A Love that Sees no Flaws

What does it feel like to be seen as completely beautiful? 

Entirely desirable?

Flawless?

In an age of social media where every blemish is blown out of proportion and all time is given to the upkeep of one's image, it is easy to see the allure in chasing a "Flawless" status.

However, there is clearly no such status as that. 

The paradox of today's culture is that

the more we chase flawlessness, the more we know our flaws;

the more we run and push away shame, the more firmly it lodges in our hearts;

the more we chase the acceptance of all, the less likely that acceptance will ever meet us at the finish line (or that such a finish line exists).

So then, why is there this inability to find this acceptance, this regard as flawless?

My suggestion would be that it is a part of the lies that we have been fed. Are we not all used to the following modern language that falls so lightly (almost lovingly!) on our ears:

"love yourself"

"you are good the way you are"

"shame is always bad"

"live your best life"

"do you" (my favorite)

These notions are alive and well in the landscape of modern thoughts and imaginations. However, they seem very inflated, self-oriented, and riddled with too much certainty. (We must live with some reasonable doubt, with some humility that we can be wrong as a general rule) However, these are all completely incapable of helping us deal with fundamental facts of human existence: 

limitation

incompleteness

brokenness

responsibility

sin

Judge not...

One of the most used Scriptures today - fast eclipsing John 3:16 - is also (as these things go) quickly becoming one of the most misused and misunderstood verses (Mt 7:1, for the Bereans here). With dreadful irony this verse is used to shut down any sort of judgment as tyrannical, obtuse, unbecoming, unsophisticated - the only judgment is that one may make no judgments. Against this, Jesus is making an entirely (ENTIRELY) different point. The point is that one should not make hasty judgments. After all, in v5 Jesus says that we should take the speck out of our brother's eyes, but only after we disrobe ourselves of our hypocrisy, that plank. But it is for the purpose of making right judgment. I do think that part of the self-assessment - the "plank removing" procedure - is that it removes the condemnation that usually accompanies hurried, impulsive judgments. It is condemnation, I think, that is uncalled for - this is especially true for Christians who know that "Christ justifies the ungodly" (Rom 4:5). 

We, of all, know the plank that Christ was hung upon for our just condemnation.

But regardless, we must make judgments (that is, assessments, deductions, considerations, conclusions) about the world - we hardly fault the doctor for pronouncing a cold or a cancer as the reality facing a patient. That is what it means to make judgments - to make a "judgment call" on reality. But what we disagree with is condemnation added. "Don't judge" is really common-speak for "Don't condemn." But let's be precise about terminology - to judge reality, planks aside, is the call of all people. It is what we all do.

...lest You be Judged

However, what do we do when we realize that we are all damnable? Recently I read this great portrayal of our reality (in a book of fiction no less!):

"Well, that's all I can tell you about the new religion," went on Flambeau carelessly. "It claims, of course, that it can cure all physical diseases." 

"Can it cure the one spiritual disease?" asked Father Brown, with serious curiosity.

"And what is the one spiritual disease?" asked Flambeau, smiling.

"Oh, thinking one is quite well," said his friend.

- The Complete Father Brown Stories, Chesterton (148)

Thinking we are quite well, "plank-free," is a basic problem - and then we disperse judgments like old gods. But humility admits faults and fears - flaws. The common move of culture is to relativize all judgments, to dissolve all things into nothing - flaws are of no consequence...but we know better right? 

Guilt for wrong, shame for evil, indignation at injustice, these all scream out from us; but, they rebound unto us. We wish others to understand their flaws, but we have to remove planks from ourselves. And the popular conception is to deny our own evil, our nature of exploitation and self-interest and objectification and greed and envy and anger and pride and bitterness. We rage against others, but we are wells of wickedness, and we have dropped no pennies to test the depths in ourselves. It is a hopeless affair, both without and within, since we are robbed by our culture of any ability to evaluate for fear of being seen as uncultured or being undone.

A Love that Sees no Flaws

In this, how can we love each other, flawed as we are - really, how can we even love ourselves, flawed as we are? And into this comes God, and no god of our image, a flawed god of our unhealthy imaginations. It is God, the Maker of heaven and earth. The line that caught my eye when I began writing this post was a simple one: 

"You are altogether beautiful, my darling; there is no flaw in you." - Songs of Solomon 4:7

Of course (for all the exegetes), this is a book detailing the ins and outs, the little and the large phrases, that are uttered by the almost married and the married, those in love. But the Bible posits something magnificent - a God in love with his wayward creation, a God who chases the defaced, a God who pursues the undesirable, He follows after the flawed, the most flawed; He loves those made in his image, to be with him. "But come on," someone can say, "God clearly sees our flaws. What about being clean? Being pure before a pure God?" 

Agreed. That is the facts - we are broken, we are flawed. 

But what of the love of God, the love of God that lifts up the face of the least deserving (John 7:53-8:11), the shrivelled (Mark 3:1-6), the spiritually dispossessed (Mark 5:1-13), the betrayers (John 21:15-19)? It meets our uncleanness with His cleansing, changing love - his  love that sees no flaws, who's love plunged him into the darkness of Gethsemane and the horror of the cross in order to take the punishment for our sins and our flawed nature. 

Honestly, flaw is too weak a word, because we are a hostile, morally bent people - all of us, on inspection of ourselves. However, God bids us come regardless; to those who say, "I am broken; are you for me?" he responds, "You are beloved; I am willing - be healed." 

Again, someone might say, "but love does not erase the presence of flaws, of sin - it sees it clearer!" And correct, when we love others we actually see their flaws and their deformities more clearly, for we close the distance between them and us. But our love sees past the flaws and loves regardless - how much more God's love? It sees past all our flaws every time - in our most broken, God is unchanging in His love. His door is always open, and Christ is always Friend, and God is always Father, and Christ's wounds have borne all the burden and measure of the sin of sinners who have sought his friendship. 

Personally, I have found that it is this love that enables us to work past the flaws of others, to live in a comparison-driven culture that is obsessed with being affirmed while, simultaneously, covering up all the really dark and dirty bits (or parading them about with a defiant and sad pride). 

Against that, God knows all, and loves regardless - for those who come to Him. That is completely freeing - freedom from comparison and the endless pleading for acceptance and acclamation that is at the root of much of social media. God knows, and God loves anyway, and He is committed to the restoration of all who come to Him honestly. What beauty in that love, which takes the brunt of our deserved punishment in Jesus, and gives us the welcome we do not deserve. A love that knows all our flaws...but sees none.

-----

"It's a long way out to reach the sea

I'm sure I'll find you waiting there for me."

- In Memoriam, The Oh Hellos

"Turn your eyes from me; they overwhelm me." 

- Songs of Solomon 6:5