In the midst of our growing fragmentation, we have never been more focused on the individual than we are today. This focus plays itself out in unbridled consumerism. Consumerism's primary product in our culture is narcissism. Even the language of pop psychology betrays us. "You can't love anyone else until you love yourself," is the mantra we are expected to embrace. We are given professional permission to put ourselves above everyone and everything else. "You've got to take what you need before you can give."
When we are disjointed, there is never enough. When we are emotionally fragmented, we leak. No matter how much we consume, how much we take for ourselves, we always find ourselves empty in the end. This in turn leaves us only more frustrated and embittered. Our desperate search for wholeness requires us to let go of what we so long to take hold of, and instead, to set forth on a pilgrimage that leads us along an entirely different path. Wholeness is not found through receiving, but through giving. Wholeness and generosity are inseparably linked.
While it is true that we cannot give what we do not have, it is also difficult to give what we have not experienced. We may find it challenging to serve if we feel we have never been served. We may find it arduous to forgive if we feel we have never been forgiven. We may find it daunting to express compassion if we find that mercy is foreign to us. Yet the reality is that God is the one who always initiates these experiences in our lives ... Jesus said that he "came not to be served but to serve and to give His life as a ransom for many" [Matthew 28:20]. He also first forgives us and then expects us to forgive others [Matthew 6:12-14]. And lastly, we see that "because of His great love for us, God, who is rich in mercy, made us alive in Christ even when we were dead in our transgressions -- it is by grace that we have been saved" [Ephesians 2:4-5]. So we see that our only reasonable response to God's generosity to us is for us to be willing to give to others.
Generosity in its primal essence is love. When we are fragmented, we become emotional black holes. No matter how much is poured into us, its light is absorbed and never finds its way back out. When we are whole, we are nurtured by what is invested in us, and at the same time we freely give of ourselves to others. When we are whole, we see love as limitless. We become what God designed us to be, conduits of love. The overarching problem with mankind is that we have become disconnected from the Source of love. We love because God first loved us [I John 4:19] and love is so central to who God is, that it is a primary test of our relationship to the Creator [I John 4:7-8].
The Scriptures also describe us as being perfect and complete in this life [1 John 4:16-18; Ephesians 4:13]. The best parallel word would probably be "wholeness." The promise of God is not that we will be flawless in this world, but that we can be whole in this life. We have wasted too much effort trying to become perfect in our actions and invested too little energy in becoming healthy in our spirits. To become truly generous and genuinely whole, we must become generative. God intended us literally to generate love .
"May the Lord make your love increase and overflow for each other and for everyone else, just as ours does for you" [1 Thessalonians 3:12].
"This is my prayer: that your love may abound more and more in knowledge and depth of insight, so that you may be able to discern what is best and may be pure and blameless until the day of Christ, filled with the fruit of righteousness that comes through Jesus Christ -- to the glory and praise of God" [Philippians 1:9-11].
"I pray that out of His glorious riches He may strengthen you with power through His Spirit in your inner being, so that Christ may dwell in your hearts through faith. And I pray that you, being rooted and established in love, may have power, together with all the saints, to grasp how wide and long and high and deep is the love of Christ, and to know this love that surpasses knowledge -- that you may be filled to the measure of all the fullness of God" [Ephesians 3:16-19].
This is the ultimate secret of moving toward wholeness: we love.
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