some clarification

Does having a passionate hunger for the Kingdom of God mean the same or something different from growing more in love with Jesus, getting to know Him and growing in a personal relationship with Him? The more I study and understand the apostle's teaching the more convinced I am that they (the love of the kingdom and the love of Jesus) are virtually the same. They are not exactly the same thing, of course. Jesus is a person (the first-born of many brethren) who will reign as a personal King of the Kingdom of God. Accordingly, we will have (and from a distance do have now) a personal relationship with Jesus as our King.

But what does it now mean, and what will it then mean, to "love" Jesus? Ultimately, I am convinced that it means to passionately value what Jesus values and, therefore, what makes Jesus what he is - hence, to love who he is.

Will that ever translate into a sentimental affection for the mere thought of Jesus? Yes, I think so. For some people such sentiments will express themselves more often than for other people. But such an emotional response, if it is an expression of authentic love for the real Jesus, will arise out of a bona fide love of who Jesus is, what he stands for, and the values he embraces and embodies. If that is not its source, then it is an empty, meaningless, and spiritually insignificant "love" of Jesus.

The problem, of course, is that such an empty and spiritually insignificant sentimentality toward Jesus - a Jesus whom we have created after the image of our own desires - is easy to come by. I fear this is what all too commonly passes for the love of Jesus among Christians. It is that false and inauthentic sort of sentimentality which I feel the need to warn against.

It is not "correct doctrine" per se that I am exhorting us toward; rather, it is true belief with all the passion and burning existential commitment that it ought to entail. From my perspective, therefore, I cannot even understand the distinction between a passionate mind and a passionate heart. They are the same thing. Perhaps I can clarify my thoughts this way:

The question is not whether passion is a necessary aspect of the believer's life and walk; the question is what sort of passion is the necessary aspect of the believer's life and walk. What I see prevalent in Christian culture around me is the view that in order to be a truly spiritual disciple, one must evidence the longings of the mystic or the sentimentality or adoration of the pietist. That, I believe, is wrong. Mysticism and pietism, I would argue, are bastardized forms of spirituality. (I am referring to a "popular" version of pietism, not its classical expression by the original students and thinkers.) The passion of authentic belief is the passion of the existentialist who is committed from the core of his very being to the "life project" of pursuing a destiny in the Kingdom of God by embracing even now the values which will eventually be embodied in that Kingdom. Rightly understood, this is not a merely surface intellectual belief. This is as passionate as it gets and serves as the foundation for a true and authentic emotional response of love, joy, delight, adoration, affection, praise, gratitude, and all the rest.

How we express such emotional responses is not particularly important. It will vary from person to person, from community to community. I have no bones to pick with particular worship forms - if they are authentic. It is only when we take a form of worship, empty it of authentic content, and then embrace it as, in itself, our love for God that I have serious difficulty. Perhaps I am seriously wrong; but as I look around, it looks to me like that is what so many Christians are doing today. Without an ounce of authentic existential commitment to the Kingdom of God (as evidenced by the choices we make in our everyday lives) - and, hence, without an ounce of authentic passion - we manufacture a pseudo-passion in the form of virtually empty and contentless adoration, worship, "love", etc.

My point is this: loving God is not the state of consciousness of feeling loving in the direction of someone I call God, loving God is to have an authentic core response to who God really is and what he really stands for.

It is a knowledgeable response to the reality of who God is that says, "I like that! I really like that! I like it that God is exactly who he is. I like it that God is going to do with this whole creation what he is going to do. It's right. It's good. God is truly a good and wonderful creator." This is (roughly) what an authentic love of God would look like. Because it is a love that in grounded in understanding, does that make it "intellectual" rather than from the heart? I don't think so. Rather, I think it makes it a real and authentic love with real and authentic content rather than an empty, contentless love than lacks any authenticity.

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