the deepest emotions I'd ever felt in my life.  I didn't even know the human body could handle such things as failure, rejection, divorce, abandonment, loneliness and hatred all within a two month period.  (Our capacity to handle such things now goes to show the depth in capacity of our sinful nature.)

In that time, had I a better knowledge of the scriptures, in addition to 2 Corinthinas 1:8b-9, I would have prayed Philippians 3:10-11 as my theme verses: "I want to know Christ and the power of his resurrection and the fellowship of sharing in his sufferings, becoming like him in his death, and so, somehow, to attain to the resurrection from the dead."  Of all those terrible things going on in my life - "I consider them rubbish, that I may gain Christ" (3:8).  But what does it mean to "gain Christ"?  How does one do that practically?

God has been laying this verse on my heart for quite some time:1 John 4:20 - "Anyone who does not love his brother, whom he has seen, cannot love God, whom he has not seen."  Add to that John 3:12 - "I have spoken to you of earthly things and you do not believe; how then will you believe if I speak of heavenly things?" and Ephesians 5:32, about husbands and wives - "This is a profound mystery - but I am talking about Christ and the church."  These all point to the exact same thing: God intends earthly things to parallel the spiritual realm as a guide to help us understand heavenly things.

Now, of all the crap I've dealth with - wounding enough to warrant psychiatric help for some - there has been one hope that I have which lets me consider them rubbish that I may "gain Christ."  Do I really know what it feels like to "gain Christ"?  I can't say that I do.  Two sentences later, Paul is even saying, "Not that I have already obtained all this" (3:12).  But what I do have is a parallel - a bridge.  Her name is Jessica Hayes.  She is the one who shows me a silhouette of what it will feel like one day to "gain Christ."  And if the mere silhouette is enough to count all my troubles as rubbish and view my life as a heaven-on-earth, how much greater the full thing?!?

A silhouette is but a mere outline of what we are to look at.  It gives a framework for how the truth is meant to look - and she blows my mind.  How can emotions make any sense when everything in the world is thrown against you along with the darkest feelings the world has to shove down your throat, yet all it takes is one girl who is captivating to her very core for me to "consider them rubbish" and be overjoyed with beatitude.  How much more impossible might it be to understand the surpassing greatness that is "gaining Christ"?  In the third heaven, Paul "heard inexpressible things, things that man is not permitted to tell."  This might be an extrapolation, but I believe that he felt inexpressible things as well.

That is what happened for me this weekend...