Diamond in the Rough (a song)

I didn’t know that the day that I sat down beside you
I was sitting down next to my destiny
And I didn’t know that the day you smiled at me the first time
I was meeting a long lost piece of me
And I’m so glad you didn’t let the disguise fool you
I’m so glad you didn’t fall for my bluff
Cause if you had we might have never learned the truth about us (that)
Whatever else we had together
Together we had a diamond in the rough

I didn’t know the first time I felt your breath upon me
How much grace was breathing over me
I didn’t know the first time I held you in my arms
How strong a heart was beating next to me
And I’m so glad all my mistakes never deterred you
I’m so glad that we held on when the going got tough
Cause if we never had we might have never learned the truth about us (that)
Whatever else we had together,
Together we had a diamond in the rough

So place me as a seal upon the hinges of your heart
Like a lover’s seal engraved upon your arm
Cause love is strong as death, more jealous than the grave
And its flame burns with the fire of the Lord

I do not know all the ups and downs that lie before us
And where we’ll be when its all said and done
And I do not know what we’ll see there in the rear-view mirror
When we look back after its all said and done
But I hope it’s true we’ll say we savored every moment
I hope it’s true they’ll say we left a trail of love
Cause if we do that’s how we’ll finally know the truth about us (that)
Whatever else we had together,
Together we had a diamond in the rough

A Thousand Words, a Song

They say the Inuit up north
Have got a thousand words for snow
And well, honey, I just don’t know if that’s true
But if you need a thousand words
For the stuff of life you need the most
Then I guess I ought to have a thousand words for you

They say that Earnest Hemmingway
Could write a thousand words a day
Well he must have had a most prolific muse
But if you give a thousand words
To the thing that most inspires you
Then I guess I ought to have a thousand words for you

And I remember how they say
That a picture’s worth a thousand words
Well honey, give or take a word or two
But a thousand pictures won’t suffice
To tell you just a single thing
Out of the thousand words I want to say to you

A thousand words could never contain
The one thing I most want you to know
A thousand words could never describe the beat of my heart
I know its not much, I know it’s absurd
And I’ll never say something you haven’t heard
I know it falls short, but it’s all I’ve got
A thousand words, a thousand words

It’s better to be thought a fool
They say than open up your mouth
And prove to the whole world that its true
And if brevity’s the soul of wit
Then maybe all I have to do
Is just hold my tongue and let the silence speak to you

The Crucible of Love (The Meaning of Marriage, Part II)

In metallurgy, a crucible is a heat-resistant container that’s used to melt down and purify metal—copper, iron, gold or what have you. It's made of material that can withstand the extreme heat necessary to melt whatever's placed in it.  The metal melts, the impurities are burned off, and the crucible is left intact.

Inasmuch as it is a vessel designed to withstand high temperatures so that its contents can be purified and/or transformed, the crucible is, I think, a powerful analogy for Christian marriage.  For a Christian, marriage is meant to be a crucible for discipleship—a vessel, of sorts, designed to withstand extreme conditions, so that its contents—the man and woman who have covenanted together before God—can be purified and transformed as followers of Jesus.

Let me get extremely concrete here.  I remember one of the first “heated discussions” my wife and I had as newly-weds.   She was expecting me home at a certain time, and I wasn’t going to be home then but didn’t call to let her know.   She expressed to me her concern, and I (I confess) countered with indignation—I never had to “check in” with anyone before—and a while later we were cooling off and apologizing.   This, on the surface, sounds like a pretty ho-hum, mundane thing, the kind of domestic “sorting-out-of-expectations” that every newly-wed couple needs to work through. 

Hardly gold-smelting material. 

Unless you’re working with the definition of discipleship that I’m working with: that being a disciple of Jesus is about being increasingly “Christ-centred” and “others-oriented,” so that the “self” makes room for Jesus, and he, once he’s at the centre, turns the heart out towards others.  Sin, as Augustine said, is the self curved in on itself.  Discipleship, I’d add, is about having that curve turned inside out.

To the extent that I was learning to surrender the freedom I once had to come and go at whim without regard to how it might impact others; and to the further extent that I had no choice but to learn this, because the “vessel” that held my wife and I together wasn’t about to dissolve, just because the heat had turned up—to that extent—our argument over the call I’d neglected to make was, in fact, a profound discipleship moment. 

So are the disagreements about how to spend money, or how to parent the kids, or who ought to take care of the vacuuming, that every married couple will have in different ways at different times.  None of these things, on the surface, seem like profound discipleship moments, but these domestic, day-to-day, ho-hum activities present us continually with the choice to keep the self as the axis of life, or to allow Jesus to be there and have him turn us out towards others.   And perhaps it’s because these mundane, terribly “unsexy” things have such power to shape us spiritually, that they also happen to be the things that most often cause the most melt-downs in marriage:  money, parenting styles, housework.  The warp and woof of life together.

As a crucible for discipleship, then, marriage is meant to shape us into “Christ-centred,” “others-oriented” men and women, because it holds us together when the heat heats up—the argument over the cost of that golf game, the spat over indulging the kids too much, the frustration over the unvacuumed floor, whatever it is—so that the impurities of selfishness can burn off and the gold of an "others-oriented life" can be refined.  This particular crucible was especially designed to withstand the heat of the soul-smelting process.

If it feels like I’m beating this metaphor to death, it’s only because, once you imagine marriage as a crucible for discipleship, some very important points come into focus that start to challenge some cultural assumptions about marriage, even assumptions held by the Christian sub-culture.

For starters:  marriage is not about me, or for me.  Culturally, our view of marriage is increasingly self-centred.  It’s about fulfilling the felt-needs of the individual and only worth working on so long as it does.  I’ve blogged about this before, but the thing is: marriage is actually about Jesus and for Jesus.  Of course, I’d argue that a marriage which genuinely brings glory to Jesus will be the most fulfilling kind of marriage, in the long run; but self-fulfillment, itself, isn’t the goal. 

Secondly (and here’s where the “crucible” image starts to speak to the Christian sub-culture):  Marriage itself is not the highest ideal of the Christian life.  It is, actually, a crucible for discipleship, not the crucible for discipleship.  In fact, if you read the Scriptures closely (like in Matthew 19:10-12, or 1 Corinthians 7:8-31) it sort of looks like marriage is not even the best crucible.  But that’s a blog post for another day.  The point for today is just that:  God’s goal is not, necessarily, “married Christians”; His goal is disciples.  Marriage is a framework he provided for achieving that goal—a vital one, a beautiful one, a sacred one, an indispensable one—but not the only one.

Sometimes churches, in their well-intentioned urgency to keep marriage vital and beautiful and sacred, can elevate it to a place the Bible never puts it, making it sort of the ideal expression of a Christian lifestyle.  As a pastor, my concern is that, if we do this, a church can unintentionally marginalize the unmarried Christians in their community—the single Christian who for whatever reason never married, the divorced Christian who’s picking up the pieces, the widowed Christian in grief, the Christian who’s chosen the path of celibacy—telling them, in effect, that they are somehow or other “incomplete” in Christ because of their singleness.

It is possible to put the family into such sharp focus that the other crucibles for discipleship that God has given us—celibacy, spiritual friendship, singleness lived out in the context of Christian community and so on—can blur out of focus, creating a sadly distorted depth of field.  Viewing marriage as one among other crucibles for discipleship helps us bring the picture back into proper focus.

I am a pastor, but I’m not naive.  I realize that there are times when the crucible may be cracked irreparably, and there are other times when the heat that’s there is not at all purifying but only destructive.  Marital abuse or spousal abandonment, for instance, is not a purifying fire, but a sign of something gone wrong deep down in the heart of things, and it needs to be addressed as such.  But even in recognizing all that, I still see in this image—marriage as a crucible for discipleship—something compelling, and inspiring and worth the effort.  

If nothing else, it's challenging me to rethink my prayers when it comes to my marriage.  Am I asking God simply to give me "a happy marriage"?  Or am I asking him to make me a serious disciple of Jesus, and then giving him my roles as a husband, a father, my wife's best friend, to use in the process?

The Most Excellent Way: A Theological Reading of The Princess Bride

One of my favorite movies is Rob Reiner’s cult classic, The Princess Bride.  I have long held that this campy, swashbuckling fairytale, for all its silliness and slapstick, actually deals very sensitively with a distinctly biblical theme:  That love is the most excellent way (see 1 Corinthians 12:31).

If you’re unfamiliar with this 1987 masterpiece, stop what you’re doing right now and go watch it; we’ll wait.  If you’re like the members of my family, however, and you can quote long sections of the script by heart (No more rhyming now, I mean it...), allow me to connect some dots for you.

On the surface, of course, one of the main themes this film deals with is the power of True Love.   As Westley tells Princess Buttercup, “Death cannot stop True Love, all it can do is delay it for a while.”  Or, as she will tell Prince Humperdinck latter on, “Westley and I are joined by the bond of love, and you cannot track that, not with a thousand bloodhounds, and you cannot break it, not with a thousand swords.”

So far, so obvious; but there is an important motif running alongside Westley and Buttercup’s romance that brings the whole theme into sharp and profound focus, namely: the quest for excellence.  If you’re familiar with the characters, you may recall that each of them are striving for, or have achieved, superlative excellence in some field of human endeavor or other.  Buttercup’s the most beautiful girl in the land, of course, but that’s an easy one.  Prince Humperdinck is the greatest hunter ever to live (he can track a falcon on a cloudy day).   Fezzik is the strongest man alive (only Fezzik is strong enough to climb the Cliffs of Insanity).  Inigo studied all his life to become the world’s greatest swordsman (and his sword, of course is a peerless work of craftsmanship).  Vizzini is the world’s smartest man (Plato, Socrates and Aristotle are morons next to him).  Count Rugen is writing the “definitive work” on the subject of pain (and spent a lifetime perfecting the greatest torture device ever invented).  Ranged against the power of True Love, in other words, is a host of superlatives that True Love will have either to subdue (as in the case of Fezzik and  Inigo) or defeat (as in the case of Humperdinck and Rugen).  In a world suffuse with “excellence,” that is, True Love proves itself “the most excellent way.”
                   
This all ties up rather neatly, but there is a layer to this that isn’t immediately obvious, but is so important: it is not romantic love, exclusively, that is the most excellent thing.  The film, in fact, presents us with a whole range of human loves that together combine to contribute to the victory of True Love. Inigo’s filial love for his murdered father (“I loved my father, so naturally I challenged his murderer to a duel”); Fezzik’s fraternal love for his friend Inigo (“Fezzik took great care in nursing his inebriated friend to life”); and, of course, the Grandfather’s paternal love for his sick Grandson, which he demonstrates by reading the book to him in the first place.  We’re invited to connect all these loves together in the closing line of the film.  As the Grandpa's leaving, the boy asks him to come back and read the book again tomorrow, to which the the Grandpa replies, “As you wish.”  These are, of course, the same words Westley spoke to Buttercup when what he really meant was “I love you.”  "As you wish," it turns out, can apply to more than mere romantic love.

Because in The Princess Bride, the “True Love” that is the most excellent way is not simply the romantic passion that binds Westley and Buttercup together.  It is, in fact, that profound and complicated network of human affections and loyalties and commitments and longings that binds human hearts to human hearts, parent to child, friend to friend, man and wife (that most bwessed of awangments...).  Westley’s and Buttercup's romance is, of course, the centerpiece of the story, but the point is to see how their romantic love both compliments and draws life from these other, equally important kinds of love that together point out the “most excellent way.”

In his classic book The Four Loves, C. S. Lewis notes that the ancients identified at least four distinct types of human bonding that today we would call “love.”  Storge, refers to warm affection between companions and family members; Philia describes deep, spiritual love between friends; Eros describes romantic or sexual love; and Caritas (charity) describes the kind of unconditional brotherly/sisterly love that the early Christians referred to with the Greek word agape.  And it was not eros specifically that was “the most excellent way,” but agape, the Love of God which the Spirit has poured out in our hearts.

I think there is something to regain in this more wholistic vision of love; because we live in a culture where sexual love is increasingly disconnected from the other types of loving relationships it was meant to encourage and compliment and draw life from. But biblically, I think, sexual love is supposed to fit in to a larger picture of shalom-ordered living: nurtured families and wholesome friendships and vibrant communities that taken together give us a taste of True Love; and we do violence to True Love when we wrench it from that setting. Perhaps if we could put eros back in its place among the other loves, it would start pointing us again to that thing which, all by itself, it is not: the most excellent way.