John was by all appearances a good husband. He always remembered their anniversary, and was diligent in doing things like helping his wife with the kids, buying her flowers, and being kind to her. He read all the right books, was part of the latest fad movements in the Church that focused on man's responsibility, and he even led men's ministries to help teach other men how to do what he did.
It was their tenth anniversary, and John was certainly not going to forget that. He came home early from work with a bouquet of long stemmed roses. His wife opened the door, and he handed her the roses. "Oh, thank you, John! I love them!" she said. Confidently, he replied, "Think nothing of it. I'm just doing my duty like I always do!" Upon these words, her countenance dropped. The roses fell to the ground, and she turned and headed to the bedroom in tears.
Bewildered, John’s first reaction was to become angry. After all, as he played the reel in his head, he had been more committed and dutiful than any husband he knows. What gives? He got into his car and drove away angrily. As he began to cool off, he came to a sudden and painful realization: "I haven’t really loved my wife at all." Though he had been ardently committed to fulfilling his promises, he saw that his motives over the last ten years have been more about himself... how it made him look, the recognition and respect he got at church, and how he could look at himself in the mirror and know he was doing a good job -not to mention how God must have felt about him, because of it. But none of these were actually about love for his wife. Cut to the core, he thought to himself, “What kind of husband am I?” His image of himself came crashing down around him.
Unsure of what to do, he finally realized he must go to his wife. He walked in the door and found her sitting on their bed. Sitting down next to her, he took her hand and said, "My wife, I am so sorry. I realize I have not really loved you at all. I want to, I truly want to, but I haven’t. It’s been all about me." She looked at him and said calmly, "I know this. This might be a new realization for you, but I have known it all along. But here's what you need to understand: I love you still. I have loved you all along, and my love has been enough for both of us. I forgive you and am not going anywhere."
Stunned, humbled, and overwhelmed by her love, John embraced his wife with a long hug. He had hugged her so many times over the past ten years, but this hug was different. There was no box to check, and it was not about his commitment to be good. It was different.
This short story is clearly not real. It a somewhat condensed, even dramatic, version of a “parable” from a book I’m reading. The thing we see that John cannot initially see, and the point of this parable, is that Law is not the same as love. Law does not creative love. It is good and rightly can tell us that love is our duty, but, like John's wife we understand immediately that when love is turned into duty it loses what makes it love.
The catch is that doing the opposite -nothing- is also wrong. That is not the solution, either. So, what is the answer? The only thing that creates love is love. All the commands and reminders of our duties in the world cannot do that. All of our best commitments and pulling up our bootstraps still fail to create that. They only ultimately serve to show us how lacking in love we truly are. This is a key thing that I think is not seen or understood in the Church very much.
This is how the Gospel (love) changes us. When we come to the end of ourselves and see our true lack, like John, the Lord meets us with love. He meets us with a word that says, “I have know this about you all along, and I have borne your sins and forgive you. I am committed to you, even still.” This love creates love, nothing else. This is what it means to live as a Christian every day.
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