Growing in Love; The Sin of Fantasy

GROWING IN LOVE

Something by John Piper caught my attention. It is an excerpt from this post:
http://www.desiringgod.org/blog/posts/letter-to-an-incomplete-insecure-teenager

I think the key for me was finding help in the Apostle Paul and C. S. Lewis and my father, all of whom seemed incredibly healthy, precisely because they were so absolutely amazed at everything but themselves.

They showed me that the highest mental health is not liking myself but being joyfully interested in everything but myself. They were the type of people who were so amazed that people had noses—not strange noses, just noses—that walking down any busy street was like a trip to the zoo. O yes, they themselves had noses, but they couldn’t see their own. And why would they want to? Look at all these noses they are free to look at! Amazing.

The capacity of these men for amazement was huge. I marveled and I prayed that I would stop wasting so much time and so much emotional energy thinking about myself. Yuk, I thought. What am I doing? Why should I care what people think about me. I am loved by God Almighty and he is making a bona fide high-hopping frog out of me.

I have long recognized that I need to love God and people sincerely. I didn't know how, though.

And perhaps it's also that my idea of love has been influenced by our individualistic modern culture, such that at times I would find "love" and truth at opposite corners of the ring.

God has helped me to make some sense of it. Because of that post, Sunday school, and other things I've heard elsewhere, I could hold on more firmly onto the fact that love, like everything else, is centered upon God's glory, upon who God is. God is love.

God is love because even before the foundation of the world, the three persons of the Godhead loved each other for their perfection. All that He is, is good. And this goodness is infinite, rich, and inexhaustible, such that we can learn about Him for all eternity. He is the best we can have, and in bringing to us the truth of who He is, He shows His love for us, because He gives us the best.

I can love people in the same way. I show them God's glory and worth.

But before that, I must learn to do that myself. I must deal with my pride, because pride causes a person to think he makes better decisions than God, and thus be better than God. He will be so immersed in how good he is that he will be blind to God's immense glory shining in all of creation and in mankind.

No, I don't want to be that. I want to be the person who sees the better show, the one who looks away from himself and sees God's work everywhere. Of course, that includes himself, but then the focus is not on him but on God.

In my striving for this, I strive also to the benefit of those around me, because gradually I will be conformed to the image of Christ, and by my words and my actions they will learn of the truths of who God is.

In my striving to grow in my knowledge of God, I strive to grow in love.


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SIN IS BELIEF IN FANTASY

Every sin is an acceptance of deception.

And every sin includes this lie: that life can be beautiful without God.

The very nature of lies is that they feel real, and one will not be able to see their falsity until reality sets in.

I have been delivered from the worse depths of fantasy, by God's grace. I remember that in the process, my heart questioned the value of reality. Why can't I stay longer in fantasy if it makes me feel better than reality does?

And so we come upon the topic of epistemology ("how I know what I know"). When we reject God as being the ultimate judge of what is truth, all we have left are our feelings and thoughts. And it is a bad foundation, as illustrated in the continuous failures of mankind across history. We cannot discern true from false because we have rejected the source of truth. At this point, we can only believe in what feels right. And we are often proven wrong.

The remedy is simple: believe in what God says, because what He says is real.

If you do not do what He says, you will be proven wrong in your beliefs. Thus is the value of reality over fantasy: reality kills fantasy.

Life cannot be truly beautiful without God. You will believe it sooner or later because it's true.