Dave Andrews

We can overcome fear with greater faith, in God’s love, embodied in Jesus 

‘Christian spirituality is not a set of beliefs – or a list of obligations. First and foremost it is a relationship. It is a journey toward union with God ’ .[1]

‘I am convinced God comes to us as love, in love for love’, [2] ’that God wants the intimacy of friendship, not our fear. God comes to us with gestures of love, hoping to eliminate fear, not manipulate us through it. And he offers his love as the one thing in the universe capable of making an otherwise hostile cosmos into a friendly home. He offers his love as the one thing in the universe capable of freeing us from our fears.’[3]

The creation story is a love story. ‘It begins with the Spirit hovering over the unformed elements of creation (like) a bird nurturing new life that is forming under her (care’). ’ Love is our source and love is to be our fulfilment.’ [4] And the redemption story is the love story continued. ‘Realizing we had forgotten our story, God sent Jesus as the personification of love’[5].  He said he came to gather people together again, as a bird gathers her chicks under her wings.

However, we have reduced the great love story to systematic theology and substituted dogma for encounter. So that the God who comes up close and personal to us in Jesus feels as distant and as impersonal as ever before.

’Jesus described himself as “the Way” to God. The image of journeying with Jesus highlights (the fact) Christians are not simply commanded to go somewhere or other or do something or other. They are invited to follow Jesus.’[6]

‘Union is not fusion. My becoming united with Christ does not annihilate my being as a separate self. Rather, I find my truest and deepest self in Christ, and this “me-in-Christ ” (indeed this “we-in-Christ”) becomes my new self.’[7]

The change envisaged in becoming this “we-in-Christ” cannot be described as self improvement – but nothing less than ‘death and resurrection of the self’.[8]

‘The truth of Christ’s life is that life is love and love is life. There is no genuine life without love.’[9] In Christ, we are called not just to receive love, and to give love, but to become love. ‘He wants us to be lovers because love is his way’.[10]

‘Love is the acid test of Christian spirituality. If Christian conversion is authentic, we are in the process of becoming more loving. If we are not becoming more loving something is seriously wrong. Love is the single most important criterion of spiritual transformation. Christian conversion is not merely encountering love. Nor is it de-veloping new ideas about love. Nor is it committing my-self to trying to be more loving. Christian conversion involves becoming love’[11]

‘Growth in love always involves movement beyond the hardened boundaries of the isolated self to the selves-in-relationship that make up community’.[12]

‘Love that comes from the heart of God connects us to his creation. (His) heart of love moves me from the isolation of self-interest to a connection with life that cannot allow any ultimate divisions’. ‘It does not allow me to limit my interest to those within my tribe – whether those tribal boundaries are understood in religious, ethnic or national terms. Instead it leads to a sense of oneness with all human beings’. ’Love cannot exclude concern for (global) social justice. Nor can it exclude ecological concern for the planet.’[13]

‘Love that comes from the heart of God connects us to all God’s children. No longer can I close my eyes to the things that hold them in bondage. If God’s heart has truly become mine, their bondage is mine. If one person suffers, all suffer’. (1 Cor.12:26) As Nelson Mandela says, “the chains on all my people were the chains on me”. My identity is grounded in human solidarity.’[14]

‘Christ teaches us that love is setting aside one’s life for another’ – ‘not just saying yes to someone, but also saying no to self’ in order to say yes. ‘We want a spirituality of success and ascent, not a spirituality of failure and descent. But the way of the cross is the way of (failure,) descent and death’. ‘Christian love only emerges from the journey through the cross. There are no short cuts that allow us to bypass the cross on the Christian spiritual journey.’ [15]

‘Love alone is capable of making a person willing to give up his or her own life in loving others.’ [16] ‘Only love can free us from the tyrannising effects of fear. Only love can renew trust where it has been shattered. Only love can soften a hard heart. Only love can inspire acts of genuine self sacrifice.’[17]