Relentless Love: Christ’s Message From The Manger To The Cross

In his classic Mere Christianity, the great Christian author C.S. Lewis writes that God’s love for us is a relentless love, meaning that it continues and does not ebb and flow as our own virtues and vices so often do.  God does not merely love us when we are good, or when we remember or even appreciate Him.  He loves us all the time, including when we most likely are very far from loving ourselves.  The presence and absence of love in our lives is often most strongly felt at Christmas, so perhaps this is a good time to reflect on the notion of how we relate to God’s relentless love.

Thanks, But No Thanks

When push comes to shove, we are each a  personification of inconsistency.  We drift between the devils and the saints, floating toward one or the other with the changing winds of our vices, desires, whims, pride, and moods.  God is relentlessly reaching for us, even when we are obliviously pushing Him away. He does not need a reason to love us, but we seem to continuously conjure up many reasons to reject Him. We know that our sins are repetitive, both from our own experience, and the reminders in the confessional.  Perhaps this is merely a case of finding “comfortable” ways of pushing back from a God whose love we feel inadequate to copy.

Maybe we do not think that we deserve God’s relentless love. Perhaps we are even ashamed to receive it in the daunting shadow of His example. It is almost as if we subconsciously compare ourselves to God, feeling how relentlessly He loves us despite our faults and imperfection. Lucifer fell because he wanted to be like God so much that he forgot how much God loved him. In fact, the devil probably delights in our misguided self-comparisons to a perfect God and His perfect love.  We cannot possibly exit unscathed from such folly, and the devil knows it.

Our Twisted Reality

In his famed Theory of Cognitive Dissonance, the psychologist Leon Festinger suggested that people will do whatever it takes to find consistency in their lives, good or bad.  Consistency makes life seem easier, and inconsistency seems to make hiding our warts that much more difficult.   

Perhaps our problem lies in our twisted notion that consistency is de facto good and inconsistency is de facto bad. Maybe, somewhere along the way, we bought into the myth that following Christ means being as perfect as He is and that stumbling is a reminder that we are nothing but sinful misfits. The problem, however, is that being a Christian is as much about falling and getting back up, and helping others do the same, as anything else.  Christ faced the dirty realities of this world from the moment of His birth.  

It is the height of irony that the best way to follow the perfection of Christ is to relentlessly love God and others despite our imperfections. We should consider the possibility that our version of that relentless love entails looking beyond our faults to the needs and pain of others.  Sitting in our imperfection entails obsessing in ourselves. Loving despite our imperfections demands that we put God and others first. It is really a matter of answering inconsistency with acceptance and love rather than with shame and pointless self-criticism.

Father, Forgive Me….Again

I have felt the frustration of confessing the same sins over and over. Sometimes I feel like a broken record.  I wonder if I am so stupid that I cannot see the familiar potholes or so stubborn that I refuse to avoid them.  Could it be that I am so frustrated by my inconsistent loyalty to such a loving God that I prefer the consistency of sitting in my familiar, comfortable sins?  Have my sins become the security blanket, the drink, or the cigarette that only confirm that I do not deserve God’s love?  After all, labeling myself a lost cause seems so much easier than being expected to be better.

I remember that fight scene in Rocky when Mickey pleads with Rocky to stay down, to surrender, to accept being a loser. For a fleeting instant, the comfort of sitting in his imperfection must have seemed the most comfortable thing for Rocky to do. However, Rocky wanted more than that, and his relentless determination to be more made him get up despite the tempting comfort of staying down.

Likewise, Veronica could have dwelled on her fear and uncertainty as Christ struggled past her on his way to Calvary. However, she loved Christ so much that she reached out to Him despite her imperfection. Perhaps God wants us to love so much that we keep getting up, and that we keep reaching out, forgetting ourselves in our relentless love of God and others.

The Message From The Manger To the Cross

Christmas often seems to be a fork in the road when it comes to love in our lives. We can choose to dwell on how imperfectly we love others and how imperfectly others love us. Such a choice is always centered in self, and can only lead to frustration and bitterness.

On the other hand, we can choose to embrace and spread the love that we do have, relentlessly seeking those who need a smiling face and a kind word. This second choice is always centered in others and seems like a worthy effort for all of us to make.