Last week I met with a student who was wrestling with a great question: what does it mean to love God more than his gifts? And isn't it all a bit unfair anyway...he gives us good things and then expects us to not enjoy them?
In the process of talking through this, we stumbled across the analogy of the love triangle--handy for so many reasons, really.
We are gladly invited by God to enjoy his good gifts. But we are commanded to never take those good gifts off in a corner, alone, apart from God. When we do that, we become hoarding, brooding, anxious, coveting, Gollum-like creatures. Our souls become fixed on the wrong object, wrapped around a deforming shape that, if left un-checked, will eventually kill us.
Instead, we are always to enjoy God's gifts in the context of a relationship with God. There is God, myself, and this gift that he has given me. And the love triangle that we share together must remain fixed in order to keep me from making the fatal error of worshiping the thing instead of the One who has given it to me.
This frees me to love the gift appropriately--as a gift, nothing more, nothing less. Only then can it truly bless me.
Augustine, I believe, said that all sin was disordered loves. That is, we sin when we love something in its' wrong place: pleasure or work or approval or applause or achievement or relationships (including family) all have their proper place, and number one in our lives was never supposed to be that place.
To live life in the Spirit is to set love in order. This starts with God, then his gifts.
As I move and relate as a part of this love triangle, I become more fully alive, more real. This frees me from the tyranny of "following my heart" (a fate I would not wish on my worst enemy) and leaves me less wrapped up in all the crap that clamors for my attention and affection and worship.
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