One focus of Lent is that we are urged to be introspective. If we intend to examine ourselves, we need good questions. Knowing where to probe, what thoughts or frameworks to investigate, and to be daring enough to look within, is required if we are to engage meaningfully with our own inner lives.
We inevitably find answers to the questions we ask. Poor questions will lead us to responses nonetheless, but they won’t be as helpful and transformative as more insightful ones.
A question I propose is, What is overriding love?
We know that love is the central resource for our spiritual potential and the path of participation in God. Developing and progressing in the practice of love, the perspective fostered from love, and being personally ordered in love, is absolutely necessary if we are to grow to maturity in Christ.
There is no fear in love, but perfect love casts out fear; for fear has to do with punishment, and whoever fears has not reached perfection in love. 1 John 4:18
From what John writes, we see that we are to be perfected in love, that is, to come to wholeness according to God’s eternal destiny for us through his love. As he states, fear keeps us from that completeness, but we can also assume that the journey to this fullness means that divine love must successively supersede a series of rivals, not only fear.
Other habitual practices, any differing order to our inner life, and competing priorities and directions seriously obstruct our participation in God. These must be overcome with love.
To state my question more fully, what is presently overriding, taking precedence in our thinking, holding sway over us, and forming us, perhaps unconsciously, instead of love? Secondly, how do we detect what that might be?
Even our attempt at self-examination must be enabled by love. Unless we are confident in God’s acceptance of us, in his eternal love for each one of us, probing where God and his love are not preeminent in us can be fear-inducing. We must be freed by the unending love of God to ask where that love is yet to take root in our hearts.
When we are ready, we can expand the initial question into many others, searching for the rivals to love that still occupy our hearts and constrain the Spirit which dwells in us. What do I think about frequently or constantly? Could it be safety or comfort, success or belonging? All these are actually granted by divine love, but may also be what we seek through other means, apart from love.
For example, we may find, when we look deeply into our motivations, that we want safety but do not rest in the love of God for it. Perhaps we desire safety on other terms, from other sources, especially in material rather than spiritual ways.
If so, then concern for our own well-being is “overriding” love because we have not trusted God’s love which we have received, and which we ought to share. Love has yet to become the ultimate well-being for our souls. This is but one example.
Throughout our lives we have responded in various ways, quite reasonably but often poorly, to our basic fears and concerns. However, the only true answer is the love of God. Our journey is to move toward the wholeness of all things being summed up in love.