01/17/2023 – Chapter 17 Discussion: “Unselfconciousness”, God’s pathway to eternal joy.
The concluding sentence of this chapter: ” ‘Thy will be done’ is what faith hope and love look like. That is also the secret of joy.”
A quick review of the antithesis, Hell, from our third paragraph in this reading:
“In Hell, my will is always done, because there is nothing else but my will. There is no Other. The otherness that goes all the way up into the eternal divine life of the Trinity and is the source of its joy is totally extinguished. As the opposite pole from the self-conscious self-love, we find the ecstasy, the ‘standing-outside-self’ (that’s the literal meaning of ‘ecstasy’ of unselfconscious other-love.”
An excerpt from the back of our blog “business card”:
“God’s deepest desire is for our peace and joy. We can’t lose, because God can’t lose! Insofar as we believe that identity, we will love His will as we love our own. We will then fully embrace it and become holy.” Or an axiom of Truth: “God loves us more than we love ourselves.”
I wonder how many people would draw a blank when asked to compare and contrast joy with pleasure? Not all pleasure is hedonistic, but I submit it comes fairly close to asking : “compare and contrast heaven with hell.” What “future” believers don’t take into account yet about this world: God gives common grace to non-believers. A world without God is terrifying, and that is what hell is.
Does this not provide the answer to the biblical paradox that I could not sort out as a teenager:
“For whoever desires to save his life will lose it, but whoever loses his life for My sake and the gospels will save it.” Mark 8:35. So that paradoxically, you could say: “For God’s sake: “let go!”, and don’t ever look back!” Soli Deo Gloria!