Sex and the Trinity (an exercise in practical theology)

"Let us make man in our image, after our likeness.... So God created man in His own image. In His image He created him; male and female He created them." Gen. 1:26-27

Q: How did God create man?

A: God created man male and female, after His own image, in knowledge, righteousness, and holiness, with dominion over the creatures.

(Question 10, Westminster Shorter Catechism)

There is consistency and diversity in God, and humanity bears the same double-stamp. We are one creature, a human being made in God's image. Yet we are also two separate creatures, male and female, both in God's image. When we read this in Genesis, it is so quickly stated and then left behind that it feels like an absent-minded contradiction: "In His image He created him; male and female He created them." The switch from "him" to "them" is instantaneous, almost nonchalant, as if it should be obvious that what God makes as singular cannot help but also be plural. And why not? When the Holy "Us" makes after His own image, should we expect less rather than more?

We should not glaze over how nitty-gritty the trinitarian implications of our creation are. The basic idea of the Trinity (as if this will explain it) is that God as a Being is a diversity that is so absolutely harmonious in their unity that "they" are "He". The "three" are "One". Even that shallow sketch seems to skirt heresy, but here's one ting that doesn't: the "image of God" is the image of the Trinity, and it is in that likeness we are made. Thus, we are "him" and "them," one and two, two becoming one when they "cleave" to each other and become "one flesh" (Gen. 2:24). This is a great mystery, one easily misunderstood. The point for now is that the Trinity, far from being a theological abstraction, is in fact a divine reality whose image is revealed in us, even (and especially) in our moments of the most intimate physical contact.

Again, why not? Only love creates real unity, and the name of the Trinity is "love" (I John 4:7-8). Thus, the love between friends and "like minds," the love between a man and a woman, the love of Christ for His Church---all these things are reflections and refractions of the One Great Love, the Trinitarian Dance. The Trinity is the higher reality infusing all of existence. It is the watermark of creation, the touchstone of all that is, and therefore it is practical theology, for without it we cannot even begin to understand God, or the world, or ourselves.

All other ground is sinking sand.

-Jon Vowell (c) 2013

"...the philosophy of Light" (ramblings and parables from orthodox rebels)

Recently I flipped through an essay by Roger Scruton called "How I Became a Conservative," where he charts his course to philosophical conservatism from the Student Riots of 1968's Paris to his professorship in the 1980s. He mentioned how during the Student Riots, a friend of his (one of the rioters) justified the mayhem with a book by Michel Foucault called The Order of Things. Scruton had few kind words for the book, but one thing he did say stuck with me: "The book is not a work of philosophy but an exercise in rhetoric. Its goal is subversion, not truth...." 

That last remark in particular wedged itself into my mind. As a member of the postmodern "millennial" generation, I have found myself flummoxed by the strange audacities committed in our name. Rampant relativism, the near deification of doubt and skepticism, and a narcissistic insistence on a conformity to our own "authenticity," i.e., if something doesn't speak to or "resonate" with us then we have no ears for it and that's that. A lot of books have been written in defense of these atrocities, many of them religious in content, all of them mystical in tone.

It is that mystical quality that often astounded me. When I would read the "history" of Foucault or the "theology" of Rob Bell, I found a singular consistency: what they said was gibberish, but it was artful gibberish, and very often infused with a romantic flair or delivery. Some of Foucault's best chapters are his last ones, where he drops all pretense to scholarship and simply slips into the artist that he is, weaving an intoxicating and provocatively put pack of lies. Bell is even better, being an artist from start to finish. His books are more a product of creativity than serious study. Anyone with a critical eye can see through all the ornamentation to the real substance of the work, which is either terrifying (Foucault) or damnable (Bell). In either case, it is utter nonsense in fancy garb.

Yet they gain traction, and it is because of the fancy garb. There is something to be said for the power of beauty: it has a moral force. As such, its abuse is incredibly dangerous. It can turn a man's heart faster than any syllogism. I speak as an artist myself: in the grand scheme of any debate, rhetoric often trumps logic. That is the meaning behind Scruton's statement. It's not what you say but how you say it, and if you speak it well then you can bombard people with any number of things, hiding your true meaning and purposes behind a flurry of colorful lights, like a fireworks display obscuring an incoming storm.

The exact purpose of all this rhetoric is indeed "subversion," and the goal of subversion is the destruction of every "truth" that has apparently imprisoned us. Such a task can sound very noble, especially if you dress it up with terms like "tyranny" and "liberty," "oppression" and "authenticity". It can even speak of "truth" in a sense, i.e., all of the "truths" we've been given are just the oppressive constructs of dead, white, European men. We must tear down those constructs so that we can get to the real essence of things (if there even is such an essence). One could very well argue (and I'm sure that some have) that subversion is all about "truth": the destruction of its counterfeits and the discovery of its true form or nature.

"White is only the beginning."

Calling "subversion" the search for truth through destruction reminds me of The Fellowship of the Ring where Gandalf recounts his ill-fated meeting with Saruman. Gandalf discovers that Saruman has rejected his title of "the White" and has instead become "Saruman of Many Colors". Gandalf retorts that he "liked white better." Saruman sneers at this: "White! It serves as a beginning. White cloth may be dyed. The white page can be overwritten, and the white light can be broken." Gandalf's reply is another statement that has stuck with me: "In which case it is no longer white, and he that breaks a thing to find out what it is has left the path of wisdom."

Tolkien was referencing a medieval theory of light. Medieval Christianity viewed light as the perfect physical image for God, being not only pure and clarifying but also an absolute unity of multiples. Such logic is fundamentally trinitarian, as is all of Christianity. Every inch of Christian thought and act and artistry revolves around this central notion of separates being one while remaining separates (neither confounding the persons nor dividing the substance). The Trinity is the highest expression of this (three in one). There is also the Incarnation (God and Man) as well as Atonement (God and man). The Church fits the bill (one body, many members), as does the Bible (66 books of different genres written at different times and places in different contexts, yet all unified around a singular theme). The Liturgy is built upon many separate elements coming together to form a singular worship, while the sense and structure of stained-glass windows and the cathedrals they adorn give vivid concrete testimony to the amassing together of many into one (without losing the many).

Out of many, One.

For the Christian, existence (from the foundations of ontos to the spectacles of quarks and quasars) has always been a fragmented whole, a great and glorious tapestry of many threads of many colors(!) woven into a singular image. Reality, truth: these things have always been a work of art, not a didactic platitude. Truth cannot be summarized in a statement; that is why it was summarized in a person (John 14:6). The swirling complexities of reality are captured by the irresistible gravity of an incomprehensible center that is God. But that capture does nothing to diminish the complexities, anymore than gravity diminishes the stars. On the contrary, it is their capture that gives us the beauty of the night sky, with its constant constellations and expansive milky way. From the foundations of trinitarian doctrine, you arrive at a philosophy of light, which says that it is neither unity nor diversity, neither solidification nor fragmentation, but rather the whole spectrum working in unison, in perfect, sublime harmony and holism.

Not that I see it, but that I see all else.

It is this "both/and" trinitarian logic that has been missed by the radicals of yesterday and today. They fear solidification at every turn, so they tear it down. To them, the light is nothing to them but blinding, so they break it that they might better see. But then it is not light at all, just disparate colors scattered about without direction or clarity. And in such a catastrophe, one of two things typically happens. Either they revel (or despair) in the prismatic chaos they have created, or they try to contain the madness by reducing everything to one of the disparate colors. Thus, everything becomes a reductionism: it all boils down to economics, or genetics, or sex, or race, or class, or truth-to-power, or pacifism, or Republicanism, or patriotism, or doubt, or whatever else comes and goes in fashion. Whatever way they go, they have broken the whole, and have left the path of wisdom.

I end this random ramble with a parable, told by G.K. Chesterton in the first chapter of his book Heretics. It is not his best book, but it is relevant here. Each chapter has Chesterton dealing a deathblow to a different kind of reductionism, for subversion (rhetorical or otherwise) has been in vogue for a long time now, which is why today we are practically drowning in it:

Suppose that a great commotion arises in the street about something, let us say a lamp-post, which many influential persons desire to pull down. A grey-clad monk, who is the spirit of the Middle Ages, is approached upon the matter, and begins to say, in the arid manner of the Schoolmen, "Let us first of all consider, my brethren, the value of Light. If Light be in itself good---" At this point he is somewhat excusably knocked down. All the people make a rush for the lamp-post, the lamp-post is down in ten minutes, and they go about congratulating each other on their unmedieval practicality.

But as things go on they do not work out so easily. Some people pulled the lamp-post down because they wanted an electric light; some because they wanted old iron; some because they wanted darkness, because their deeds were evil. Some thought it not enough of a lamp-post, and some too much; some acted because they wanted to smash municipal machinery, and some because they wanted to smash something. And there is war in the night, no man knowing whom he strikes.

So, gradually and inevitably, today, tomorrow, or the next day, there comes back the conviction that the monk was right after all, and that all depends on what is the philosophy of Light. Only what we may have discussed under the gas-lamp, we now must discuss in the dark.

-Jon Vowell, et. al. (c) 2013

 

Homily 47: For the Love of God (as preached by an orthodox rebel)

"I have formed this people for Myself; they shall show forth my praise." Is. 43:21

The universe dances for the love of God, and by the love of God, for by the love of God were all things created, flying forth from the bounteous, rapturous joy of His Being like light from the sun, like sparks from the furnace, like foam from the sea. We were built from love and for love: from the love of God most glorious so that we may love God most glorious and all His glorious creatures. This is the true way of worship: not in words or song or dance but love, love that is not less than and yet is greater than all expression. True, our halting metaphors are ever-inadequate to pronounce our great purpose, yet we cannot help ourselves. We must sing, we must say, we must do, for the aching desire will not leave us be. Our bones burn until we prophesy the love of God to us, to all, to every one and thing.

Herein is love: not that we created ourselves, but that God created us, and recreated us. He is in the old things and the new things, and newer and newer things still, renewed in deeper and starker shades of glory and grace. There is no bottom to Him, and yet there is no bottom without Him. The dark is endless, the void deep where His love is not, where all things are not. Outside of His love is No-thing, and those who turn to its noths will feel the burn of endless exile, rejection by and of the summit of all light and desire. Who are we to neglect so great a salvation?  If we would be perfect as God is perfect, holy as He is holy, then we should abide by the summation of his commandments and law: love God, and necessarily love others (Matt. 22:37-40; Gal. 5:14).

But we are evil creatures indeed, for no one seeks after holiness, after righteousness, after God. No one seeks the way of worship, no not one. We have all of us turned astray, to our own way. Falling deeper and deeper into the abyss of our own isolation, our terrible loneliness, hard-won by our own spite and hell-born ignorance. God above, most brilliant and profoundest Being of the Deep Light, cleave our minds with Your truth, our selves with Your Selves. Strike us with Your love, your wild and reckless love; like a flash and crash of lightning against a dead tree, make your mark against our bark and spark the fire that burns towards Heaven once again. Amen.

-Jon Vowell (c) 2013

The Evils of Freedom (as explained by an original orthodox rebel)

"The earth is also defiled under the inhabitants thereof, because they have transgressed the laws, changed the ordinances, broken the everlasting covenant. Therefore, the curse has devoured the earth, and they that dwell therein are desolate." Is. 24:5-6

"Rules are made to be broken," or so goes the cliche. It is inaccurate, of course. For starters, no one actually believes it. What we actually believe is that the rules of others are meant to be broken, but you'd better not touch mine! We all have our private codifications that are untouchable, unquestionable, and binding for everyone. Thus, we are all hypocrites in our rebellions, for we are only rebels to others. No one is a rebel to themselves.

This hypocrisy is a particular mark of our own age. Every day and in every way we are encouraged further towards some vague notion of freedom: freedom to express ourselves, to find ourselves, to be ourselves and be true to ourselves. The result is that there is freedom of expression but no freedom of correction. You may express yourself as you please, but no one has the right to suggest that your expression (and your "self'") may be unwholesome or even destructive to you and others. Such suggestions are oppressive, mean-spirited, and the way of the bigot, or so we are told by those who are apparently free to correct us.

Unfortunately, when qualifications are made, the hypocrisy only gets worse, viz., becomes confused and confusing. "You may do as you please as long as you don't hurt anyone." If I may do as I please, then why can I not hurt anyone? Will you now plead for absolutist morality to bolster your relativism, like flying buttresses for a fortress of air? The whole thing is ridiculous because it is groundless by its own logic. If I am free (and encouraged!) to be myself, and "my self" just happens to be a violent monstrosity (or simply has a proclivity for deception and manipulation or any other less spectacular cruelty), then who are you to limit my freedom with your narrow-minded notions of social contract? Am I free or not free? Or am I free in one way but not in another? Which? Why? How? Exceptions can prove a rule, but in this case exceptions only complicate the rule into oblivion. It is no wonder that common folk (being fed their daily indoctrination of freedom through their iPods, streamed videos, and game systems) don't really think on these things: a moment's scrutiny would send the whole house of cards tumbling into the wind.

At this point, some of my readers may be annoyed with me. "Look, we don't know why we draw the line here and not there, okay? Are we not free to draw lines as we please? And is it so bad that we are more tolerant of someone's fashion sense than their murdering someone? It's just common sense." It is a fair frustration to have, and like any sane person I don't want to be a bother, except with things that are bothersome. And here is what I see as bothersome: the so-called "freedom" that is the foundation for all of this hypocrisy and confusion. We have an unhealthy love of freedom. We have poisoned our own well, and what once may have been a virtue is now most certainly a vice.

If you think this is about politics (about candidate "X" or legislation "Y"), it's not. This is a moral issue, not a political one. Politically, you may be a liberal or conservative or points in between. Morally, however, we are all libertines. We all inherently distrust rules and authority and the order they bring. We instinctively consider them to be oppressive and suffocating, and consequently the one and only desire is to be as free as possible. But it is a destructive desire, for this one, radical reason: order is the only grounds for all good things, including freedom.

That is "common sense," for those of you who are flabbergasted at the moment, so allow me to repeat myself: there is nothing good without order. There is no freedom without laws (like "the right to bear arms") to keep you safe from tyrants and robbers alike. There is no possibility of peace without the confines of civilization and all its "oppressive" accoutrements: a police force, traffic laws, court systems, and common civility and custom. There is not even the possibility of fun, for without rules (hard, binding rules) there is no game, not even Calvinball. And if you think you can disprove all of this, then you have already failed, for there is no argumentation at all without the cold bigotry of the laws of logic.

All of our modern ruin (from social decadence and political corruption to school shootings and abortion on demand) can be traced to a confusion of terms. We equate "order" for tyranny and then mistake anarchy for "freedom". Our slobbering lover-affair with limitlessness has taken its toll (and many lives). We have forgotten old wisdom, the wisdom of balance and moderation, of the simple notion of the "point between extremes"; for order, truly beneficent and wholesome order, is the point between extremes, the extremes of tyranny and anarchy. The extremes of law gone mad and freedom gone mad. It is a truth as old as Plato, as old as the Bible: when the good king rules, all is well; when the bad king rules, or when no man rules, the city of oppression will fall, and the city of confusion will break down. Then all joy will be darkened, and the mirth of the land will be gone (Is. 24:10-11). Peace and prosperity is found in order alone, in the beauty, the κοσμος, of a thing rightly put together, for only when every bone has found its socket can the whole man stand.

We must not be deceived: democracy is not divine. God is not a democrat, and although Christianity (and God) values every individual person as a unique creation, it cannot be called a democratic institution. If it is anything, it is monarchical, in service to the King and Lord of Heaven and Earth. It still believes in freedom, but as a means and not an end. Freedom is to be the road to a greater glory: telling the story of God and living in His righteousness, for the Christian does not live for themselves but for their Beloved Belover.

It is love that is the key, for love is the foundational principle for true beneficent order. For love of the people, the king rules rightly. For the love of existence, God made all things. For the love of our "selves," He submitted Himself to the limitations of flesh and blood and the political claptrap of men, because God is not a democrat. He is a lover. He is Love, and from His Love springs the order of all things, and without His Love there is no order. No freedom. No peace. No-thing, except the dark with its weeping and gnashing of teeth, for in the darkness outside the kingdom there is only the wasteland, where all hope is abandoned, and all joy and mirth fade forever away into puffs of smoke and ash.

-Jon Vowell (c) 2012

The Extremist (The Six Shades of Sin, Part II)

"Woe unto them that rise up early in the morning [so] that they may pursue strong drink; [who] continue until night, till wine inflames them! [...] they regard not the work of the Lord, neither consider the operation of His hands." Is. 5:11-12

Immoderation has always been misunderstood mainly because moderation is misunderstood. Moderation is often associated with a puritanical sense of abstinence, which it was never meant to be. It was never meant to be about abstinence but balance. This is a fact as old as human thought: the virtuous life is the point between extremes. For example, courage is not an extreme passion or pursuit but rather a moderate one. Cowardice and recklessness are the extremes, and thus they are the vices. Love is moderate; lust and apathy are the extremes. In short, moderation is not the life of a dullard or bore. On the contrary, it is the adventurous life, a perilous and precarious walk on the edge of a knife, the maintaining of a precious balance between two equal yet opposite points of mania. Such an endeavor calls forth the best from us, for as Chesterton put it, "There is an infinity of angles by which one falls but only one by which one stands." Any fool or weakling can go mad; it is easy to be insane, to be extreme. Sanity is the true struggle and spectacle. Vice can only be a sputter; virtue alone can be a song.

That virtue requires real struggle and adventure is the thought behind the ancient notion that evil was not only fundamentally wicked but also fundamentally dull. It takes the easy way out, settling for a lesser post. Much to the chagrin of popular perception, the evil life is ultimately lackluster because it is a stunted life. It always leaves something out. Rather than maintaining the healthy and powerful balance between caution and action (which we call courage), they succumb to either one extreme or the other, leading either the sedentary life of endless caution or the chaotic life of endless action. Likewise, rather than maintaining the healthy and joyous balance between restraint and pleasure (which we call love), they grow weary of the effort and slide into either joyless apathy or joyless lechery. In either case, they do not have love.

The immoderate life, the joyless, dull, inconsequential life, stems from one source: "they regard not the work of the Lord." Like all sin and all its insanity, the immoderate life is the life that disregards God. Is this any wonder? God is the supreme picture of sanity, of balance, of rigorous and living order that knows no extremity and therefore knows no ennui. In His trinitarian dance, we see His balance: Father begetting, Son creating, Spirit proceeding. Give and take, surrender and acceptance, obedience and love without confusion or division, nor dominion or neglect. The balance is perfect, the dance is tight, and thus the Being is One. Likewise in the Incarnation, we see the same balance: neither humanity dissolved into deity nor deity subsumed into humanity, but rather both gloriously preserved in hypostatic union, neither nature lacking or dominating. Both are maintained at the absolute fever-pitch of their intensity, and the God-man is One. God is the Great Sanity against all of our myriad madness. Both in His character and His actions, He proves how consistently we fall short of the glory of His moderation.

When God's people were not His people and did not know Him, He gave them an identity through a religion; but when that religion turned into dead formalism and meaningless rite, He broke their religion (Is. 1:10-15) and spoiled their identity (Is. 5:1-7). When Messiah came, He continually frustrated and bewildered both His enemies and His friends, for they could only conceive of Him as either this or that when He was both this and that. He was both conqueror and conquered, the breaker and the healer, the judge and the victim, the poor and the king, He who was dead and yet lives. The sanity of God frustrates our every plan, for our world is a ship of fools and the lunatics run the asylum. Sanity is only insanity to the insane, and moderation is only a threat to the extremist.

Even today God's holy sanity bears witness against us. We who are caught up in the seemingly endless euroclydon of American Christianity often find ourselves tossed about with wave upon wave of doctrines or fads or movements or agendas or politics or some other unholy alliance between the Christian Faith and a fleeting element of American culture. We hear the siren calls every day as we walk a hairline between an array of Scylla's and Charybdis's. To remain moderate in such an environment is to live a life on the edge, but it is on the edge where we find God, and make no mistake: it is God who we must desire if we are to live moderately. It cannot be out of duty or drudgery but out of love, love for God and His Christ, for all that they are and all they have done and are doing and will do. God must be the highest, our all in all, with every thought or plan or scheme or desire or inkling or good intention made captive to the glory and supremacy of His sweet moderation. That is what it means to live moderately: not to wallow in prudery, but to every day, bit-by-bit and step-by-step, dance the dance of God, where all things find their place, and all of life is consumed into the holy harmony of His fullness.

-Jon Vowell (c) 2012

Boil to Rags, Part 6: Free Indeed (a devotional series by an orthodox rebel)

(See the first post in the series here.)

"For God so loved the world that He gave His only begotten Son, that whosoever believes in Him...." John 3:16

Faith is the very heartbeat of existence. The world may doubt faith, but it can never live without faith, for faith is trust in action, a very common and yet a very magnificent occurrence. It touches everything, from the flowers that trust the sky for rain to the child who trusts their parents without fear or question to the very heart of the Godhead Three: their perfect communion breeding perfect knowledge, and perfect knowledge leaping out in perfect trust. He trusts in His will, and into His hands He commits His spirit. So you see, from the highest to the lowest, faith is trust; furthermore, it is trust in another, for where there is no other, then there is no faith. Faith in Self is not faith at all but the very essence of Sin, and what is of Sin is not of faith. Likewise, faith in faith is not faith but foolishness, for faith is an action and not a being, and an action turned back in on itself is aimless and therefore lost. Thus, it is not good that faith should be alone.

Without faith, it is impossible to please God. Without trust, we dishonor Him, claiming Him to be unworthy of our lives and our love. Yet we abandon ourselves to everything else: to pleasure and power, to dominance and doubt, to money and markets, to self and satisfaction, to work and causes and fads and all the unstable chaff of this world. We abandon ourselves anew every day to a myriad of vaporous lovers, but we will neither submit nor surrender to Love Himself. Oh, we will disguise our fear and arrogance by calling it false names like rationalism or "healthy" skepticism or "humble" agnosticism, but we are all liars and self-deceived. Our skepticism is always selective, and we will always trust in our doubts as long as they will keep us both safe from the living God and free for our own will.

Yet the doubting soul is never free, for freedom belongs to faith alone. Doubt pulls one into the self: our lusts and desires and will to dominate our own life. It is a vacuous narcissism that pulls all inward, making a cage out of its own desire. But faith knows no cages, for it is an ever-expanding thrust outward, breaking barriers and walls and bars, discovering newer and newer undiscovered countries and canvases of souls. Never stopping until it touches and is caught up in that Soul whose very essence is faith, an endless giving and receiving, trusting and loving. For in God alone our faith find a resting place where its movements never cease, and thus it is ever-satisfied.

-Jon Vowell (c) 2012

Boil to Rags, Part 2: The Great Dance (a devotional series by an orthodox rebel)

(See the first post in the series here.)

"For God so loved...." John 3:16

Herein is a great mystery and lovely beauty. The God that we serve and adore is neither mechanical nor inert. The core and source and glory of Reality is not a lonely dynamo whose silent energies are all centripetal and not centrifugal. The Empyrean Prime, who is beyond and yet sustains all appearances, is alive and He loves. All three of Him dances to His love, and all the elements and pieces of the universe dances to His love. All great galaxies and subatomic singularities and every mind and soul under the sun lives and moves and has their being in the ever-dynamic Being of Love Himself, His love for Himself and His love for all things made and begotten and proceeding from Himself.

There is no discontentment in His love, for it is a Dance and not a trade. Its transactions are giving, and it receives so that it may give, and give all the more. So the begotten is given and gives the proceeding, who gives and receives of the Father so that it may give further. So you see, there is no discontentment. No pride or bitter jealousy. No raging accusations or schemes of humiliation. Rather, all is a gift of Love. Love beating out and pouring forth from the very heart of existence like golden heat from an eternal furnace.

Yet there is also no contentment in this Love, never a moment where it utters, "Hold, it is enough." All of its endings are beginnings. All of its deaths are resurrections. All things are made new and newer still, further up and further in to newer and newer perfections, deeper still into the divine substance of the Perfect Himself. He is not satisfied with anything less than Himself, and He is not satisfied with giving anything less than Himself, so that He might receive nothing less than Himself. And it is we, we few, we happy few who are meant to be caught up in that holy reception, made one with the Divine Dance, finding our measure and place. Not lost in the impersonal ether, but found. Found by Love at last. Seeing Him face to face at last. Knowing Him as we are known. There is no fading here, no ceasing to be. You do not cease to be once you rest in the bosom of Being. There you Are. There you finally Become. In the center of His Love is the ending and beginning of our very existence.

Let the heathen rage. Let them weep and gnash their teeth with their gods of sex and money, of self and self alone, of noise and chaos, of static and silence. The Threefold Heart and Mind and Lord of all is calling. His voice is in the stars, on the winds, on the very lips of the morning: "Rise up, my love, my fair one, and come away."

-Jon Vowell (c) 2012

Homily 37: Love and Holiness (as preached by an orthodox rebel)

"And may the Lord make you to increase and abound in love...to the end that He may establish your hearts unblamable in holiness...." I Thess. 3 (vs. 12-13)

There is a sacred bond and intimate connection that love has with holiness, with the otherness of God, for love is not a human invention. It does not even do it justice to call it a discovery. It is more like a revolution. Love falls upon humanity like a clap of thunder or erupts from amidst it with volcanic violence. In blatant opposition to the dark instincts of survival and domination that to this day drive the bestial side of mankind, there comes a voice and notion piercing through, wholly alien and yet wholly welcome, a passion that in its finest and truest manifestations places the self on the lowest rung and places another on the highest in an act that seems nigh to worship. Indeed, it inspires worship, whether in ceremony or in song; for mankind's instinct to survive has always been natural, but love has always been divine.

God is love, not in an accidental sense of His actions but in an essential sense of His existence. Love is His very being, which is to say that it is His holiness, the very quality of His otherness that makes Him separate and unique and above us. For us, love is lovely but seemingly foreign to our natures, a transplanted essence from other realms; but God knows no such division in Himself. His persons dance so fully in love's purest reality and expression that we cannot help but call them one, for they are one. Love pulls together perfectly (Col. 3:14), binding all together in a harmonious whole by its continuous deference to another, to the beloved. Its deference is its unity: therein is the paradox and the beauty. Sin is separation (Matt. 7:23, 25:41) and isolation of the self (Is. 14:13-14): therein lies the terror and the reason for why holiness can never know sin, for sin cannot abide its communion. To be freed from sin, to be holy, is to be one with Love: not our love, our vapid, shallow, half-halting indifference masquerading as tolerance; but love fierce and faithful and everlasting. The love of God and the God who is love. Amen.

-Jon Vowell (c) 2012