Unconditional love

A social being must interact, connect and dialogue with others. A self is nothing apart from the implied equality of interaction. A self is "by nature" social, by nature in need. "Sin" is the drive to autonomy and independence. We all, devoted to our self, are in a self-ward spiraling hell, redeemed only through interaction and connection with another. Conditional and unconditional love are means of interaction and connection. Conditional love, in the face of un-met need of interaction, in the face of the death of a social self, grasps to control, manipulate, resent or threaten their departure. Conditional love is an economic arrangement. Unconditional love at the threat of the un-met need for interaction, respecting the equalities of wills (even Christ did not resist), submits itself to its own nature, being both love and unconditional. In its submission to the death of the social self it is reborn, it proves itself eternal because it has summited to eternal nature. I think that the quality of eternity is something like whatever it is that allows us to be open to being formed by our interactions. Pride thinks it knows everything and can not see anything new and it is a spiraling death because it can not get out of its own mind. Eternal life is something like unconditional love: both are dependent on continual social interaction. Conditional and unconditional love both have to respond to the need of interaction. But in the first it takes the interaction and, assuring control, tries to stop up the need, so as to be independent or free of that need. Unconditional and eternal love, on the other hand, are so because the need itself is eternal. Thus unconditional love holds other in an open hand, giving space for free movement. It is living in the tension of the awareness of that need, yet knowing that if it were to cease by trying to be rid of it, so would its being. which is impossible.

It is very hard to feel the intensity of need and not try to stop it up. Especially when that need is denied. Death, daily crucifixion of a social self, is a troubling door. But with every death accepted comes the rebirth into eternal life.

Unconditional

Love and Death are the two marvels, yea the two terrors, but the one goal of our history.

MacDonald


Unconditional love is not based on any quality of a person. Whatever the fault, it is irrelevant because love is not based on any quality. That is the unconditional part. The love part, however, shows a vulnerability or a sympathetic connection. It means that while this love is given and will not change, it can yet be hurt.

Unconditional love is insane.

Or genius. I can not live much longer not trusting, always fearing, never sure if my friends will change from one moment to the next. I will have to run off and escape somewhere. This love is genius because it does not try to deny any bad quality. Threats simply irrelevant to its existence.

When connecting one's self to another there is a choice on where its base will be. A love based on qualities is target to many destructive agents, and it sets one against another. The other way to love someone is to embody a love which by virtue of its being alone attaches itself to another.

I know Christ is deeply in this, because he is the best example of someone who is so beyond the need of those who he loves to return his affection, yet he makes himself vulnerable to human pain of rejection, insult, crusifixion and blame. I hope soon I will understand how Christ touches our lives here, because I can not last much longer without this mindset. I may die of the fear of love.

Nice Fluffy Ideas

I have just realized how little I actually connect with people. It is really simple, and Bonhoeffer has put it very well in a quote that runs something like "He who loves his idea of community destroys it, while he who loves those around him creates it." I wonder that all my passion for justice, and simple life and profound thought has not brought me closer to love. I find that I still am isolated, alienated, frustrated, jealous, impatient, ungraceful... etc etc. I used to think that if I just uncovered the right thoughts in self and other I would be able to love. That the way I think somehow will magically transform my nature. But now I see that I can have all the right ideals and profound thoughts, but they are meaningless without the bedrock of first connecting to people.

Ideas are harmless and a lot like a fluffy smoothie. Loving people can not be compared to anything because people are too dynamic. Good and bad. Loving a neighbor, class mate, friend, lover is actually really hard when I love the idea first because I have no room for their difference when my mind is looking for a preconceived pattern, especially if there is a moral dimension to the pattern.

Anyway, I am now on a quest to recognize the ideas that keep me from loving those around me. Or a better word that I think I prefer to love is connection. This is because I can kiss or hug or talk as long as I live, but these are not means to the end. They are mediums, but not means.

Christ and Anti-Christ

Christ is entering into anomy and creating meaning from paradox.
Anti-Christ is a sacred canopy that protects from anomy.

Meaning is generated when two un-associated ideas are linked together. The literal, and the lexical have ceased to have meaning. Their meaning no longer brings to the mind new connections and the mind can not therefore perceive what it does not know.
If when two un-associated ideas brought into connection create meaning, Christ, sometimes referred to even as the Word, brings a new meaning and light to our perception. He embodies two un-associated, indeed opposing, ideas and brings them together. God was born in a manger.

“existing in the form of God, counted not the being on an equality with God a thing to be grasped, but emptied himself, taking the form of a servant, being made in the likeness of men; and being found in fashion as a man, he humbled himself, becoming obedient even unto death, yea, the death of the cross”

Christ is entering into death and through that enabling eternal life.
Anti-Christ is denying death and in consequence denying the possibility of life.

From that time Jesus began to show His disciples that He must go to Jerusalem, and suffer many things from the elders and chief priests and scribes, and be killed, and be raised up on the third day. Peter took Him aside and began to rebuke Him, saying, “God forbid it, Lord! This shall never happen to You.” But He turned and said to Peter, “Get behind Me, Satan! You are a stumbling block to Me; for you are not setting your mind on God’s interests, but man’s.”

Chaos, anomy, is that state where our paradigms breakdown and we are not in control. It is darkness where we can not see. It is never to be embraced or called good. But neither is it to be denied. To do so is to live in an illusion, or what Barger refers to as the sacred canopy of religion.

Christ, held by orthodoxy as the only way to God, is the only way beyond anomy. It is not the annihilation of evil, of chaos, but the transformation of it which is its final destruction. Christ’s ethic is to act in opposition to our nature. Anomy demands a response.

(Some just curl up in bed.)

The Christ response is to enter it. Insanity.

It is safe to say I am now a Christian.