Posted on by Abe Austin

Deeper Love- Love Without Acceptance

An Unfounded Assertion)

Yesterday I discussed some of my issues with the question, “How can you say you follow Jesus and his commandment to love everyone, while also not accepting members of the LGBT community?” And for today’s discussion, we can even drop the parts about Jesus’s teachings and religious belief. Leaving us the more general assertion that if you do not accept someone’s sexual or gender identity, that you do not love them.

This assertion is built upon the assumption that love = acceptance. That assumption is everywhere in our society today, but nowhere have I seen it justified. Love and acceptance are clearly two different concepts, with two different meanings entirely, so why would we assume that they were equivalent, or that one was the necessary component of the other? It is not immediately apparent to me that this is the case, and I have never seen any argument, let alone a convincing one, that such a claim is logical.

Love Defined by Whom?)

And how can we determine whether someone has genuine love for another person or not? A spouse might say that she loves her husband every day right up until she serves him divorce papers. A father might struggle to ever say that he loves his children, even though he sacrifices for them every day. Is not the man who feels the love most qualified to know that it is really there? How can we tell a person that there is no love in his heart, when we do not personally feel what stirs within him?

I believe that when people suggest that love = acceptance, what they really mean is, “I can only feel loved if you accept me.” What they are describing then is not an inability for love to be sent by the lover, but an inability to receive it by the loved. Such a plain admission is unlikely, because usually in these conversations there is an intention to place the problem in the other person, but requiring acceptance says more about the person who demands it than the person not providing it.

If a person is unable to receive love unless special, personally defined criteria are met, then the solution is to examine what walls they have built up on their own side, to ask, “What is wrong in me that receiving love does not come naturally?” Just as if I find that I really am unable to love a person while fundamentally disagreeing with them, then the solution is for me to examine what walls I have built up on my side, to ask, “What is wrong in me that giving love is not natural?” If both of us will work inward, rather than at the other, then we will achieve the shared goal of love being given and received.

Posted on by Abe Austin

Deeper Love- Common Criticisms

Disagreements on Love)

As a traditional Christian, I have been challenged about how I can follow Jesus’s admonition to love everyone, and also be opposed to certain lifestyles, particularly those under the LGBT umbrella. I’d like to take a couple posts to address this matter. Sometimes I feel these questions are posed in good faith, and sometimes not, but in both cases, I believe the inquirer deserves for me to have ordered my thoughts and feelings into a coherent and genuine answer.

To start things off for today, I do have to point out why I say that sometimes these questions are not asked in good faith. I believe that many of the people asking these questions don’t actually believe that disapproval precludes love. We all have people that are very close to us, that engage in something that we think is hurtful, that we wish they felt differently on, that we fundamentally disagree with them about. Whether it be politics, or self-destructive behavior, or mannerisms, we all see flaws in other people, even the ones we love most. Yes, differences of opinion can become a source of hostility, and sour love in a relationship, but we all know that it doesn’t have to be that way. We can both love a person and disagree with parts of them.

Of course, it is true that I could profess to be a Christian and also have a deep hate and resentment for everyone in the LGBT community. That is a possibility, but it is not a foregone conclusion. It is also possible that I can both love and disagree.

Narrow Questions)

I do also find it interesting that I only ever get these questions related to people living an LGBT lifestyle. As a traditional Christian, there are many other lifestyle choices that I am also opposed to, yet no one ever asks me why I “don’t love them.” For example, I’m just as opposed to fornication, adultery, and most forms of divorce. Why not challenge me as to whether I can still love a person who cheated on his spouse or who got a divorce because he just wasn’t feeling it anymore?

From what I have observed, it seems that the love of Christians is only brought into question on LGBT matters because that movement is unique in its requirement for total acceptance. The fact that these questions only come up in such narrow contexts suggests more about the views of the people that ask them than they say about me and my views.

I think it’s also worth noting that among all the behaviors that I renounce as a Christian are ones that I struggle with also! I have spoken at some length on this blog about my addiction to pornography, which I absolutely condemn as one of the greatest evils of our day. I have always known that it is wrong, and every time that I’ve engaged with it I’ve felt deep shame, but also each time I strive to fall back in love with the Son of God that still lives inside of me. Thus, on questions of whether I can disapprove of behavior but still love the individual, my practice begins with myself.

Posted on by Abe Austin

Coming to God Through Others

The Order of Love)

1 John 4:20 states: If a man say, I love God, and hateth his brother, he is a liar: for he that loveth not his brother whom he hath seen, how can he love God whom he hath not seen?

This is an interesting claim. It doesn’t just seem to be saying that hate of a brother gets in the way of our love for God, it seems to be setting an order of progression, where love of brother comes before love of God. It says that we have to learn what we can see, before we can have any hope of loving what we cannot.

And at first this seemed backwards when compared to my personal experience. I would have said that I always loved God, and growing closer to Him was fundamental to increasing my love for others. But as I thought more about it, I wouldn’t say that I always loved God, I would say that I always loved my idea of Him.

But God is not just an idea, He is an actual being, who has to be known as He really is before you can love Him as He really is. And coming to know and love the real Him, in my personal life, did come only after getting to know and love a group of brothers. It occurred as I attended 12-step groups for the first time. There, I started to have real conversations with other men and developed a real appreciation for each one of them. Then, and only then, I started to see the reflection of the real God in their eyes and started to love Him, too.

And yes, loving God did increase my ability to love my fellow man, so there is a positive feedback loop here, but it all started with coming to know and love those around me first.

Avatars of the Almighty)

Unfortunately, many of our interactions with our fellow man are shallow. Too many of them are neutral at best, with many of them being downright negative. We all-too-rarely get close enough to see the spark of the divine in another person and fall in love with that inner soul. We see too many of God’s children as an obstacle in our lives, not as the avatar for the Almighty. But that’s what they really are.

We are told in the very first chapter of the Bible, “So God created man in his own image,” (Genesis 1:27). Mankind, flawed as it might be, are the closest any of us will ever come in this life to seeing the face of God. The best representation of God is not our ideas of Him, not His commandments and principles, and not the churches that profess His name. The best representation of God is the people who hold His light aloft. All the other things are good, and point us part of the way, but it is in people that we actually start to meet Him.

So, let us ask ourselves, do I know and love Godly people in that personal and intimate way? Do I look for the spark of the divine, even in those who are flawed and oppose me? If our answer is no, then we’ve never really known and loved the real God either. If our answer is yes, then we have already had glimpses of God, and can continue to pursue Him further in all the rest of our brothers and sisters.

Posted on by Abe Austin

Fix the World

Each side wants to fix the world by overcoming the other
To make the other side surrender to their side
And by so doing, they only make the world worse

There is only one way that the world could be fixed
And that is by each side surrendering to Christ

Posted on by Abe Austin

How the World Can Ever Change

Maybe even if I change
The world will stay the same
But on the other hand,
How can the world ever change
If I’m still staying the same

Posted on by Abe Austin

Taking Accountability- Conclusion

Big Problems)

In this little series of posts, it was my sole intention to act out the principle I had recently espoused, to put my behavior where my belief was. And so, in the aftermath of Charlie Kirk’s death I identified a way that I contributed to the culture that got him killed, and I took steps to change my behavior accordingly.

But that wasn’t all that came out of these posts. By going through this exercise, I was able to more fully flesh out some of the vague ideas that originally inspired my call for us to find our own personal responsibility in every ill that besets us.

I realized that a major reason for us all to seek out our own slice of responsibility is because that is the only way that the world will ever be healed. Some problems are just too big for some of us to solve it for everyone else. Everyone has to tackle the part that is directly in front of them.

We must not have the arrogance to think that we can divide ourselves into fixers and problems. We all have to see that we are each a fixer, and we are each a problem in and of ourselves. And so, we must take our fixer part and use it on our own problem part, and only by doing this individually can we heal collectively.

A Call Inward)

I invite all of us to start looking at the big problems of the world in this way. I suspect it will be best if we look at the deepest problems, things much more fundamental than politics or ideological divides. Let us consider the hate, the poverty, the deceit, the confusion, and the loneliness. For once, let us set aside who is most responsible for these issues, and just ask, “to what extent am I responsible?”

Is there something negative that we are doing that we could stop? Is there something positive that we should be doing that we are shirking? Can we truly say that we have a clean conscience? That we have contributed nothing to the problem? That we have done our part to contribute to the solution? Or is there room for improvement, room for taking the beam out of our own eyes, room to re-establish heaven in our little corner of the world?

Posted on by Abe Austin

Taking Accountability- Acknowledging Limitations

My Commitment and Influence)

In my last post I explained how I feel that I have given my attention to social media that escalates tension and promotes an “us vs them” mentality. I have been more likely to click on a video because the thumbnail or title promised outrage and blame. And in so doing, I have signaled to the algorithms that I, and people like me, want to engage with this sort of content, want to consume it, and want to be emotionally charged by it. And it’s not hard to see how that drives division, animosity, and eventually violent ideation in the most impressionable of minds.

And so, with yesterday’s post I made a commitment that I was going to stop engaging in this cycle of escalation and tension. I have gone through all of my subscriptions and purged the voices that were most divisive and angry. I am resolving to lessen their reach by at least one viewer, and by that take accountability for my own, little slice of the murder of Charlie Kirk.

Limited Scope)

I think that that conclusion is pragmatic and realistic. Of course, to be honest, it has its limitations. It is not as though that I am equally responsible for the murder of Charlie Kirk as some other people are, or that I have the power within me to change everything wrong that led to his murder. This moment of introspection wasn’t about convincing myself that I’m guilty of his murder or making it my sole responsibility to make sure something like that never happens again. That would not be realistic. This moment was about seeing how I am guilty of some things, and how those parts are in my power to change.

This isn’t about changing everything; it’s about changing me. And that might not seem important from the scope of the world, but it is important from the scope of me. My own world and my own soul will be better for making this change, and right now that’s what I want to focus on.

Also, who knows. I’ve seen in the past where I’ve made changes to myself and then seen parallel shifts happening in the world at large. I actually do believe that our spirits are bigger than we think, and that they pull on more strands than we know, and one person making a change for himself can create unseen ripples in the world around him.

More than anything, though, I think the real importance of making a personal change comes down to this: the world is much bigger than I am and requires much more effort to be moved, so if I won’t find the will to change just myself, then obviously the world won’t either. Or in other words, maybe the world will stay the same even if I change, but how can the world ever change, if I’m still staying the same?

Posted on by Abe Austin

Taking Accountability- Clicks and Views

Self Inventory)

In my last post I made the point that I want to find my own personal responsibility in regard to the murder of Charlie Kirk and take accountability for it. Perhaps it would be possible to conduct that inventory, and genuinely find no fault whatsoever, and then I could have a completely clean conscience and continue living exactly as I was.

That, however, is not the case in this event. As I have examined my thoughts, feelings, and behaviors, I found something that I would like to do differently moving forward. There is a prominent regret that I have, one which I believe helped feed into the culture that led to his death.

Divisive Social Media)

And it all has to do with the social media that I choose to engage with. As I look at the big picture of things, I do believe that there is a great, terrible machine in our culture, one that I have been a part of.

In social media, content that is angry, that warns of imminent threat, that gives a simplistic view of an enemy group, is typically the content to get the most clicks and views, which results in more revenue for those channels, which encourages the platform-owner to recommended it other people as well. We are fed content, not because it is true, or virtuous, or good for us, but because it is most likely to get a reaction. And when we give it that reaction, it only encourages the algorithm to amplify that rhetoric even further.

And, like I said, I have been part of that cycle, too. I have watched videos because the titles were provocative, because they stoked my sense of righteous indignation, because they gave me a rush of dopamine.

And it wasn’t even that these channels were doing anything obviously evil, like making calls for violence. But they did still paint the world in terms of “us vs them.” They were still painting an entire group of people as fundamentally wrong and dangerous. They were still increasing anger and division. That alone is enough to push people into desperate patterns of thought, where extreme solutions seem to be the only option. That was the type of content that I regularly engaged with, but I’m here to say that I don’t want to be a part of that anymore.

The Value of Attention)

One of the greatest things that we have to give, is our attention. It is limited, it is finite, and where we point it directs all the rest of our lives. For this reason, it is extremely valuable, and very hotly contested for. Channels become powerful purely by their ability to win our attention from us, and if we do not give those channels our attention any longer, they wither away and die.

So, from this point on, I want to be very careful about whom I give my attention to. I do not want to sell it to voices that are coarse, divisive, and loud. And I already know other channels where the discourse is much more rational, much more open to finding solutions other than domination of “the other side.” I’d like to give my attention to them instead. As such, I have already cancelled a great many of subscriptions and will tell the algorithms to stop recommending those channels when they pop back up on my feed.

Anyway, this was the response that I had from looking at the murder of Charlie Kirk and asking myself what I had done to contribute to it. My answer is, “I gave my attention to the voices of division,” and my personal solution is to not do that anymore.