The Gospel of Jeff, Who Lives at Home

Jeff, Who Lives at Home struck a deep emotional chord within me when I first saw it in 2012 -- a very, very dark chapter of my life.  I remember my then wife asking me why it had moved me to such tears and I don't think I even knew how to answer her at that time.  I was so utterly alienated from my True Self (for what I mean by this term, see Richard Rohr) that I could not perceive the nature of her question -- a question fundamentally about me.  Yet now I have rewatched this film twice within the past six months and I think I know what my soul was crying about in 2012. I was encountering the gospel of Jesus in this new story/Story of Jeff.  (By the way, the 32 f-bombs in this rated R film -- and its treatment of homosexuality -- means that most "good Christians" wouldn't even watch this mythical story.  Their loss, I guess.)

*Spoilers ahead*

Jeff constantly points away from himself.

Jeff senses a purpose to his existence which is mysterious and beyond himself.  He loves the movie "Signs" because in the end it is the half-consumed cups of water that saves everyone.

Jeff seems to have a "sixth sense" for what is going on around him, an awareness of the holiness of all of life (birds in the air, phone calls, infomercials, traffic jams, random people); everything matters, Jeff thinks, if we can see with the eyes of faith.

Jeff sometimes doubts himself and, in those moments, he is most convinced that the story is absolutely NOT about himself (which it is!  haha! the joke is on Jeff!).  After all, how could the story be about him if he is just a thirty year old pothead living in his mom's basement!?  What could be more irrelevant than such a man?

Jeff, precisely because he alone considers his own life completely expendable, saves everyone in the end.  His mother reconnects with life and love; his brother does too and the ripple effects carry on infinitely.  Completely unaware of his own agency, Jeff has single-handedly saved us ALL with his courageous act of self-sacrificial love and utter abandonment to even death itself.

Jeff is baptized into death, enters the roaring waters we are drowning in, embraces the chaos, and quite literally dies.

And lastly, of course, Jeff is resurrected.  It could not end any other way since this is the Gospel.

Prayer for a Friend

God of Love,

You have existed in an eternal circle of self-giving from the beginning. Your nature is to love, to submit, to please the Other instead of the self. Because you wish for humanity to join in this unending dance, you teach us to love in the same way. We often fall short, but you stubbornly love us anyway. Like a whore, we wander away and sleep with false gods. We squander your wealth in hedonistic wild living. Yet you remain faithful.

My dear friend wants to be reconciled in his marriage. But she does not seem interested. Give him the strength to imitate your love. May he love her as stubbornly as you love us. Give him a supernatural power to love even when she spits at him, insults him, and crucifies him. And in the process, make him your disciple.

Stamp your image on his life. And pursue her until she cannot resist your grace any longer. Reunite these two in a passionate embrace. Work your miracle of peace as you so love to do.

Amen.

Two Competing Loves

For some years now I have felt a tension between two different definitions of love.

The first is quite popular in American culture, but especially prevalent among the liberal elites of our society. This is love as kindness. In other words, if we would all just leave one another alone, tolerate behaviors as long as they do not directly interfere with the happiness of another human being, and rid ourselves of old-fashioned religious standards (which "suppress" our humanness), then the world would be a much better place. This is indeed an attractive option to me. For example, on a certain level I would be very glad to have my closest of friends simply "accept me for who I am" and not try to change me and not feel the need to rebuke or reshape my character on some level. This form of love would see my imperfections, but instead of attempting to surgically remove them (which would undoubtedly be a painful process) it would embrace them as being part of the essence of Greg Coates -- a lovely and yet imperfect being. Under this definition of love, the phrase "Your God loves you as you are, but He is not willing that you should stay that way" is an object of mockery. In short, love of the first type is a "live and let live" love, a love that places tolerance above confrontation, and a love that looks askance at "objective standards of morality" as oppressive -- a wet rag on the goodness of life. Furthermore, this love is rooted in an anthropology that insists we are basically good.

The second definition of love goes something like this: Who you are and who you ought to be are different from one another. The intense love that I feel for you refuses to allow me to remain indifferent toward the deficiencies in your character because who you OUGHT to be would ultimately lead to a greater level of happiness for both you and those to whom you relate. C. S. Lewis describes this love well in the third chapter of his book "The Problem of Pain:"

You asked for a loving God: you have one... not a senile benevolence that drowsily wishes you to be happy in your own way, not the cold philanthropy of a conscientious magistrate, nor the care of a host who feels responsible for the comfort of his guests, but the consuming fire Himself, the Love that made the worlds, persistent as the artist's love for his work and despotic as a man's love for a dog, provident and venerable as a father's love for a child, jealous, inexorable, exacting as love between the sexes.

In other words, the second form of love believes in objective standards of behavior which are weaved into the fabric of the universe such that only those who live in consistency with them could ever experience true happiness. To tolerate and allow the "stains" on our character to fester and linger like a cancer is the opposite of love. And we can no more wish them to remain within ourselves than "a dog, once having learned to love man, could wish that man were such as to tolerate in his house the snapping, verminous, polluting creature of the wild pack." (Lewis)

The first love insists that there is not need for me to be tamed. The second insists that a loving person/God will do anything possible to tame me. The first love looks at the second and calls is judgmental, Pharisaical, smothering, and harsh. The second looks at the first and calls it wimpy, Hippy-ish, diluted, and fake.

Lewis argues for the second love and I'm inclined to agree with him. He calls the first love "mere kindness" and claims that those who want God to show them their type of love are actually asking for less love, not more. Lewis concludes: "Whether we like it or not, God intends to give us what we need, not what we now think we want... If we will not learn to eat the only food that the universe grows -- the only food that any possible universe could ever grow -- then we must starve eternally." Hence, we have an argument for what Christians down through the centuries have called "holiness." We are not what we should be and love has an obligation to bring us to the place where we are ultimately happy (i.e. holiness).

Love

Love is not love
Which alters when it alteration finds;
O no, it is an ever fixed mark
That looks on tempers and is never shaken;
... Love's not time's fool, though rosy cheeks and lips
Within his bending sickle's compass come;
Love alters not with his brief hours and weeks,
But bears it out even to the edge of doom.

- William Shakespeare, Sonnet CXVI