Fall, Freedom, and Love
I am moved back and forth by both the simplicity and complexity of God’s love as I have let Peter Kreeft’s perspective from The God Who Loves You permeate my experiences in study, creation, and relationships. Here is a piece of Kreeft’s uncomfortable wisdom followed by one of Fiction Family’s songs that has helped me to connect with the discomfort.
“The connection between the fall and love is freedom. Love does not enslave, but frees, the beloved. God’s love gave us free will. With it, we chose sin and we fell. Thus even our fall, our sin, is proof of God’s love. Only in freedom can we sin. And only love gives us the freedom to sin. Without that freedom to sin there is also no freedom to love…
“We doubt God’s love when we see and feel all the sufferings that our freedom to sin has brought upon us… We wish He had given no law that we could ever have chosen to disobey… But mere kindness or compassion would keep us protected against suffering by denying us real freedom.”
So how should that perspective on God’s love change me? I am given the freedom to respond to the stimuli around me – everything from an incompetent sales clerk who cannot seem to do his job to my little girl waking me at two in the morning crying because her ear hurts. If I know that God loves me, the store clerk, and my sick little girl, then how should I respond to these persons in love, and how is God shaping and teaching me to love through my experiences?
When the gavel comes down crooked
And the verdict feels unfair
And the judges robes are stained
And the jury don’t seem to care
Hey, how you gonna pick up the pieces?
Hey, how you gonna pick up the pieces?
Our love is a puzzle that can’t be solved
Our love is a puzzle that can’t be solved
And the urn that holds the ashes
Has been shattered by the fall
I’m stuck with the circus king
Getting sick of it all
Up against the wall
Up against the wall
When you’re down on the ocean floor
And the sand gets in your shell
Everyone’s been talking
About the pearl you’ll have someday
But right now it only hurts like hell
Hey, how you gonna pick up them pieces?
Hey, how you gonna pick up the pieces?
Our love is a puzzle that can’t be solved …
