Crazy love

I "know" a guy who titles his every blog post with a song title. I'm not copying you, Tom, honest!

After an extraordinary amount of time and number of opportunities to reflect on this during this Lenten season, and I can't escape the feeling that we usually miss the essential way in which we are to be united with Christ in the Passion. We talk about joining the difficulties that we face with his suffering, think of them as our crosses to bear, and that is a good thing. But thus limiting our view of our own crosses misses something truly essential about the Passion, something easily overlooked and more easily dismissed. In fact, suggesting that this aspect should be central to the truly Christian life may seem needlessly masochistic. It will remind some of ways in which the Gospel has been misused throughout history to keep others under control. I'm certainly not suggesting its application in any such way; I'd never use this to suggest how another should respond to me.

Still, once we've truly turned away from the sin in our lives, I've come to believe that our failure to recognize and embrace this one, small yet obvious element of the Way of the Cross is the biggest obstacle to our being Christ to the world. I believe it represents each Christian's calling, and in fact should be our greatest aspiration. Yet failing to live out this facet of the gospel can also be the greatest obstacle to our becoming the completely free people who God dreams for us to become in Him. We never fail to marvel at its wonder when we see it put into practice, as we're blessed to do occasionally. Yet it is only possible to the extent to which we have been open to the Holy Spirit's transformation.

For the way of the cross ultimately consists in this: to receive unspeakable, completely undeserved hurt, and respond with utterly unmerited, compassionate love.

It sounds insane, doesn't it? Call it "God's crazy love," if you will.

I think there are many reasons we fail to follow Christ's example in this; among them:
- The most obvious is our sense of self-preservation, by which we protect ourselves from further hurt
- If we at all believe (consciously or not) that we've contributed to the situation in which we've been hurt, our defensiveness interferes with our ability to love
- Most fundamentally, we don't really consider ourselves responsible for Christ's crucifixion; in fact, our psychobabble culture tells us that such a viewpoint is self-denigrating. Therefore, we are not converted to the degree that is only possible by acknowledging our need of him

I'm blessed to have been loved like this, both by Christ and by others. I pray that I may respond to each hurt done to me in the same way.