"Fear Not" - The Message of Christmas in a Frightened World

Column by Bishop John Shelby Spong on 18 December 2014 1 Comments
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Question

Specifically what should I do to “live fully, love wastefully and be all that I can be?”

Answer

Dear Andre,

One of our Supreme Court Justices, when asked to define pornography, replied that he could not do that, but that he could “recognize it when he saw it.” That is somewhat how I feel when I try to respond to your question.

How does one define selfless love? Is anyone ever free of a hidden agenda? Yet we have had in human history people who have been dedicated to causes that transformed the world and in the service of which their entire lives were expanded. One thinks of Mahatma Gandhi, Martin Luther King, Jr., Mother Teresa and Nelson Mandela just to name a few. On a less heroic, but more personal level, we all have known people who have loved others into a deeper, fuller life. It happens in husband-wife relationships. It happens in parent-child relationships. It happens among friends and even among political associates. Without a full analysis of the things that motivated each individual, however, we can never say that some personal agenda was not operating.

I have known gay couples where one partner dealt with the progress of AIDS in the other so lovingly and with such faithfulness as to inspire all who know the two of them. In my own life, I watched my older sister care for my mother until my mother’s death at age 92 in such a way as to give expanded life to both of them.

“Living fully, loving wastefully and being all that we can be” is my definition of seeing the presence of God in human life. To live for another is to escape the natural human drive to survive and to enable us to live for others, to give ourselves away in love for another. It means placing someone beside ourselves at the center of our affections. It is to recognize that God is part of who we are and that we are part of who or what God is. God is the quality of life that I see in the picture and memory of Jesus that transcends the ages. It also transcends the limits of the literal words in the biblical text. That quality is why I assert with St. Paul, that somehow and in the same way God was in this Jesus. That is finally why I am a committed Christian.

John Shelby Spong

 

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