G. Wright Doyle's Blog

 
Last night Dori and I watched “Confucius,” starring Chow Yun-Fat (2012).
Among many powerful scenes in a generally powerful film, the confrontation between the renowned sage and an equally renowned seductress in the state of Wei resonates in a day when, as then, powerful and sometimes otherwise good men are all too often brought down by beautiful, and not always good, women.
Without rehearsing the entire sequence, in which feminine charm and wiles are deployed with every-increasing subtlety and potency, I would only comment on her last remark, which penetrates the heart of Confucius with amazing perception.
She says something like, Worldly men may understand some of the pain and suffering which you endure, but they cannot not understand its breadth and depth. (I am only paraphrasing, but this is close enough for our purposes.)
I think that this remarkably lovely, intelligent, and cunning woman finally saw into the soul of the equally remarkable man with whom she was engaged in a tense face-to-face encounter of wiles and willpower.
Having overcome the (probably half-hearted) moral defenses of kings and princes, she knew all too well their weakness when assailed by her rare combination of beauty and brains. For any normal male to withstand her silken assault would exact a huge price. For she knew how to probe a man’s vulnerable spots, in this case, Confucius’s doctrine of “ren ai” (benevolence to all) and his love of teaching. To deny these would be to deny core values of his. In addition, his long travels had deprived him of a normal married life. As much as he loved his disciples, he would have been inhuman not to want the warm, soft companionship of a woman after years of wandering on cold and dusty, and often dangerous roads.
More than that, however, she could see that he was not immune to her charms and her apparent admiration for him. How could he turn down her request to see him again, especially when the king had set him up in an ideal situation?
Surely, to deny himself a few hours, or even moments, with her would require immense self-control and self-denial, perhaps followed by pangs of regret that he had lost a unique opportunity to enjoy a uniquely attractive female. Yes, she was right. Others might know something of his pain and suffering, but few could comprehend the breadth and depth of them.
The scene ends with both of them coming to a new self-understanding and a strange and totally unexpected admiration for each other. Each had entered the room with a record of unbroken conquest; each left it with an unsettling awareness of weakness.
Suppose, however, that Confucius had met not a “bad” woman, but a noble lady, known not only for her beauty but even more for her virtue? Suppose he had been faced with someone whose intelligence matched his (like the seductress), but whose heart beat to the same rhythm, whose ear was attuned to the same music, whose dreams resonated with the deepest longings of his own heart? Suppose he had discerned in her a kindred spirit, a soul-mate, if you will.
And suppose that she had no thought of tempting him or turning him from the path of duty. She would have affirmed his commitment to what is right and proper, and honored his sense of propriety. Let us further suppose that his admiration for this elegant, chaste woman was openly reciprocated, that she clearly returned his attraction to her and growing affection for her.
Of course, he was married, and we must also suppose that a lady like this would not have remained single for long, and so she must also have a husband, even if we can suppose that few men would appreciate her as she deserved. Perhaps she was bound to a man who, inexplicably, could not see her true value, but – like so many husbands – busied himself with his work.
How easy it would have been for him to accede to her invitation to develop a friendship, an innocent relationship of mutual sharing, and always without a hint of immorality!
What would it cost a man like Confucius to walk away from such a lovely creature? He would know the pain of loss, the pangs of renewed loneliness, the realization that none of his devoted disciples could replace such a sweet companion.
And yet he would know the path of duty, and the necessity of resisting the very normal desire to tarry for a while, or even often, in a place of delightful intimacy.
Now let us consider Jesus. Must we assume that he was never attracted, as a man, to a good woman, someone who, like him, sought nothing more than the glory of God? Do we have to believe that when Mary of Bethany lavished upon him her extravagant womanly love he was totally without inner response? Was he a rock, a stone, a Stoic with no feelings?
Or did he control himself, deny himself, resist the temptation to return her touch with a simple gesture of affection – perhaps a hand on the shoulder?
In any case, we know that Jesus welcomed Mary’s demonstration of boundless affection, seeing that she understood his heart, that she alone, it seems, knew that he was about to walk the horrible path to Golgotha to pay the price for her sins, and that to do so he must retain his absolute purity and utter dedication to the Father’s will for him.
He knew that she would expect no untoward expression of gratitude towards her, that she wanted nothing more than to demonstrate her own thankfulness to him for what he had done for her brother Lazarus and what he was soon to accomplish for sinners of all nations.
We do not know the mind of Christ at this point, but we may, perhaps, see his self-mastery in the presence of Mary (and other women who loved him) as another aspect of his self-denial and his daily bearing of the Cross.
Truly, we may perhaps understand some of his pain and suffering, but I doubt we shall ever plumb the depths of it.

 

The Limits of Love (2)

Loving Within Limits

“God, grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change, the
courage to change the things I can, and the wisdom to know the difference.”

This well-known prayer by Reinhold Niebuhr provides some guidance for those who
want to know how to love within the limits imposed upon us by time, space, the
past, the present, ignorance, differences between the sexes, different love
languages, and other frustrating factors.

Some things cannot – or should not -be changed. These include our marital
status. The Bible teaches that God hates divorce, for example.(Malachi 2:16)

So, if I am a Jew or Christian who takes the Scriptures seriously and who is unhappy
with my marriage, I have not liberty to leave one partner and marry another.
Nor may I “cleave” (cling) to anyone other than the one whom I promised to
love until death parted us.

Age, gender, past experiences, and the natural boundaries of time and space
stand before us as immovable barriers to some expressions of our love for
someone of the other sex.

These we must simply accept as from God. The New Testament teaches that “all
things work together for good for those who love God, to those who are the
called according to His purpose” (Romans 8:28). A Christian may, therefore,
be “giving thanks always for all things,” because all things – no matter how
frustrating or painful –  are gifts from God to his people, meant somehow to
advance their growth into greater moral conformity to their Creator
(Ephesians 5:20; 1:4; 5:1-2)

Of course, non-believers are at liberty to complain about their lot and do
all they can to break out of the prisons in which they think they are
unfairly bound, but millennia of history, not to mention virtually every
love story, should have amply demonstrated by now that self-centered, moral
law-defying actions are like powerful waves that crash and dissipate into
mist the moment they encounter the rocks of the fundamental ethical
principles of the universe. Nothing but misery results.

On the other hand, if we actually thank God for the boundaries which he has
set all around us, and submit willingly to them, we may find them to be like
tracks on which a high-speed train can race smoothly to its appointed
destination – greater and greater resemblance to the self-sacrificing,
ever-giving love of Christ and of God.

“If any of you lacks wisdom, let him ask of God, who gives to all liberally
and without reproach, and it will be given to him” (James 1:5). When
confined by circumstances which cannot be altered, then we may beg God to
guide us into his will. Perplexed about how rightly to love another, or
how to show that love, we may confidently petition the Author of love, the
one who created us as male and female, to lead us into the way of love.

God gives wisdom, but only to those who listen daily to his voice as
revealed in the Scriptures, and who humbly ask the advice of others who can
provide godly and wise counsel. (Proverbs 2:1-22; 3:3-6; 4:1-27; 8:6-9,
32-36) Pagan or worldly suggestions should be rejected, however, for they
only direct us to the door that opens onto destruction and death. So, a
group of divorced friends, or those living in adultery, or those whose
values come from the narcissistic culture of television, movies, and romance
novels, will not be of much use to someone sincerely desiring to do what is
right.

In short, confronted with unchangeable realities, we must, first, accept
this fact; then, give thanks for it; and finally, ask for wisdom from God.
In all this, we will experience God afresh, and come to appreciate what the
Son of God did when he chose to pour his immense deity into the body of a
little baby in first-century, Roman-occupied Palestine. Certainly, the man
Jesus had to live, and love, within the tight restrictions of time, place,
social situation, gender, marital status, net financial worth, and a very
short life.

Can we imagine that Jesus did not look with male appreciation upon the women
who devoted their lives to him? Did the one who commanded men not to look
upon a woman with the intention to lust after her (Matthew 5:28) not have
known the attractive power of feminine beauty? We are told outright that he “loved”
Mary and Martha and their brother Lazarus. (John 11:5) Just as clearly, Mary
– especially Mary – loved Jesus with all her being, and did not hesitate to
express her love as tangibly as she could (see John 12:1-3).

Must we suppose that Jesus, as a normal male, never wanted to give Mary a holy hug, or even a
chaste kiss on the cheek? Perhaps reverent orthodoxy demands such a supposition, but I
find it both unlikely and unnecessary.  I may be wrong, but I think that his
full humanity included natural human affection, while his spotless character
saved him from the least taint of illicit desire or inappropriate behavior.

In other words, we must not think that we alone must live, and love, within
the limits of God’s law and the unalterable “rocks” that stand in the way of
unrestrained displays of affection for the other sex.

(To be continued

Meggie is right, of course.

Men are like moths, chasing a flame that is behind a glass window, and wearing themselves out in this futile process.

The flame represents fame and fortune resulting from hard work. Success, in a word.

Men validate themselves by their performance at work, or seek to. They will subordinate everything to this futile project – health, marriage, children, life itself.

Meanwhile, women, unaware of how much words can wound, criticize their men for such folly. Wives demean their husband’s work, and caustically comment on how worthless it is or how silly men are to worship the god of success.

In the process, of course, they attack the core of a man’s being; wither whatever affectionate care he might have had for her; and murder their marriage.

Meggie has nothing good to say to or about Luke. She complains, she criticizes, she cuts him down in every way possible. He is a selfish jerk, to be sure, and doesn’t “deserve” her love, but her conduct is sure to drive him farther and farther away from her and their hapless child. Any remnant of ordinary human kindness that might still reside in his self-centered heart will be drained away by Meggie’s constant assaults.

Nor does she treat Ralph any better. Yes, his consuming ambition has driven him to renounce any connection with Meggie, whom he loves passionately. She sees that, and hates him for it. Not seeing that he really does love her; forgetting that he drove a thousand miles to visit her just because he sensed that she was in trouble; and totally eaten up by her own self-pity, she assails him with false accusations and orders him to leave. Which he does, of course. A man can take only so much abuse.

What she fails to see in either Ralph or Luke is the in-built, God-given nature of a man’s commitment to work and to what he sees as his duty. This originally good instinct has been twisted, perverted, and monstrously deformed by the Fall, but it reflects something that God intended for Adam and his sons.

Meggie needs to learn that negative speech doesn’t succeed in browbeating a man into doing his duty as a husband and father. Compliments – since expressions of admiration for his abilities and achievements – caresses, and care for him as a person might gradually wean the poor man away from his obsession with money and success. There’s no guarantee, of course; but we do know that criticisms and complaints will only further encourage a man to withdraw into a world where he finds fulfillment and affirmation: his work.

 

 

Whoever desires to come after Me, let him deny himself, and take up his cross, and follow me. For whoever desires to save his life will lose it, but whoever loses his life for My sake and the gospel’s will save it . . .

If your hand causes you to sin, cut it off. It is better for you to enter into life maimed, rather than having two hands, to go to hell, into the fire that shall never be quenched – where “their worm does not die, and the fire is not quenched.”

               Mark 8:34-35; 9:42-44

 

 

The real secret of an unsatisfied life lies all too often in an unsurrendered will.

When the heart submits, then Jesus reigns. And when Jesus reigns, there is rest.

Hudson Taylor, Union and Communion, 20, 22

Jesus has always many who love His heavenly kingdom, but few who bear His cross. He has many who desire consolation, but few who care for trial. He finds many to share His table, but few to take part in His fasting. All desire to be happy with Him; few wish to suffer anything for Him. Many follow Him to the breaking of bread, but few to the drinking of the chalice of His passion. Many revere His miracles; few approach the shame of the Cross.

Many love Him as long as they encounter no hardship; many praise and bless Him as long as they receive some comfort from Him. But if Jesus hides Himself and leaves them for a while, they fall either into complaints or into deep dejection.

Those, on the contrary, who love Him for His own sake and not for any comfort of their own, bless Him in all trial and anguish of heart as well as in the bliss of consolation. Even if He should never give them consolation, yet they would continue to praise Him and wish always to give Him thanks.

What power there is in pure love of Jesus – love that is free from all self interest and self-love!

 

               Thomas a Kempis, Imitation of Christ, Book Two, the eleventh chapter

An Impossible Love: Some thoughts on “The Silence of the Sea” (“Le Silence de la Mer”)

They were soul mates. Werner knows it almost immediately, when he hears Jeanne, a piano teacher, playing the Prelude to Bach’s “Well-Tempered Clavier” on the piano they day he enters their house. A young and very handsome captain in the Wehrmacht, he has been billeted in the home of Jeanne and her grandfather in a little village in western France that had been occupied by the Germans in 1941.

A gentleman as well as an officer, Werner displays every possible courtesy to Jeanne and her grandfather, though he could have simply bullied and belittled them, as two of his fellow officers later said he should. Werner represents the noble tradition of the German military, in stark contrast to the SS and to men who had come under the sway of Hitler’s racist and nationalist rhetoric.

For one thing, he is a musician and a lover of books, especially French novels. In fact, he loves France as a country and a civilization, and is happy to dwell in this quiet seaside town in the home of a trustworthy old man and a very silent and lovely young woman. She reminds him of the sea, which is also silent, though its currents run deep. Despite their chilly and most discourteous refusal to answer any of his kindly greetings or respond to his self-revelations as he warms his hands by the fire, he persists in trying to point to their common humanity.

Jeanne and her grandfather are staunch French patriots, however. Jeanne’s grandfather had been wounded in a previous (unnamed, perhaps 1870) war against the Germans, and her father had been killed at Verdun. They despise the collaboration that Marshal Petain represents and leads, and are not totally unsympathetic to the Resistance, the extent of which they only slowly begin to realize.

Werner has come into their home as an uninvited invader – literally. Signs of German occupation feature prominently throughout the film, along with scenes of angry French protests over their stifling presence and the growing food shortages. Though a kind and gentle man, Werner still wears the uniform of the hated victors in yet another humiliating defeat for France. Jeanne’s friend waits anxiously for her husband’s return from the army; her favorite student has to flee with her family because they are Jews; and another friend is working for the Resistance. How could she and her grandfather fraternize with an enemy?

Gradually, however, Werner begins to win the heart of an unbelievably silent Jeanne. Early on, he reveals that he, too, had lost a family member in the Great War, and that he had joined the army only to carry on the family tradition. In fact, he too is a musician, a composer. His favorite composer is Bach, and his favorite piece the Prelude he had heard Jeanne play the day he met her.

As the film progresses, you watch Jeanne’s icy heart begin to thaw, until, clearly, she has fallen in love with Werner, as he had long ago with her. You long for her to say something – anything – when he reaches out in kindness to her and her father.

But theirs is an impossible love.

Once again, Werner sees it first. As much as he loathes war and the Nazis, he must be loyal to his country; his duty as a soldier must come first. Otherwise, even if Jeanne had returned his affection, they would both be faced with an intractable predicament: They can never marry, and if their love became known, both would be despised as traitors to their countries. They would face not only separation but an ignoble demise.

Our two lovers clearly know that romantic feelings cannot claim our highest loyalty. As the Cavalier poet Richard Lovelace wrote, “I could not love thee, dear, loved I not honor more.” (“To Lucasta: Going to the Wars”).

For the Christian, the conflict could be seen as that between personal passion and duty to the Kingdom of God.

This love story could only end unhappily. Faced with only terrible options, Werner leads the way by choosing an honorable path, and Jeanne, though clearly tormented, heroically controls what must have been an almost overpowering urge to deter him.

Perhaps they are comforted by the knowledge that they have loved, and been loved by, a soul mate. Maybe they even dare to hope that they will meet again after the war.

Nevertheless, their parting “Adieu!” breaks their heart, as it does ours.

 

From Wikipedia: Le Silence de la mer (English: The Silence of the Sea) is a French novel written during the summer of 1941 and published in early 1942 by Jean Bruller under the pseudonym “Vercors”. Published secretly in Nazi-occupied Paris, the book quickly became a symbol of mental resistance against German occupiers.’’

A Belgian-French TV movie based on the novels by Vercors was shot from 1 to 28 April 2004 in Tusson and directed by Pierre Boutron for France 2 television. This film was awarded at the Festival of Fiction of Saint-Tropez in 2004 three awards: best TV film, best female (Julie Delarme) and best music (Angélique et Jean-Claude Nachon). The actors are Julie Delarme (Jeanne Larosière), Michel Galabru (André Larosière), Thomas Jouannet (Werner Von Ebrennac), Marie Bunel (Marie), Timothée Ferrand (Pierre).

 

G. Wright Doyle

 

 

But He, who for us is life, descended here and endured our death, and slew it out of the abundance of His own life. And, thundering, he called loudly to us to return from here to Him, into that secret place from which He came for to us. First He came into the virgin’s womb, where to Him was married our humanity – our mortal flesh that it might not be forever mortal. From there He came forth “as a bridegroom coming out of his chamber, rejoicing as a strong man to run a race.” For He tarried not, but ran, calling out to us in words, deeds, death, life, descent, ascension – calling out to us to return to Him. And he departed from our sight that we might return to our heart, and there find Him. For He departed, and behold, He is here. He would not be with us for long, yet He left us not. He has gone to the place which He never left, “for the world was made by Him.” And in this world He was. Into this world He came to save sinners.

 

            Augustine, Confessions, Book IV, chapter 12

The one thing we need is to know God better. Not in ourselves, not in our prospects, not in heaven itself are we to rejoice, but in the Lord. If we know Him, then we rejoice in what He gives and not because we like it, if pleasing, not because we think it will work good, if trying, but because it is His gift, His ordering; and the like in what He withholds or takes away.

Oh, to know Him! Well might Paul, who had caught a glimpse of His glory, count ‘all things’ as dung and dross compared with this most precious knowledge! This makes the weak strong, the poor rich, the empty full; this make suffering happiness, and turns tears into diamonds as the sunshine turns dew into pearls. This makes us fearless, invincible.

If we know God, then when full of joy we can thank our heavenly Father, the Giver of all; when we feel no joy we can thank Him for that, for it is our Father’s ordering. When we are with those we love, we can thank Him; when we yearn for those we love, we can thank Him. The hunger that helps us to feel our need, the thirst that helps us to drink, we can thank Him for; for what are food or drink without appetite, or Christ to a self-contented, circumstance-contented soul?

Oh to know Him! How good, how great, how glorious – our God and Father, our God and Savior, our God and Sanctifier – to know him! Pray on and labor on. Don’t be afraid of the toil; don’t be afraid of the cross; they will pay well.”

            J. Hudson Taylor, letter to a missionary, quoted in Dr. and Mrs. Howard Taylor, Hudson Taylor and the China Inland Mission, Volume Two: The Growth of a Work of God, 202.

Now, all our peace in this miserable life is found in humbly enduring suffering rather than in being free from it. He who knows best how to suffer will enjoy the greater peace, because he is the conqueror of himself, the master of the world, a friend of Christ, and an heir of heaven.

            Thomas a Kempis, Imitation of Christ, Book Two, Chapter Three