If God’s beauty is perceived through correspondent, or ordinate love, we face a dilemma. Love is not merely a mental choice between options. One cannot simply choose to love as a naked act of the will. As Tozer said, “[E]very man is as holy and as full of the Spirit as he wants to be.… Continue Reading
Brother Lawrence’s (1614–1691) collected letters, known as The Practice of the Presence of God, describe his attempt to love all things for God’s sake. He remarks that he was pleased “when he could take up a straw from the ground for the love of God, seeking Him only, and nothing else, not even His gifts”… Continue Reading
It would be an insurmountable task to gather the collective thought of Christians on the topic of love for God. Suffice it to say, that many Christians have spoken frequently on the degree and nature of rightly ordered love. They have spoken not only on the required order of Christian loves, but on their kind.… Continue Reading
I present my children with two written tests. They open the envelope of the first, and see the heading, “Dad Orthodoxy”. A series of questions about me follows, which they find delightfully easy. “What is your father’s first name?” “What color are your father’s eyes?” “What is your father’s favorite meal?” “Where did your father… Continue Reading
Dear saint, You have been reading about orthopathy and ordinate affection, and perhaps it all sounds rather perplexing and intimidating. The controversy around these matters is unnerving and unsettling, and you wish it would go away. It has caused you some real anxiety. You are close to real distress, or worse, to dismissing the whole… Continue Reading
Thus far in this series, we have seen several truths about manners and their relation to worship and worship forms: All cultures have manners. All cultures recognize the importance of appropriate responses. The expression of these appropriate responses differs greatly between cultures. These differences do not relativize the affections of reverence or honor They demonstrate that meaning comes… Continue Reading
What do widely varying manners tell us about ordinate affection? Some reason this way: since some cultures regard eye-contact as respectful, and others regard eye-contact as impudent, these opposite understandings of reverence show the relative and subjective nature of manners. These outward expressions are adiaphora – indifferent, neutral things. The morality lies in the person… Continue Reading
“You shall not take the name of the Lord your God in vain.” This command is universally understood to mean that God’s name is not to be used as a curse-word, or as a mere exclamation. And who would deny that? To use the very name of God to express irritation or surprise, to add… Continue Reading
Manners are strange and wonderful things. Every culture has them, and yet they often vary widely between cultures. In Western culture, ‘ladies first’ is a way of expressing deference and honour to women, while in some black cultures in South Africa, a man is to enter every space first to demonstrate his protection of those… Continue Reading
Don’t use adjectives which merely tell us how you want us to feel about the thing you are describing. I mean, instead of telling us a thing was “terrible”, describe it so that we’ll be terrified. Don’t say it was “delightful”: make us say “delightful” when we’ve read the description. You see, all those words… Continue Reading
A Christian understanding of the affections emphasizes the centrality of the affections in the Christian life, and distinguishes it from modern notions of emotion. Beyond that, restoring a Christian view of the affections requires distinguishing between the kinds of affections. If the affections are our hearts’ expressions of value or response to the nature and worth… Continue Reading