Or auto-racket, I should say.
Love, that is.
A racket is how mobsters both create a need and meet the need, how baddies create a problem and step in like heroes to solve it. If a wave of robberies hits a community, mobsters can offer local companies and families protection from the baddies. For a price, of course. Meanwhile, though, the robbers are just mobster cronies in disguise. A racket is how you get suckers to thank you for extorting them.
Love, the romance racket, is how we do the same to ourselves. It is how we convince ourselves of needs that only "someone special" can meet, all the while conveniently forgetting how those needs are inspired by the very presence of that someone special.
Men––what a joke. Only as good as the women who love them.
Women––pathetic. Only as good as the men who love them.
Humans––laughable. Only as good as the God who loves them.
The only love you can trust is a love that doesn't need you, that doesn't need anything. The good news is that we all––you, me, all of us––we're all un-needed, extraneous, gratuitous, and yet, we're all loved. If we had anything essential to give to God, He might just be after our little token, and, once He got it, we could rot forever wondering whether His love was for us or for what we had to give. But, since WE HAVE NOTHING to offer God, we can only give Him our nothingness.
Nothing, of course, is a perfect non-obstacle to love. The bigger we are, the more that we insist on being, the bigger our reflection becomes to block the image of God shining in the mirror of Christ. The bigger we become, the more we insist on offering, the larger our shadow looms over others, engulfing them in our clammy obscurity. With God's love, we have all we need: nothing.
1 comment:
That's very good. Puts a lot of things together. I'll have to try to keep that in mind in terms of my interactions with wife and kids.
Post a Comment