In my grandmother’s garden there grew many things that could bring either life or death. The tricky thing though is that many plants had the capability to do both. “Now Chase, when you eat rhubarb, never eat the leaves. Okay honey?” “Be careful not to bite into that cherry pit, sweetie. It’s poisonous.” “You see those berries on the asparagus, you don’t want to eat those, you’ll get really sick.” My grandmother would often interject with these warnings whenever she saw that I was about to do the exact thing that would make me ill. But the great thing about my grandmother is that she wouldn’t just tell me not to eat something, she would also show me how to actually enjoy it and experience nourishment and life. “Here sweetie, take the stalks of the rhubarb and we’ll make some strawberry and rhubarb jam.” “Hold the cherry with one hand, and eat around the pit. There ya go! Let’s pick some more.” “Now here’s a bowl Chase, go ahead and pick all those berries off the asparagus and I’ll show you how to plant them. That way we’ll have more asparagus!” My grandmother taught me that there was a proper way to love and care for each thing that grew from the earth. And when we got that right, we could actually take joy in the beauty of creation. That loving joy always led to more life, not destruction.
I summon these memories from the dirt and sticky jam of my childhood, because I find them illustrative of a foundational truth—rightly expressed love produces life. Whether it’s the beauty of a person, or the beauty of berries on an asparagus plant, beauty will awaken our affections toward an object. As I have written elsewhere, if beauty invites you to love someone or something, then you shouldn’t kill off that desire. Because when we rightly express our love and affection toward that which we find beautiful, we will experience life and its manifestations.
This seems evident to me in the diversity of relationships we nurture. We care, support, and protect those we love because what grows between ourselves and the beloved other is life itself. And there is nothing more beautiful, more right in our eyes than life. It is the Creator’s fingerprint with all its ridges, loops, and swirls smudged on creation. And to seek out life is to seek out God. That is the task we are all engaged in whether we are conscious of it or not.
We can all think of relationships that brought life to our existence. Those formative moments of tender care in the arms of your parent. When a friend sat down next to you in the midst of darkness. The nights of laughter and vulnerability that bled into peaceful mornings as you felt safe next to your companion. Those times and many more have a common denominator—they are moments stitched together in a relationship with those you love. Each of you taking turns with the needle and thread to create the memory that wouldn’t be the same without the stitches of the other. They are times when you and your beloved other freely and rightly expressed your love. And that love produced life. Our marriages, partnerships, and friendships are all life-giving in so much as we rightly express our love to one another. That love when rightly expressed emanates out to those around us like two stars dancing with each other giving warmth, light, and yes life to those looking on.
As a Christian, I am compelled to note that the biblical text does not place a limit on who we are to love. In fact, we are commanded to rightly express our love not just to those whom we deem lovely, but to those whom we consider our enemies. It is possible for enemies to rightly love one another, in fact it is the first step toward peace. To do so is to consciously choose life over death, creation over destruction. Rightly loving our enemies is painful and difficult, and yet Christ has shown that it is not just possible it is expected, and because we are his, we therefore must pursue it. (Matt. 5:43-48)
But the biblical text doesn’t just tell us to love everyone, it also tells us how to love everyone based on a wide range of relational dynamics and particular circumstances. How we love one another matters, how we love that which we find beautiful matters. We can all think of times when someone failed to rightly love us. Indeed, we can also think of times when we failed to rightly express our love toward others. Those moments cut the soul. The pain felt immediately can act as a warning, a siren saying, “This. Is. Not. Right.” Other times, we are desensitized to our wounds. Or sometimes we are blind or numb to the pain we inflict on those we say we love. In those instances the fastest way to death is along the path of isolation and lack of accountability. It seems wise to always seek a greater perspective on your life. Our friends and family are able to spot dangers that we may be numb to. And even then, above all, it is best to seek out God’s wisdom. Whereas if unchecked, we have a horrible propensity to love people to death, God loves people to life. (Ep. 2:4-5)
As it turns out, God loves humanity. And I think I have spent the better part of my spiritual life constantly being surprised by this truth. Not necessarily because I doubt it, but rather I think it’s because the love of God is very much alive, and has a tendency to sneak up on me. God’s love is more than just an antique diadem handed down by our spiritual fathers and mothers. It’s not something that is stashed in a closet of your childhood home waiting for the next fashion cycle. In my experience, God’s love is usually fifteen feet ahead of me, ready to jumpscare me in all its youthful exuberance. No matter the path, I turn a corner and there it is, waiting for me. While God’s love is manifested and expressed in innumerable ways, I have come to believe that his love is fully revealed to us through the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus Christ. And it is in Christ’s demonstration of God’s love, that we have a model from which we can rightly express our love.
In the letter to the Romans, the apostle Paul states that, “God proves his love for us in that while we still were sinners Christ died for us.” (5:8). The empty space by which the wheel of God’s love spins is filled with sacrifice. Christ calls himself the good shepherd, and states that “the good shepherd lays down his life for the sheep.” (Jn. 10:11). To paraphrase from the Trapship Collective, “God took a look at me and said ‘Yo, I gotta go and save that’”1 But why? Christ tells us that it was because of God's love for the world that he gave his only Son, that “whoever would believe in him would not perish but have eternal life.” (Jn. 3:16). And again Christ says that he came that we might “have life and have it abundantly.” (Jn. 10:10). So God expresses his love to us through his sacrificial death, in order that we might have life. Sacrifice as a right expression of love produces life.
But how do we rightly express our love? How do we do so in practical and concrete ways? In short, I don’t know. Any answer to this question is entirely dependent on the relational dynamics and particular circumstances surrounding both the person expressing love, and the person(s) to whom love is expressed. I wish I could give a grocery list of dos and don’ts that can be applied wholesale. But any list I come up with would need a warning, “these statements have not been evaluated by the FDA or the Magisterium.” While I don’t know how to answer this question for everyone, I might suggest at least one starting place that seems wise to consider for all of our relationships.
The word “calibrate" is one of my favorite words. One of its definitions is, “to adjust, to take external factors into account.” It tends to evoke an image of mechanized exactitude. But I like to think of dancing when I hear the word calibrate. A fluid movement responding to music. The process of calibration is never static, never finished so long as the music still plays. When we calibrate we are taking in a variety of external factors and stimuli, and are adjusting our response accordingly. Calibrate is a hopeful word. It acknowledges the external factors beyond our control, and at the same time suggests that we can adjust our response to those factors. Sure, we can calibrate our response in order to destroy, but we can also calibrate our response in order to create. It is possible to harmonize. In a sense, we are always calibrating. Sometimes more deftly given the priority of our response and the mental stamina we have at any given moment. How do we rightly express our love to those we find beautiful? Well, you calibrate it.
The recipe for calibrating our love is found in the gospel of John. In chapter thirteen Christ states, “I give you a new commandment, that you love one another. Just as I have loved you, you also should love one another.” (v. 34). In the next couple chapters Christ continues this teaching in a staccato. If you love Christ you will keep his commandments, and what are his commandments? That you would love one another as Christ has loved you. But how does Christ love us? “No one has greater love than this, to lay down one’s life for one’s friends.” (15:13). And how do we know if we are Christ’s friends? “You are my friends if you do what I commanded you.” (15:14).
There are many times when we think we are expressing our love in a way that honors both ourselves and the other person, but in fact we are not loving as Christ has loved us. Primarily because we are not loving in a way that God has commanded us to love. We may be asserting our own will and our own preferences over someone else, demanding they fall in line with our own desires. Or we may think that submitting to someone else’s will is in and of itself loving. But if our submission to another person’s will goes beyond God’s command, then it is not love we are submitting to but rather abuse. And if we demand others submit to our own desires, then we reveal ourselves as idols, unfit for the praise we so desperately crave. Instead we are to love as Christ has loved us, and everything Christ did was done in accordance with the will of the Father (Jn. 14:31). So too then, we must love first in submission to the will of God. And if in loving someone we set them in the place of God, or in loving someone we put ourselves in the place of God, then we are not loving rightly. The love song we sing is discordant because we are not tethering ourselves to the original score.
If we calibrate our love to Christ’s love, then rightly expressed love will sound like harmony. It will feel like an embrace that does not devour. It will provide an empty space for solitude and air, but never isolation. Calibrating our love to Christ’s love will ultimately look like respect for the otherness of those we find beautiful, and at the same time an admiration for the divine similarities we reflect in each other. And perhaps when we play the chords right, something of those groans and deep sighs which the apostle Paul tells us about will reverberate into worship of our holy God. Calibrating our love to Christ’s love is in a deeper sense to see the other through Christ, to constantly place Christ as the lens and filter by which we love.2 Truly meditating on how Christ loves us, and inviting the Spirit to reveal this love, will shape how we love those around us.
Again, how do we rightly express our love for those we find beautiful? We love them as Christ does, we lay down our own life for those we love. Because Christ laid his life down for us, and submitted to the will of the Father who loved him, we are now lifted up and looped into this grand ballad of creation which pours out of the divine love of God. “I am giving you these commands so that you may love one another.” (Jn. 15:17). And when we do, when we play in harmony with the will of God and love in the manner he has called us to, no sensation will be able to match the eternal joy we will have in creating alongside the creator.
“Like this Grandma?” I show her the bowl of beans I've been picking next to her in the hot Kansas Sun. “Just like that sweetie. Keep going. Even if you mess up, just keep learning and keep going. We're gonna have a good dinner tonight!”
Nxtmike, Prestxn, and Trapship Collective, “ILLANOISE”.
Richard Foster mentions this idea when discussing how to listen to a confession. Celebration of Discipline, p. 156.