All Together Now

The scriptures referred to are 1 John 4:7-12.

The typical hero in our movies, TV and popular literature is the lone male. This figure cannot be better described than by Raymond Chandler, creator of private eye Philip Marlowe. He wrote, “Down these mean streets a man must go who is not himself mean, who is neither tarnished nor afraid. He is the hero; he is everything. He must be a complete man and a common man and yet an unusual man. He must be, to use a rather weathered phrase, a man of honor—by instinct, by inevitability, without thought of it, and certainly without saying it. He must be the best man in his world and a good enough man for any world. He will take no man’s money dishonestly and no man’s insolence without a due and dispassionate revenge. He is a lonely man and his pride is that you will treat him as a proud man or be very sorry you ever saw him.”

Sam Spade, James Bond, Batman, Rambo, Indiana Jones, the Lone Ranger, Superman, Marshall Will Kane in High Noon, Dirty Harry or just about anyone else played by Clint Eastwood...all heroes who can take on entire criminal conspiracies and defeat them. In a Mad magazine parody, a woman tells James Bomb that he is up against hundreds of bad guys. “It's so unfair!” she protests. “I know,” says the hero. “But they'll just have to take their chances.”

It's fantasy, of course. But we want so hard to believe that one man can do it all. However it's not even true in those fantasies. The hero has a secretary, a quartermaster, a sidekick, a love interest and/or allies who help him out. But people forget that. And this stereotype is toxic, especially to men. 

Why do the perpetrators of these mass shootings turn out to be men who are single, divorced or separated? The same is true of most men who commit suicide. Men who are divorced or separated are more than twice as likely to kill themselves as married men and 8 times more likely to commit suicide than divorced women. The suicide rate for men in general is 3 ½ times as high as that for women, despite the fact that women have a higher rate of depression. The highest suicide rate is for middle aged white males, who have grown up with the ideal of the self-sufficient man.

No one can do it all alone. God says so in Genesis 2:18. Women tend to make and have many friends. They go to church more frequently. They have social support. Many men do not. I just saw a Facebook meme that says, “Nobody talks about Jesus' miracle of having 12 close friends in his 30s.” And sure enough, a study shows that we have the most friends at age 25. And at that time, men have more friends than women. But it goes down from there, and by age 39 women have more friends than men and that continues to be true right through their 90s!

We are social animals. After God says it is not good for man to be alone, he makes another person who is, in Richard Elliott Friedman's translation, a “corresponding strength,” an ally. And the two become one flesh, one organism, so to speak.

What does this have to do with Trinity Sunday? Just this: In 1 John 4:8, it says, “God is love.” Not “God is loving” but “God is love.” God is the original and eternal love relationship. Love is something that requires at least 2 people. I think this is how we can reconcile the fact that the Bible tells us the Father is God (Deuteronomy 32:6; Matthew 6:9), the Son is God (Philippians 2:6; Colossians 2:9), the Spirit is God (2 Corinthians 3:17-18; Acts 5:3-4) and yet there is one God (Deuteronomy 6:4; John 10:30; Romans 8:9). If human beings are created in the image of God (Genesis 1:27), and God is three persons so united that they are essentially one, then it makes sense that the primary imperative is to love (Matthew 22:37-40). We seek each other out because we are most like God, and therefore most like who we were created to be, when we are in a love relationship. It needn't be a romantic relationship because there are other loves, such as for family and for friends.

And it makes sense that when we get too isolated, when we are separated from our family or our community, we become less like ourselves and we get spiritually, physically and mentally ill. 20 years ago doctors were researching the personal histories of their chronically ill patients and found that most had suffered from many adverse childhood experiences (ACEs). They found out that if, before the age of 18, a parent or other adult in a child's family often verbally, physically or sexually abused them, or neglected them, or were themselves victims of domestic abuse, or abused drugs or alcohol, or were mentally ill, or divorced or went to prison, that had a very great impact on the child's mental, physical and social development. 67% of us have experienced at least one of these things but the more of these adverse experiences a child had, the greater their risk of experiencing chronic disease, depression, suicide, of exhibiting violent behavior, and/or becoming a victim of violence, as well as other health, social and emotional problems lasting even into adulthood. They often become loners and have a hard time trusting and bonding with others.

We are created to love and be loved because we are created in the image of the God who is love. And everything flows from that love.

Justice flows from love. If you have more than 1 child, or multiple family members you love, you come to realize that if you don't treat them all fairly, there will be trouble. And if you love them equally, you don't want them fighting with or mistreating each other. By the same token, injustice comes from either imperfect love, like obsessive or possessive loves, or from non-love, like hatred or indifference. If you love people you want them to be treated fairly and you want them to treat each other fairly.

Peace flows from love. Peace, which in the Bible means wellbeing, comes from loving and being loved. Surprisingly they have found that neglect does more harm to a child than abuse. But it makes sense. To be neglected means that you don't even merit being noticed or being taken into consideration negatively. In Romanian state-run orphanages, children were given basic physical care but not shown affection. Many died from what is called “failure to thrive” and those who survived were psychologically damaged. Love is so central to what we are that to be deprived of it is to be deprived of wellbeing and peace.

Wisdom flows from love. If you are focused on the wellbeing of another, you wish to learn how better to treat them or take care of them. You observe what works and what doesn't work. You use your own life experience and if you are truly wise, you seek the wisdom of others, whether they are family or friends or experts or simply folks who have gone through the same thing. You read and absorb the wisdom to be found in books, old and new. Love may make us act foolishly at first but it should impel us to gain wisdom.

Self-control flows from love. Though we talk of “falling in love” to describe how out of control it makes us feel at the time, self-control is what you need to succeed at anything, including a relationship. Just as a car needs both a gas pedal and a brake pedal, and a steering wheel to boot, a wise person needs to control his or her impulses if they are to make love last. You need to know when to say something and what to say as well as when not to say certain things that are not going to help matters at all. In the same way you need to know when to do something and when to just be there for the other person. Love is not just letting go; sometimes it is restraining yourself and doing what is good rather than what just feels good.

Courage flows from love. My wife and I knew our kids loved one another, despite all the fighting and squabbling, because they would nevertheless come to the defense of each other whenever one was bullied. Parents, whether animal or human, will similarly face fearlessly any sized foe should their offspring be threatened. People will run into burning buildings or jump into treacherous waters to rescue those they love. Love makes us disregard our own comfort and safety to protect or save the beloved.

Patience and perseverance flow from love. People try our patience at times, even people we love. (Make that: especially the people we love!) We have to learn their pace is not ours and their timing is not ours. We forget how long it took us to learn the things we expect them to pick up right away. And we have to learn not to give up just because things don't happen on our timetable. Anything worthwhile, such as relationships, take time to develop and mature. Out of love, we stay patient and persevere.

And it is easy to see how qualities like kindness and generosity and trust and faithfulness all flow from love. They come from our being created in the image of the God who is a love relationship, where all the persons act with one will, albeit in different ways.

We know God the Father as creator, lawgiver, protector. We know God the Son as the Word, the expression of who God is in the medium of a human life, the one who reveals God's self-sacrificial love for us and his forgiveness and his power over disease and death. We know God the Spirit as the one who animates and empowers all life, the behind-the-scenes person who speaks and acts through those who are open to him. We experience God above us, God beside us, God within us, all acting in love and wisdom to heal, repair and restore all that is broken in our lives.

Usually all of this talk about the Trinity ends up being so abstract most people don't know what to do with it. They figure it is about something obscure which we are just supposed to believe. But, as Paul said in a different context, “The only thing that counts is faith expressing itself through love.” (Galatians 5:6) In 1 John it says, “Little children, let us love, not in word and speech but in truth and action.” (1 John 3:18) How can the doctrine of the Trinity help us in practical ways?

Dorothy L. Sayers had a unique take on the Trinity. She compared it to the creative process. The analogue for the Father is a person's original idea. The analogue for the Son is the incarnation or realization of that idea in some concrete form. The analogue for the Spirit is the communication of the idea. And that is a really good way of not only understanding the Trinity but of turning our faith from something that we merely believe into something that makes an impact in the world.

Say you are encountering a problem that needs be solved or a situation that needs to be dealt with. You get an idea how to do it. The next step is to put it into practice or turn it into something that exists in this world and not just in your head. You may be hesitant to act so boldly. That's where courage comes in. It may take a lot of thought as to how to achieve it. That's where wisdom comes in. You may not get it quite right at first but that's all part of creating. It took Edison hundreds of trials till he found the right filament for the light bulb. That's where patience and perseverance come in.

Once you get something that is a good practical solution, you need to get the word out so it can help others. Their feedback may include ways to improve it. Don't get offended or proprietary about it. In fact, a really big idea will require a lot of people to achieve it properly. That's where self-control comes in. And keeping the peace, to ensure the wellbeing of all.

And we must never forget that the point of the message is about love. People focus on the times God's message doesn't get perfectly realized or communicated. They don't notice that not everything recorded in the Bible is meant to prescribe how we should behave. Some passages in scripture are precautionary tales. They describe people's imperfect attempts to follow God as well as the instances when they abandon his message altogether. And some people miss the point entirely, thinking it's all about punishing those who don't agree on the message. Those who think it's all about doing something to people they consider evil have the same mindset as those who shoot up schools and theaters and churches and synagogues and mosques. In their minds they are that lonely and proud hero Raymond Chandler described, the man of honor who punishes others' insolence with what they think is a “due and dispassionate revenge.” But they are not motivated by love for all and so they cannot dispense justice but only injustice.

Not only is the lone hero a fiction in the world, it is not something for Christians to imitate. Some think they can be Lone Ranger Christians, not needing the church and its resources and people. But how are we to incarnate and communicate the good news of God's love apart from others who are also committed to showing God's love? As it says in 1 John, “Beloved, let us love one another, because love is from God; everyone who loves is born of God and knows God. Whoever does not love does not know God, for God is love. God's love was revealed among us in this way: God sent his only Son into the world that we might live through him...No one has ever seen God; if we love one another, God lives in us, and his love is perfected in us.” (1 John 4:7-9, 12)

It is not so important that people grasp the theology of the Trinity as it is that they see that divine love embodied in us. That's a tall order. So we must listen to and digest the words of God the Father. We must watch and imitate the actions of God the Son. We must open ourselves to and be filled with God the Spirit. We need to do everything in harmony with the God who is love, and from whom all blessings, like justice, peace, wisdom, self-control, courage, patience, perseverance and every good thing, flow.