The Scandal of the Only Possible Love

 

因為愛著你的愛　因為夢著你的夢

所以悲傷著你的悲傷　幸福著你的幸福
因為路過你的路　因為苦過你的苦

所以快樂著你的快樂　追逐著你的追逐

因為誓言不敢聽　因為承諾不敢信
所以放心著你的沈默　去說服明天的命運
沒有風雨躲得過　沒有坎坷不必走
所以安心地牽你的手　不去想該不該回頭

也許牽了手的手　前生不一定好走
也許有了伴的路　今生還要更忙碌
所以牽了手的手　來生還要一起走
所以有了伴的路　沒有歲月可回頭
所以有了伴的路　沒有歲月可回頭

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Dear Kate,

Last night I had another chance to talk to a man about the Christian faith.  He first questioned the existence of God in general, then the scandal of the one true God crawling out of a woman's womb, and finally got stuck on the question of theodicy (how a good God could allow bad things to happen).

I've drunk a bit too much to know if I've spoken scandalously as anyone should when addressing something so disgraceful.  If you don't think it is humiliating to talk about a humiliated God and your pledge to give up your life to be humiliated likewise, you are probably only subscribing to a religion of Man and should consider joining the revolution of Jesus.  We don't unshame ourselves of the shame that is Jesus.

In our conversation I encouraged my friend to see God's relationship with us (if there is a God) as one of parent-child, and that this father could have been a very different sort of parent than the one we know in the Bible.  He could have been indeed the Creator of all but after having fun making stuffs hated what he saw and left us father/motherless and we've never heard from him since Day Six.  Or he could have been a parent with good intention but simply powerless once we the disobedient children have messed up big time his original conception of an ideal family.  Now you can come up with another million could-have-beens without giving the matter a million thoughts: just look at the human parents around us, the father and mother that are us, and we can see the possibility of devastation is so colorful that it can only be called a tragedy.

Then we talked about Jesus, how He is the One True Man who has done what a One True Son should, being perfectly obedient to the perfect will of the Father, the One True God, and by trusting what Jesus has accomplished on the cross to reconcile us the disobedient children to the Father, we are restored to our rightful place of being a true heir, playing in the garden of the Father as He intends us.  The Christian vision of human flourishing is not an accidental byproduct of some religious recipe to cook up comfort food for the feebleminded; it has always been the main ingredient in God's masterwork of a good Creation.

Before bed last night I was humming today's song I shared above, from the same singer two days ago.  I am not going to translate word for word--maybe only the first part.

Because I love what you love

    Dream what you dream,

I am saddened by what saddens you

    Blessed by what blesses you.

Because I have walked your walk

    Suffered for what you have suffered from

I am delighted by what delights you

    And here, longing with you, what you are longing for...

As the day was closing with my eyes, I realized I could have sung this song to my friend and saved myself a lot of intoxicated energy explaining the impossible love of our only possible lover Jesus Christ.  "Only possible" because, really, what human lover could sing these words without knowing, despite her good intention and genuine wish, that she's only telling a beautiful lie?  Death would always put a full-stop to everything; and most of the time we don't even need to hit the dirt before giving our love an early burial.  Jesus is the only possible love that makes all our loves possible.

"The only thing that really matters is Jesus," thus says a certain Christmasy mug given me years ago, merchandising a religion that is sensible, sentimental, anything but scandalous.  Everything matters because Jesus matters--that's what I know to be true, following Him.

I trust when I am yearning for truth, for goodness, for beauty, it is Jesus who yearns with me.  He gives Himself to answer to what I am truly longing for.  How could a good God allow bad things to happen?  God the Father doesn't give us a set of doctrinal propositions to explain away our sufferings, neither does He let us get away with our moral cowardice (how many bad thing "happened" because of our bad choices?)  The Father gives us His son, opens the One True Man to the judgement of fallen Man, exposes Him to the torment of sins He did not commit, to the point of, for a moment, appearing to have forsaken Him.  Ecce homo, "behold the man," and we behold the scandal of the only possible love.

This Easter I would like to invite you to tell at least one person the love of Jesus and your love for Him.  You will not do a good job: no amount of good PR can whitewash the obscenity of Truth.  Yet no inadequacy of ours can abolish the Life that is resurrected from the death that we once belonged, as we commit every morning anew to walk on the Way that is Jesus.

Yours, Alex