Monthly Archives: June 2011
Loving unconditionally
We’re told in the Bible to love our enemies, and that even though everything else will pass away, love will last forever. This is not love in the romantic sense, but in the sense that we value, respect, and honour everyone around us, regardless of whether they are like us or they agree with us.
I have now read two of Donald Miller’s books in the last couple of months, first being lent A Million Miles in a Thousand Years whilst on holiday, and then at home picking up Blue Like Jazz which has been on our shelf for a while. He is full of deep thoughts and brutally honest critiques of himself which inspire him to do something about changing. He seems to learn from every situation he is in and whomever he is around.
But here’s the thing I’ve most noticed. Everyone he talks about in the book, he writes about them as beautiful, amazing people. It makes me want to meet the people he’s met as they seem like the most interesting, wonderful people in the world. In the third-to-last chapter, you find out how he manages to do that.
He talks about the metaphors that are used regarding certain subjects. For example, when we think about cancer, we use words like battling cancer, overcoming cancer, fighting cancer. They are all war metaphors which raise the level of fear about the disease. Cancer is something to be fought.
What about love. Often with love and relationships we use economic terms. We invest in people. We value people. We give our time to people we love. Some relationships become bankrupt. These metaphors are economic because we think about love as conditional. We only show love to people if we think they are worth it or our love will be valued. We struggle to truly give something for nothing, to receive something for nothing, and therefore to love unconditionally. Yet grace is unconditional, and God’s love for us is unconditional. It is not an economic contract.
Jesus’ said love your enemies. Why should we do that? With the economic metaphor of love, there is no point. But because we are loved, and they are loved, we should love. We are able to see Jesus in them and the barriers are broken down. So, I guess, Donald has been able to see a little bit of Jesus in everyone he meets. Even when he doesn’t like them, he loves them, and then he finds he likes them.
There was a guy that was really getting up his nose, annoying him and Donald got all defensive and judgemental, trying to change the other person. After he’d worked all this stuff out, here’s what happened.
After I repented… I didn’t have to discipline anybody, I didn’t have to judge anybody, I could treat every body as though they were my best friend, as though they were rock starts of famous poets, as though they were amazing, and to me they became amazing, especially my new friend. I love him. After I decided to let go to judging him, I discovered he was very funny. I mean, really, hilarious. I kept telling him how funny he was. And he was smart. Quite brilliant, really. I couldn’t believe that I had never see it before. I felt as though I had lost an enemy and gained a brother.
The people Donald meets aren’t any more or less extraordinary than the people you or I meet. They are equally as loved by God as you or I, and equally as unique and special.
Donald Miller and Story
Whilst on holiday I was leant the newest book by Donald Miller, A Million Miles in a Thousand Years which focusses on the power of story. Following his first very successful book, Blue Like Jazz (which I have just started reading), Miller was approached by some film makers who wanted to make a movie of his book. The trouble is that Blue Like Jazz is not a novel. It is a collection of thoughts about how he has made sense of Christian spirituality throughout his life. This makes it more difficult to turn it into a narrative that would work on screen.
This notion of story is something he also mentioned in Blue Like Jazz, but it seems he really got into discovering what makes story, story. He went on a week long seminar by story-expert Robert McKee, who has taught the principles of storytelling and writing to many people who have gone on to win Emmy’s and Oscars for their movies and awards for plays and screenplays.
You need a setting, conflict, climax and resolution. So, it had to be translated into a story with a narrative arc – a beginning, middle and end. He also needed to develop a character – a fake Donald - to be the lead who had a sense of direction – a film about his real life would get stale very quickly! The audience needed to like this person at some level. They needed to be pulling for him to achieve something, to get somewhere, or to change something. And you need to knit the scenes together in a way that helps the viewer progress as the character moves on.
All this made him think about his own life. Where was the narrative arc? What were his goals? (How come he needed to create a fake-Donald to make it interesting?). This thinking led him to get fit, walk the Inca Trail, cycle across america as well as get serious in his own spirituality.
The genius of this book is that he makes us reflect on our own life and the story that we are telling. Is there a progression? Are we growing or just drifting? If people were to watch a movie of our life, what would they say we were living for? Do we have big life goals and smaller day-to-day ones – goals that give us an aspect of conflict and climax and resolution.
In Christian thinking the notion of story has become more important. From Andrew Walker’s excellent Telling the Story to Tom Wright who asks us to step into the great story that God is telling. Faith is not as often spoken of as a series of disconnected doctrines, but one overarching story of Biblical Theology which stretches into the present. At what part of the story does our life fit?
For Christians, can we ask the same questions about our faith? Are we drifting along in a belief that we mentally adhere to, but which doesn’t challenge us any more? Have we reached a stop in our learning about God or in our willingness to seek to follow him? Are we ignoring some hard lifestyle changes that God may be asking for us? In which case, let’s rediscover the challenge by setting small everyday goals as well as large overarching ones.
By the way. The trailer for the movie can be seen on Donald Miller’s blog.
Iain Duncan Smith on the undeserving poor
In an interview for Newsnight yesterday (9/6/11) Iain Duncan Smith said “I have never used the language of the deserving or undeserving poor”.
A quick google search brought up this BBC link from November 2010, quoting Tim Montgomerie, a close advisor of Iain Duncan Smith as saying this below, with a simple deduction from the BBC Columnist, Chris Bowlby, following it:
Yet his moral agenda is clear. “I think the best sort of language of welfare… says that if you do the right thing, we will support you,” he says.
But if you don’t, this implies, you will not be supported.
Duncan Smith ought to be careful with his words if he doesn’t want to be misunderstood.
It seems (from the same article) that this philosophy has worked its way into government policy, despite Iain Duncan Smith’s dislike of the phrase ‘undeserving poor’
