I found following quotation from N. T. Wright's After You Believe over at Ted Gossard's blog.  I think it's profoundly accurate.

Is it paradoxical to say that cultivating virtue is a matter of looking away from yourself? If so, the paradox is only apparent, not real. Of course morality must take root deep within the individual. To insist on that, as virtue does, is to insist that it is neither an externally imposed rule, nor a calculation of consequences that could in principle have been done by a computer, nor a matter of discovering what is in the depths of one’s heart and being true to it. But if “morality” ends up coming to its focal point in faith, hope, and love, then–though it will spring from deep within–its actual focal point is outside the self and in the God and the neighbor who are being loved, in the God who is the object of faith and hope and the neighbor who is to be seen, and loved, in the light of that faith and that hope. Or, to put it another way: at this point, even the words “faith,” “hope,” and “love” can let us down. The point of all three is not “Look, here are three qualities I’m developing in myself.” To say that of faith, hope, and love is to perform a self-contradiction. All three, themselves gifts from God, point away from ourselves and outward: faith, toward God and his action in Jesus Christ; hope, toward God’s future; love, toward both God and our neighbor.

Kingdom-Oriented Relationships 3

Jesus taught us to love one another, but he also taught us to go and make disciples. I think that, with the best of intentions, we often choose the former and disregard the latter, as if the two were essentially at odds.

In our churches, we make discipleship a matter of theological study, increasing in our knowledge of church doctrine, and in time perhaps moving into a leadership role. Churches being human institutions, sometimes this process produces leaders who do not love, while the loving ones, choosing not to climb the leadership ladder, go about their lives in quiet and blessed anonymity.

Because I'm not a part of any church fellowship right now, I'm thinking about how to apply Christ's imperative, "go and make disciples," out here in the world beyond the church parking lot. But it's always helpful to define your terms. In the Christian context, a disciple is a follower of Jesus. To "make disciples," then, is to guide people toward Jesus.

Dallas Willard has laid out the problematic nature of discipleship in Evangelicalism in his great article for the Oxford Handbook of Evangelical Theology (found online here).

Willard's article is very helpful, and you should read it all, but the essence of New Testament discipleship, as Willard sees it, is "being with Jesus, and learning to be like him." Here's more from Willard:

Now this practice of discipleship in the communities of Christ followers—being with Christ learning to be like him, in part by being with those who are further along on that same path—is what lends realism and hope to the glowing pictures of his people that stand out from the pages of the New Testament. Such passages as Matthew chapters 5-7, John chapters 14-17, Romans 12, 1 Corinthians 13, Ephesians chapters 4-5, and Colossians 3 readily come to mind. These are not just passages stating required behaviors, as laws might do—"Turn the other cheek" and so forth—not a new and sterner legalism. Rather, as expressing what lies "beyond the righteousness of the scribes and Pharisees" (Matt. 5:20), they are indications of what life becomes for those who are devoted disciples of Jesus Christ within the fellowship of disciples and under the administration of the Word and of the Holy Spirit. A life of this quality is the "output" of disciples of Jesus who make disciples wherever they go, gather them in Trinitarian reality, and teach them in such a way that they come to do all that Jesus told us to do out of transformed personalities. What is now generally regarded as "normal Christianity" drops away with the "cleaning of the inside of the cup" (Matt. 23:25-26). Discipleship is the status or position within which spiritual (trans)formation occurs.

I'll have more to say concerning all this, but simply note for now that, given Willard's NT references above, you will understand that love is not something that happens apart from discipleship and disciple-making, but a fruit that is produced by our "being with and learning to be like Jesus."

The life of a disciple is this "drawing near" to Jesus (in the Word, in prayer, in fellowship with other followers of Jesus), learning from him, and then application of that which we've learned. This application happens in contexts that are anything but private, inward, or strictly "spiritual," but intensely relational. This application, this "walking out," looks a lot like love.

Love and Obstacles

The latest word in the One Word at a Time blog carnival is "love."

It was probably crazy of me to even think I could write anything useful about love. What an absurd notion. Me, writing about love.

I really don't know what love is, but when I think of love, I think of the human heart, in which are labyrinthine ways unknown to even the most self-aware among us.

And that's what makes love hard to write about. Think about. Say wise things about.

Which is to say that love--human love--is crazy and mixed up and when you try to speak of it or define it is like trying to grasp a will-o'-the-wisp in a hurricane.

And yet, to give you just one example, I know my wife loves me.

Crazy, but true.

I know she loves her boys in a way that will rock to the ground any obstacle that stands between her and them.

OK, so here's a definition--no, not a definition, but an indication--of love. It wars against all obstacles in the pursuit of the beloved.

Tragedy, all tragedy, is when the lover cannot reach the beloved, is not strong enough to overcome the obstacles.

But it gets more complicated, because the heart is involved, and as I said, the ways of the heart are labyrinthine, and it is possible to skew, to misdirect, even to poison love. The obstacles, in other words, often come from within.

See, I've made two big points without even trying. 1) Love, which comes from the heart, conquers obstacles. 2) Many times, the obstacles also come from the heart.

Tangled. Tangled is the way of a man or a woman when it comes to the human heart.

Third big point: None of us are really, really good at this.

If we were good at this--good at loving--Adam, for example, would have understood that any disobedience to the One who is the source and perfection of love would in fact be to place an obstacle between himself and that love. To part ways with it, and to condemn oneself to that separation (tragedy) until the Lover of his soul could conquer that obstacle at last.

But Adam didn't think of all that.

And because he didn't think of that, we have been heirs to Adam's entanglement ever since, putting up the selfsame obstacle between ourselves and the Lover.

The heirs of Adam find love a tangled way. Even in the best of us.

This is why we need a Lover in this world who will love us in a way so powerful and pure (and unentangled) that it overcomes every obstacle that we ourselves can throw against it.

And the thing is, He has done it.

He has loved us in just this obstacle-conquering way.

We love, if we love at all, because such a Lover has come, and has loved us first.

Cross Shaped Living

Here's a brief but very wise post from Tim Chester called A Cross Shaped Culture. This one is timely for me, with its call to ask oneself not What is the fair and just thing to do? but What is the gracious and loving thing to do?

I'm going to apply this in a particular workplace situation of mine, but I have to admit it complicates matters a little. I was going for justice. Now I'm out for love.

Dang.