Perfect Love: All Oughts Dissolved in Is

Well, it is official. I find myself joining the ranks of those who think, perhaps naïvely, that if everyone could just understand the nature of the relationship they share with God and what faith means to them, everyone would experience a strange attraction, drawn by something both winsome and deeply desirable. Then again, I do not see Christianity as I always have: there was a time in which I was not even remotely interested, my stomach turning at its mere mention. Such a response is rather common in my experience and though its reasons and manifestations are many, at its core exists the reality that only those who commune with God know and understand his ways. There are many people who may know a good deal about God as communicated by others or experienced in their reading, but their words tend to fall a little flat if their knowledge never extends beyond into dynamic relationship. To know God—to really know God—and to make God known has a mysterious, seductive, even romantic element to it: it speaks to a deep-seated human desire and can be sensed by others who feel its ineffable emanations. To be around someone who knows God is to be around someone who is “different” in the most positive sense of the word. To spread the message of Christianity as it is often manifest, however, is often little more than to spread a particular political ideology that tends to polarize, too frequently coming across as self-righteous and in any case doing little to charm—much less to warm—the human heart. At its best, it may simply bore its hearers; at its worst, it may drive them far, far away (which may in the end be the best thing it ever did for anybody).

Perhaps it is as Martin Buber writes: God “may properly be addressed, not expressed” (as quoted in Will Herberg’s introduction to The Writings of Martin Buber, 19). In other words, addressing God and being addressed by God face to face is how we learn who he is; to the degree that God is expressed in any real sense outside of face to face encounter, it is through the living manifestation of every life that communes with God. Or, as Herberg writes, “Our encounter with God is intensively personal, and remains personal to the very end” (19). For Buber, and for me, there is a recognition that each of us is unique and the relationship that we share with God is necessarily personal; each one of us has his or her own truth, his or her own destiny and purpose, and when we find and live in that center, we will then shine like the sun, moon, and stars. We bear God’s image in the same sense that the face of Moses shone when he descended the mount: we not only reflect God’s image, but it has been embossed into our very being and the messenger literally becomes the message. For Buber, then, expression is “addression.”

Even though I see many people in my world, I am thoroughly Western in the sense that I have almost no intimates. Like Buber’s conception in the previous newsletter about the “It-District” of institutions and bureaucracies and the “I-District” of feelings with an insuperable barrier between them, I feel the schism of modern life acutely at times. Increasing the “feel-good” nature of either is still not genuine relationship and reciprocity, at least not in itself. If I am bursting with feeling and so are the institutions that form a part of my life, so much the better, but in itself, that does not bring connection. My relationship with God, however, is intensively intimate and is the one touchstone I have in a world often lacking in intimacy: God is in many ways my closest friend, a very special friend without limitation upon whom I unashamedly depend. I do not fear him, though I well understand that he is God; I do not often feel guilty in his presence except insofar as I know that I have violated the relationship, just as a friend who has slighted a friend knows and feels burning shame.

For a long time I have noticed subtle changes creeping into my understanding of faith, and, as is so often the case when one is living right in the middle of something, it has often proven difficult to discover exactly what these changes involve. Even on the occasions when it seemed I grasped firmly hold of them to the point of conscious articulation, they often slipped from my fingers; often such ideas hid on the tip of my tongue, refusing to glide through my lips. It does not matter, however, for such subtle things are best expressed in ways not ordinarily open to direct communication. To the degree that such can be communicated, pictures tend to serve us better.

Happily married couples look ahead toward the future: young couples put away for later years, older couples often prepare, as much as one can, for the possibility of living out the last decades of life alone. Yet while happily married couples are forward looking, the core of their relationship is lived in the present. Though they look to the future, there is no real sense that they need to love each other or else. Most likely, such a notion would seem to them strange, just as it likely seems strange to encounter here in print.

I say that relationship with God is most important: that the core of spirituality is knowing God and being known by him. I do not at all have in mind an or else when I suggest such an intimacy. It is not fear of possible unpleasantness that motivates me nor does guilt play any great factor. Before I knew God as I do now, such worries sometimes crossed my mind and at times I was afraid. For the most part and especially later, I did not believe in God and saw no reason why anyone should. Now as I grow to know God better, any concerns I may have once had for the or else become as strange to me as it would for a wife whose cherished husband is devoted to her: she’s not always happy with him, of course, but any or else is completely consumed in the relationship of the present. It is possible that not having married her husband would not have had any overtly negative impact on her life; what is certain is that she would have missed, even factoring in the misunderstandings, sacrifices, and hardships, a very positive impact that continues to sustain her and give her life meaning. In other words, she may not have avoided any negatives, but she surely gained a positive.

Like Buber, relationship is the integral component for me and the very reason we commune with God in the first place. Eternal life is of course a great hope—the prospect of saying “goodbye” no more seems at times balm for the weary soul—but it is more incidental to my relationship than its central motivating factor. If it were proven that this life is the only one we will ever lead, I still see all the reason in the world to trust God and take to him the cares, the triumphs, and the little details of my day. I may not have avoided any negative consequence, but I surely have gained a great positive while breath still fills my lungs. I have come to know God as a woman comes to know a man or a man a woman: we can never have one-hundred-percent proof that he or she loves us but we can be so immersed in a positive relationship as to effectively remove all doubt. Further, the more that there is a positive give-and-take—the higher the quality and the more frequent the occurrence—the more reinforced that quiet assurance grows and the deeper the “proof.” Yes, “proof” is a deep and abiding assurance: as with Buber, God cannot be proven but he can be known. To be provable is to be cheapened by objectification; to be known is to be exalted, prized in one’s totality.

When I say that relationship with God—knowing God and being known by God—is the heart and soul of authentic faith, I have no or else in mind: should I live forever, my days will still be parceled out moment by moment. Or else plays on guilt and fear. Love, by contrast, sees the offense, but the offense is viewed in light of love for the beloved. An or else sees the offense more so than the person and grows indignant, a lover sees the offense as a heartbreak, for it stands in the way of his beloved. A lover sees the offense as a heartbreak because he wants nothing to stand in the way of their relationship and it pains him; loving his beloved deeply as he does, his eyes are not for the offense but for her alone. Unlike communion with the divine, human lovers are doubly pained because they both receive and give offense, rarely with malicious intent. The best human lovers learn to pray, “Father, forgive them, for they know not what they do,” seeing the offense as one they have been, or easily could have been, guilty of far too many times themselves. There is the heartache of recognition: as you are hurting me unintended, so I have hurt you. And human lovers have to say, “As I long for you to forgive me and see my heart as it actually is and not how it so often comes across, so I forgive you.”

Marriages do not happen once and then end, but are lifelong affairs that sometimes are rocky and sometimes heavenly and most often a little of both and sometimes at the same time. What cements them and makes them grow is time spent together.

We do not think it strange that we should wake up each morning and have to eat food and drink liquid; we do not think it strange that every night we should have to sleep. Sometimes we may go without sleeping or without taking nourishment into our bodies, but we do not think it strange that these are necessities that have to be repeated over and over throughout an entire lifetime. Nor should it surprise us that marriages that do not enjoy open channels of communication deteriorate rather rapidly; it should not surprise us that each day we need the bread of heaven, a life of prayer and communion with God. All nourishing things must be maintained or else they cease their sustenance and the result tends to be one of decay.

When Jesus was being tempted, he replied that humanity did not live by bread alone, but on every word that proceeded out of the mouth of the Father. If we are to flourish spiritually, daily we listen to the words that proceed from the mouth of the Father, spoken to us, his beloved children. We should not think it strange on the one hand that the Father’s love should not be doubted; we should not think it strange on the other that our relationship with the Father is daily imbibed. If or else is dissolved and reciprocity “while it is now” is the dominant focus—if “today” is the day of salvation—we can understand the two strains of those who have no fear of losing their salvation and those who stress that salvation must experience upkeep if one is to be spiritually vibrant and alive. We have merely to put them together in the eternal now to see their complement and overlay; we have but to dissolve the or else in the eternal now and all becomes clear. Salvation, whatever else it might encompass, is realized moment by moment, whether in this moment, or one eons from now in an eternal communion to come.

Archive note: See also the discussion forum thread regarding this newsletter.

In the final consensus, we could say that there are two tendencies among believers. There are those who see the spiritual life more as a marriage and then there are those that see it more as a marriage contract. If you aim at marriage, you get the contractual elements thrown in. If you aim at the marriage contract, your chances are not quite so certain. At the very least, by aiming at the contract it may be hoped that you will increasingly come to see the marriage as your efforts are materialized in ways you did not initially expect. You thought you were doing your duty; you did not expect him to react quite so warmly; you thought it was what should be done, you did not expect to see her eyes sparkle so much when she looked at you. Strange how it made your heart feel: that unexpected catch in your ribcage that takes the breath away and burns like bliss. Love is not only the perfect fulfillment of law, it also covers a multitude of sins. So then, if duty is what we understand best, then let us do our duty. But let us always pray that we find love, for the heart of marriage is not the contract but the marriage itself: the former is an institution but the latter is a living relationship. Where there is no relationship, the contract has no practical meaning; where there is relationship, the contract is implicit in all that is said and done. Where there is relationship, all oughts are dissolved in is.*

* During the Enlightenment with its inductive approach to knowledge (known today as the scientific method), an ethical dilemma arose. If we cannot know the end for which a thing is made—its telos—how can we know what ought to be done? All we can know is what is right in front of us: we can only know what is according to the empirical method. How, then, do we get from an is to an ought; how do we justify getting an ethical norm—an ought—from the muteness of the is? It appears there is an unbridgeable gap between is and ought over which rationality may not cross: as with Kant’s antimonies, we are at a logical impasse. In our example here, we are suggesting that love itself is an is, and as such, it fulfills all oughts.

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