Affection Witheld

There is a powerful equation in our post-modern culture, and it goes something like this: If it fulfills you, it is good. This equation is rooted in Aristotelian logic, that we can know the world as it stands. What we perceive, experience, desire- this is reality, or as close to it as we come. Truth is derived from our experience, and thus our desire, as a pure response to our experience, is our most truthful impulse. To reject your desire is to reject truth, and so it must not be rejected.

Plato felt differently. He felt that all reality was defined by greater, external Truth. A Form, a Figure, something which casts its shadow into our cave of experience. All that we perceive, we perceive only as representations and forms. True reality is outside of our experience, and while our experience may approach it, ultimately it must exist independently. It can only enter into our lives from the outside. Truth can only be known if it reveals itself to us.

And here I find myself, between Aristotelian and Platonic logic, as I consider one to whom I am attracted. This person is beautiful, indeed. We share common interests, common joys. We hold a common faith, and a common teleology. Our friends find us a good fit, as do we find ourselves.

And yet, as I pray and reflect, I feel, for one reason or another, that I must not act on my affections. It would not be right. It would not be right to ask my friend to dinner. Because my desire, though strong, is met with a greater truth: that of obedience to a Revelation.

I think this is what happens as Jesus asks James and John if they can share in His baptism. They have come with their desire, asking that He might fulfill them with positions of authority and power. And in response, He invites them to partake in His laying down of one life, and the taking up of another. Can you be baptized with the same baptism with which I will be baptized? Can you die and be resurrected? Can you set aside all things and become new?

You see, this is the Christian walk. As Bonhoeffer memorably wrote, when Christ calls a man, He bids him come and die. No parcel remains. No judgement, no history, no desire. Often we think of God buying us back from those things which bother us, buying us back from those things which we dislike in ourselves. We rejoice in a God that would remove those things which we already wish removed. But what of a God that desires all of us? What of a God that will not rent His people, but Who has purchased them outright? Who removes more than simply what bores or disturbs us within ourselves? What of a God who has laid His life down, and descended into hell, that we might be made utterly and entirely new? As we die with Him, He lays claim on every aspect of our being: do we really believe our desires remain unaffected?

Even in the depths of loneliness, in the midst of dissatisfaction, in the heart of despair- He has bought us. In Him we have died, and in Him alone do we have life. We are no longer that which we were: we are new creatures, cut of a new, glorious cloth. All things, including our every desire, are now submitted to Him. And whether He brings companionship or loneliness, satisfaction or dissatisfaction, delight or despair, He remains the Lord, the Revelation, the Truth, worthy of my death and delighting in my resurrection.