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November 22, 2009
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Home > 2007 > June (Web-only)Christianity Today, June (Web-only), 2007  |   |  
SoulWork
I Love, Therefore You Are
Why the modern search for self ends in despair.



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In a recent issue of The New Yorker, you can find a cartoon with a couple sitting on a couch. One says to the other, "I don't want to be defined by who I am."



The line is so human and so modern. The human part is what makes it funny: Often, when we discover who we are, we want to deny it. But it's the modern part that most interests me: that relentless search for self, the yearning to know who I am.

As with so much of modernity, this is a highly individualistic quest, and as such, it is a pointless quest. Not because the search for meaning is pointless, but because the context of modernity—the individual—is a myth.

The myth becomes apparent when we start considering who we are from a biblical and Trinitarian perspective. Both the rigors of orthodox theology and the plain sense of New Testament passages reveal that the Trinity is not merely a formal and logical explanation of God's inner essence. It points to a reality that spills over into the universe. The reality is exposed ever so briefly by Jesus when, in praying for his disciples he says:

The glory that you have given me I have given to them, that they may be one even as we are one, I in them and you in me, that they may become perfectly one, so that the world may know that you sent me and loved them even as you loved me … . I made known to them your name, and I will continue to make it known, that the love with which you have loved me may be in them, and I in them." ().

The formal doctrine of the Trinity, then, helps us grasp the nature of divine love.

First, it makes it clear that God's love for us cannot be based on his need for love and fellowship—as if we were necessary for a God of love to be complete. One hears this sort of silliness now and then, but it cannot be true of the Trinitarian God. This God has known love, and perfect love at that, from before the creation of time and space—love swirling between the Father and Son and Spirit. God created us not because he had to have someone to love to be self-fulfilled as God, but because the love of the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit bubbled over into creation.

Given the type of love we reciprocate with—something rather paltry—this is a remarkable grace. God is slumming when he loves us. He doesn't need our imitation of perfect love, yet he reaches out, wanting us to grab his hand, simply because, well, he wants to.

Second, it sheds light on the modern question about who we are. For this Trinity-in-love, this Loving Trinity, is the God in whose image we have been created. If loving communion is at the core of the Trinity, it is also at the core of who we are.

Since the Enlightenment, we in the West have thought of ourselves mostly as solitary individuals, and individuals mostly defined by mind, by intellect. As Descartes put it, "I think, therefore I am."

This insight has blessed the Western world in many ways, but it has cursed us as well. It has led to an excruciating loneliness, which nineteenth and twentieth-century existentialists (Camus and Sartre, among others) articulated so powerfully. In the twenty-first century, it has led to deep despair, as expressed by many postmodern philosophers. When we take the individual as the starting point, we can find no way to satisfy the basic yearning of the human heart, which has been created for communion.

The biblical starting point, by contrast, says, "I love, therefore you are. You love, therefore I am." Our existence begins not with the solitary individual ruminating alone about the core of human identity, but with the creation of two people in relationship: "So God created man in his own image, in the image of God he created him; male and female he created them" ().

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[Reader Reviews]
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Displaying 1 - 3 of 9 comments.See all comments
Kerry E. Southorn   Posted: July 11, 2007 4:10 PM
The article left me with a sense of foggy error rather than outright untruth. The author is obviously speaking about the love of God to Christians in referring to verses in John 17. He then goes on to say that God is slumming when He loves us. The fact that God would even consider making provision for our salvation is a marvel--but His accepting and loving us based on the death of our Lord is surely not "slumming". God is "great in counsel and mighty in work" (Jeremiah) and His magnanimity in extending His grace to us may be "stooping" but not "slumming". There is offence to God in the inference of the word. Further, our identity is in Christ whether there is another soul who loves us or not. Our faith was never meant to stand alone , but it needs to be able to if called upon to do so.

Mihaly Tapolyai   Posted: July 03, 2007 1:14 PM
Mr. GalliĆ­s article made my concept more complete, as for Christian psychiatrist. I follow the idea from the Danish pastor and philosopher Kierkegaard. He founded the Existentialism. He said "I am who I am as you see me and I am as I ought to be, or wish to be."(1848) We have to walk on our life line from the present reality toward the future self-image. I added to be Christlike, Mr. Galli presented the everyday conflicts in it. Thank you for this wonderful lighting Five stars Mihaly Tapolyai

Joyful in Christ's light   Posted: June 29, 2007 9:13 AM
Although badly written and without linguistic sensitivity to purity kindness of God that is ALWAYS inclusive and welcoming like a parent, this article does highlight how corrupt the West is with its individualism and how utterly sad and lonely and uncared for even the Christian is. Make no wonder then that Churches and Christian web-forums are meat-markets and dating agencies and people hunger to devour each other. No one finds the comfort and companionship and intimacy with Jesus that He so freely offers. Instead we bury ourselves in atempted romantic attachments; making ourselves Cinderellas and Prince-Charmings rather than a holy people. Thus Christ's light does NOT shine on us and we are far from joyful and far from humble but ever-close to the dating-agency. Paul wrote in Ephesians that we must arise from our slumber and Christ will shine on us; He wants to shower us with his love and embrace us in depth and holy intimacy. But our corruption from individualism has made us sick.

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