Detachment

“If you truly love God… then it will not be possible to have an attachment, or anxiety, or concern for money, for possessions, for family relationships, for worldly glory, for love and brotherhood, indeed for anything of earth.”

--St. John Climacus

“Do not love the world or the things of the world.  If anyone loves the world, the love of the Father is not in him.”

--1 John 2:15

To my mind, one of the most controversial things that Jesus ever said appears in Luke 15:26, “If anyone comes to me without hating his father and mother, wife and children, brothers and sisters, and even his own life, he cannot be my disciple.”  In this saying we hear the demands of the jealous God of Sinai who commands that we have no other gods before him.  How are we to understand this shocking ultimatum?  The answer, I think, is not that we should stop loving our families and others who are important to us or that we should not enjoy this marvelous world in which God has placed us, but that we should learn to love and enjoy them in the right way.

Pam and I used to have a Black Labrador Retriever named Rosie.  We called her our baby, but she was not a baby, she was a dog and we loved her dearly as a dog.  If we had expected her to act like a human child, all three of us would have been very frustrated.  We treated Rosie in ways that were appropriate to her dog-ness.  We all need to learn to love our fellow creatures, both things, like cars and food, and people, like spouses and sports heroes, in ways that are appropriate to their created-ness.

There is only one Necessary Being and that’s God.  The rest of us have been born out of the overflow of his life and love.  I love my family.  How much more should I love the God who gave them to me and who gave me the capacity to love in the first place?  God is our source and our destiny, the spring from which we flow and the ocean into which we empty.  When we remember that, our relationship with everyone and everything else is kept in proper perspective.

Prayer:

O God, help us to love you first and best so that we might use the good things of this world wisely and love our fellow creatures freely.  We turn over all our needs and wants to you, knowing that you alone can satisfy us.  We entrust those we love to your care, knowing that they do not belong to us, but to you, and we thank you for sharing them with us as we walk this earth together, through Christ our Lord, Amen.

St. John Climacus, pray for us.