The Perfect Church

 "What do you feel is the most divisive issue in the church today?”

That was the question put to a small group of guys that meet on Sunday nights, to discuss that morning’s sermon and go through a book of the Bible and just talk about life in general.

It’s a question that has as many answers as there are people who go – or have gone – to church, whatever type of church it may be.

Our answers ranged from the issues that split the Methodist church (how to address same-sex marriage and ordination of gay clergy) to worship music (often the most contentious issue in a lot of churches). This group is made up of guys from a variety of denominational backgrounds who now attend a non-denominational church, so there was some discussion related to individual experiences with our various church backgrounds.

In the end, we kind of settled on an answer similar to that of G. K. Chesterton, who, when the Times of London reportedly sent an inquiry to a number of famous authors asking the question “What’s wrong with the world today?” is said to have responded with a two-word answer: “I am.”

We decided the most divisive issue in the church is people.

There are no perfect churches. There is a lot of “church jumping,” people going from church to church every few years hoping to find the perfect one. The problem is, as the English pastor Charles Spurgeon (known as the ‘Prince of Preachers’) once said, “If I had never joined a church till I had found one that was perfect, I should never have joined one at all; and the moment I did join it, if I had found one, I should have spoiled it, for it would not have been a perfect church after I had become a member of it.”

I was told by the director of a non-profit I support that there are roughly 1,000 churches in the Birmingham, Al. metropolitan area where I live, serving a population of about one million people. Despite what some people who are not from here may think, my guess is I could walk into almost any one of those 1,000 churches and be welcomed.

That’s not to say they all worship the way I prefer to worship, or the music is the music I like, or even that the theology is consistent from church to church. And theology is important, particularly the central theology that Jesus’ life, death, and resurrection offer my only hope of forgiveness and eternal salvation.

Don’t get me wrong: There are certainly other important theological issues. But I saw a t-shirt once that said, “If God is your father, then you are my brother.” If we agree on the nature of God, then that’s a critical starting point from which to discuss everything else.

For all the disagreements on style and, perhaps in some cases, substance, a number of congregations from urban and suburban Birmingham gather on a regular basis for something called “United We Pray.” Christians cross community lines to come together on a Saturday every few months to meet with each other and pray for specific issues facing our community, primarily around racial reconciliation. The goal: to love one another in a way the world could see. People who, in many cases, would never see each other on a daily basis – of different races, economic status, education, whatever - sit together, discuss what to pray about, and then pray together. It’s a pretty powerful event, particularly if you are familiar with the history of Birmingham. For a few minutes, it’s pretty close to being a “perfect” church.

Then we go back to our communities, to our imperfect congregations.

Because my guess is, none of these churches are perfect. But that’s been true since the earliest churches, otherwise (as my pastor recently said) the Apostle Paul wouldn’t have had to write so many letters!

But maybe we’re a little more perfect for trying.

German theologian Dietrich Bonhoeffer once said, “The person who’s in love with their vision of community will destroy community.” We see that happening around us in our country, every day. The people who are committed to their singular vision of how we’re supposed to live, of what we’re supposed to say, of how we’re supposed to think often become so single-minded in their pursuit of perfection that they will not accept anyone who has a different vision.

That’s not to say we accept everything everybody says. Sometimes people – myself included - are wrong. Correction is not a bad thing.

But at the same time, I think it’s too easy to disregard or even treat people who don’t see things the way we do with disdain, to retreat to that group of people who agree with me and the way I think things “ought to be.”

Let me take that back. I think quite a few of us agree on how things “ought to be.” The disagreement tends to come in how best to make it happen.

When I worked for a United States’ congressman, part of my job was to take the calls from the people who disagreed with positions the congressman took or government policy. Often, they were very angry and aggressive. I developed a habit of saying to them, “I think we both want the same thing. We want to live in a country where people are treated equally, where kids get a good education, where we can be safe and make a decent living and raise our families without fear. We just disagree on how to do that.”

Very often it changed the tone of the conversation from antagonism to trying to find common ground. Sometimes we grudgingly came to agree with parts of what the other person said. But even when we didn’t, we were often able to find a measure of respect for each other. Some of these people became friends, even though we would probably never vote the same way. But the conversation was a start.

I fear too many of us see people who we disagree with and immediately start from a position that these other people are is crazy and want to destroy the country. When that happens, it becomes incredibly difficult to ask reasonable questions, or listen to them to figure out what they really want (and they may indeed want to destroy the country!), or to just be curious about why they believe what they believe, what they have been through, what they really want to ultimately see happen.

If you’ve already decided that person is crazy, it’s tough to have effective communication. A guy I know who I like told me he believes all the people that voted a certain way (and I won’t say which way, it doesn’t matter) should be locked up and never allowed to vote again. That’s around 70 million of his “fellow” Americans and he told me he refuses to listen to them, that they don’t deserve to be heard or shouldn’t even be allowed to speak.

How do you overcome that?

Go back to Bonhoeffer’s quote. He didn’t stop with the negative on destroying a community. He went on to say, “But the person who loves the people around them will create community everywhere they go.”

Again - not the person who agrees with the people around him, but the person who loves people, even the stupid ones.

Another Christian writer and thinker whose books I have enjoyed, Donald Miller, said, “When you stop expecting people to be perfect, you can like them for who they are.”

That’s really the mark of the church. We recognize that we’re all imperfect, that none of us are God, that we’re trying to navigate our way through this world the best we can, hopefully reading and correctly interpreting Scripture, growing with other like-minded people we sit next to in our pews on Sunday.

And that we take that sense of community beyond the doors of our church.

C.S. Lewis wrote, “It would be quite wrong to think the way to become (loving) is to sit and try to manufacture affectionate feelings … The rule for us is perfectly simple. Do not waste time bothering whether you “love” your neighbor; act as if you did. As soon as we do this we (will learn) one of the great secrets: When you are behaving as if you loved someone, you will presently come to love them.”

Or, as John wrote in his Gospel (13:35), “By this all people will know you are my disciples: if you have love for one another.”

I’m not saying it’s easy. But it’s worth the effort.

Ending up where everybody knows your name

 Growing up, I wanted to be somebody.

As the joke goes, maybe I should have been a little more specific.

But you know what I mean; I wanted to do something important, be somebody important, be significant in a way that people would remember me for generations (if not longer).

Part of it was, sure, I wanted to be famous. I wanted people I didn't know to know who I am. I wanted people I didn't know to talk about me the way I talked about people that I knew were famous. I wanted to walk into a place have people whisper to each other, "Do you know who that is?" while I was too cool to notice, trying to act like a "regular guy" even while the maître d fawned over me, the waiters and waitresses made sure I had everything I wanted, the chef came out to offer me his not-listed-on-the-menu-but-he'd-make-if-for-me special.

But I didn't entirely want to be famous just for the sake of being famous (like a teenager I saw on an episode of Dr. Phil who said her goal was to "be famous,'' but when asked how she had no idea - she just wanted to be famous). I actually wanted to do something to deserve being famous. Even when I was going through my dreams of being an NFL quarterback or an NBA power forward or a major league baseball relief pitcher, at the end of that I still wanted to be a writer who would write books that would be in libraries and become required reading for future generations.

I was always enamored with the written word. I remember when my brother, David, taught me how to write my name, I held that piece of paper dearly, believing that - like Steve Martin's character in "The Jerk" when the phone books came out - once your name was in print, who knows who might see it and what opportunities might come your way?

To be honest, I have experienced a rather curious form of underserved fame. I apparently look like some vague character actor, and it really gives people fits. Particularly, it seems, Black people or college kids of a certain age who like certain Syfy or horror films. I can't tell you how many people who come up to me and say, "I know who you are!" They can't think of who they think I am but are convinced I'm an actor. One time I had a college student valet at a hotel in Greenville, S.C., who was so excited to park my car because he "loves my movies." (Although, in retrospect, maybe he does that all the time, hoping to get a bigger tip).

One time, years ago, we were at a Sheila E concert (which means mostly old people who remember the 1980s-90s) in Birmingham and a guy walked by me and said, "I know who you are. I'm a movie buff; I've seen all your films." I tried to tell him he was mistaken, but he refused to believe me. During the intermission, he came over to shake my hand and ask if he could have his picture made with me.

Another time, several years ago, my wife and I were vacationing in Antigua at a small, out-of-the-way all-inclusive resorts, and this guy comes up to me as we're walking to dinner one night and said, "I know who you are. I won't say anything, because I know you're trying to not be noticed. But I love your work." And, again, even as I try to tell him he's wrong, he refused to believe it. He kept saying he would respect my privacy but wanted me to know that he knew.

A woman at the drive-thru window at my local McDonalds wouldn't give me my debit card back until I told her who I was. I told her I wasn't who she thought I was, that she could look at the name on my card and see, but she refused to believe me.

As I said, this goes on frequently, at the most unexpected times. A security guy working a jewelry store in the Grand Caymans was so certain he followed me all over the store, but just couldn't think of “my” name. Finally, as we were walking out, I leaned close to him and whispered, "Go home and look at the Bruce Willis movie, "The Fifth Element." He got so excited, saying, "I knew it! I knew it!" (There is a character in that movie that I admit I do look like; I've even used a still shot as my picture on my Facebook page). I didn't say I was in the movie, I just told him to go watch it. Whatever conclusion he may draw is his own fault.

Now, the funny part is that people can't think of the name of the actor that they think I look like. The nice lady in the deli at the local grocery store went through the whole thing with me, and I said, "I know. I look like Brad Pitt." She, of course, said, "No, not Brad Pitt .." to which I always act hurt and say, "Just once, can't someone say I look like Brad Pitt?" For a long time after, when I’d go in she’d see me and call me "Mr. Pitt!" My youngest son went in with me one time, and she said, "Look - it's Brad Pitt junior!"

Being mistaken for someone famous - while fun - is not the same as actually being somebody famous.

However, the older I get, the more I realize in today's celebrity-driven culture where everyone, as Andy Warhol once said "will be world-famous for 15 minutes," it takes courage to be willing to be obscure and ordinary.

That sounds funny, of course. No one says to their kid, "You can grow up to be ordinary!" And I'm not saying we should strive to be ordinary. But I do think it's too easy to feel I am worthless because I'm not exceptional - and of course, by definition, everyone can't be exceptional. As a friend of mine likes to say, "50 percent of everyone you meet is below average." (I was afraid to ask him which side of that ledger he thought I was on.)

I have come to realize that an awful lot of really important work, work that matters and has a lasting impact, is done in obscurity. The Apostle Paul said as much in when he told his young protégé, Timothy, "If anyone teaches otherwise and does not agree to the sound instruction of our Lord Jesus Christ and to godly teaching, they are conceited and understand nothing. They have an unhealthy interest in controversies and quarrels about words that result in envy, strife, malicious talk, evil suspicions and constant friction between people of corrupt mind, who have been robbed of the truth and who think that godliness is a means to financial gain.

"But godliness with contentment is great gain. For we brought nothing into the world, and we can take nothing out of it. But if we have food and clothing, we will be content with that. Those who want to get rich fall into temptation and a trap and into many foolish and harmful desires that plunge people into ruin and destruction. For the love of money is a root of all kinds of evil. Some people, eager for money, have wandered from the faith and pierced themselves with many griefs...."

I'm sure even as Timothy heard that, he may have thought, "Sure, but you're Paul! I want to be like you!" - not realizing, perhaps, that being "like Paul" might mean suffering shipwrecks, beatings, jailing, and all sorts of assaults that no one in their right mind would ask for.

While even the Bible has these stories of these great men of faith, there are all kinds of people who are just mentioned, briefly, almost in passing. I think of Joshua's partner, Caleb. Or the relatively unknown Barnabas of the New Testament that, while we've created a whole idea of who he was and what we think we did, we don't really know for sure. Remember that (for a time) famous book about the "Prayer of Jabez?" What do we know about Jabez, other than those few words? What is there to know about Jabez other than these 50 or so words that appear in the midst of 1 Chronicles. Timothy, Titus, Luke, Silas, Tychicus, John Mark – they are names in the New Testament that carried a lot of weight with Paul, but to most of us they are just "the other guys," guys not named Paul or John or Peter.

There are people all around us who are "in the trenches,'' so to speak, the ones who follow the well-known, the leaders, and faithfully do the work.

I know it is human nature to rebel against obscurity. We have that innate desire to be known.

In today's world, I think it takes courage to be willing to be over-looked, to work in obscurity, to find satisfaction in knowing you're doing your best (or at least trying to) and knowing that you are performing not for the recognition of those around you but for that audience of One.

"If I could,'' author Emily Bronte once said, "I would always work in silence and obscurity, and let my efforts be known by their results."

The point is that while we may think we toil in obscurity, we don't. God knows us. I know this from the end of Hebrews 11, that famous chapter referred to as the "Hall of Faith." After a list of well-known names and stories, it says, "Some were tortured, refusing to accept release, so that they might rise again to a better life. Others suffered mocking and flogging, and even chains and imprisonment. They were stoned, they were sawn in two, they were killed with the sword. They went about in skins of sheep and goats, destitute, afflicted, mistreated — of whom the world was not worthy." (Hebrews 11:35–38)

We are all well-known in heaven. Let us live with both the knowledge and responsibility of that fact.

It may not get you the best seat at your favorite restaurant.

But it’s nice to know we’ll end up in a place where the one person that matters knows your name.

Getting Together (face-to-face, not screen-to-screen)

 The message Sunday was on Worship.

It was a good reminder of what worship is and perhaps what it should look like, that it’s more than just Sunday morning, or just being in church.

But something that my pastor said got me thinking.

He pointed out how easy it is not to go to church yet still fulfill the elements of what most of us think as worship. We can scroll through our phones to find a preacher we want to hear. We can scroll through sermon topics to find one we think we’d be interested in. If we want to hear worship music (unfortunately often one of the most contentious issues in a lot of churches), we can pick the musicians we want to hear and, like with sermons, pick out the songs we’d like to listen to.

In other words, we can tailor our ‘worship’ experience suit what we’re in the mood for, or what we think we need to hear, or what seems to strike us as interesting or timely or maybe addresses an issue we’re currently facing.

To what we want.

But maybe not what God wants us to hear, or see, or experience.

Doing those things – listening to your choice of messages, music, whatever – are not in and of themselves bad. And certainly, it can be “worship.”

But it’s not all of it. Hebrews 10:25 says, in part, we are to “not give up meeting together, as some are in the habit of doing…” Or the way some of us learned it in the King James, “Forsake not the assembling of ourselves together, as the manner of some is...”

Why? What’s wrong with going off on a hillside by myself to listen to praise music or the audio of a sermon? There are fewer distractions, and I can be surrounded by nature, where Paul says in Romans that “since the creation of the world His invisible attributes, His eternal power and divine nature, have been clearly seen …”

Again, those are valuable tools in the worship toolbox (if there is such a thing).

But it isn’t enough.

There are practical reasons to “assemble together,’’ as Paul would say, not the least of which is the rest of that verse in Hebrews, which says we should meet together, “encouraging one another…”

We’re not meant live in isolation. Some of us do it better than others, and certainly there are times when almost all of us want to get away, to be by ourselves, to leave distraction behind.

But God said it in Genesis, that it’s not good for man to be alone. Indeed, being around people tends to energize us. There’s power in a group of people comping together, participating in the same thing together.

Think of a sporting event, where thousands of otherwise strangers will stand shoulder to shoulder, celebrating the same successes (assuming they are fans of the same team) or crying over the same failures. They’ll lift their voices with people they’ve never seen before – in fact with people from across the stadium that they’ll likely never see at all – and join in singing the fight song or some form of what we used to call “Jock Rock,’’ with songs like “Sweet Caroline” or “Living on a Prayer.”

For a few hours, we forget the troubles of our lives and join together in something else. And if the game turns out good, that feeling of euphoria can carry us through the next several days. We don’t have to see those same people we sat next to or behind or sang with from across the stadium every day to remember the feeling. We just look forward to getting together and doing it again.

It’s almost an act of worship.

I go to a church of several thousand people. I don’t know all of them. While I feel confident most of us are alike – after all, we live in the same community, we’re almost all the same race, we share a basic concept of faith – I know there are differences, too.

But I don’t need to know them all to know that, when something happens, they’ll be there for me and I, hopefully, for them.

Because they have been. We’ve been through a lot as a church. We’ve been through births and deaths and disabilities and marriage and divorce and hospital waiting rooms and funeral home receiving lines and delivered meals and mowed lawns and rehabbed houses in neighborhoods devastated by disaster and dug wells for clean water in areas that didn’t have it and brought medical care to people who didn’t have access to doctors and … well, we’ve shared life.

As the hymn says, “through many dangers, toils and snares” we have already come.

Preacher and author Alistair Begg said it this way in a sermon transcript I was reading the other day:

“And you know what one of the most encouraging things is for me? It’s simply this: that since we’ve been in this building—since ’95, was it?—we came in this building and we said to one another, “You know, this’ll never really feel like anything in here at all until we’ve laughed together and till we’ve cried together.” And it’s starting to have a feel now to me. Not because of stuff that we have in it, because we don’t have any stuff in it. And that’s purposeful. ’Cause we don’t want to look at stuff, we want to look at the Word of God, and then we want to look at one another. And in seeing one another enduring the difficulties, in running to one another in the experience of loss, in receiving from one another the enjoyment of restoration, we’re discovering that our hearts are being molded together in the bonds of the gospel, and that God is doing a quite wonderful thing. Oh, we’re not perfect, we’re not even close, we’ll never be till heaven; but nevertheless, we’ve come “through many dangers, toils, and snares,” and the wonderful thing is that we’re all still here. At least I’m glad about it, and I think perhaps one of two of you are also. ….”

We live in a world where we can connect with almost anybody, anywhere in the world. Yet the more we’re connected, the more it seems we become increasingly disconnected. We find ourselves beginning to withdraw from real-world interactions. How ironic that in a time when the world is connected as never before, too many of us are feeling a real sense of isolation.

Ultimately, it’s real relationships with real people, people with skin on their faces rather than images on a screen, that can give you a sense of security, a place in this crazy world. You might make friends that, even if you disagree with them on some pretty major issues, will still be there for you – or you for them – when something goes wrong.

And its’s a lot more fun to celebrate when things go right with people who can celebrate with you, because they know you. You have shared what it took to get where you are.

Forsake not the gathering of yourselves together.

It’s an act of worship.

Know Thyself (but don't get carried away)

 Know thyself

Self-discovery. Self-esteem. Self-fulfillment. Self-expression. Self-knowledge.

Library shelves – if not entire libraries – are filled with books helping us as individuals to learn more about ourselves, discover ourselves, look inside ourselves to feel better about ourselves.

And a certain amount of self-awareness and introspection is healthy.

But I fear there is a huge difference between a ‘certain’ amount and the amount of introspection that many of us engage in, that our cultural know-it-alls tell us we need to do in order to be emotionally healthy and well-adjusted.

Simply sign on to Facebook to see how many “selfies” – pictures we take of ourselves – are posted. I was on a flight recently with a women’s college athletic team. The young lady across the aisle spent the entire two-hour flight scanning pictures on her phone – of herself. She zoomed in, cropped, turned, and did all the things we can do on our phones to see ourselves. I saw an article recently that said 30 percent of pictures taken by young people age 18-24 are “selfies.” In fact, “selfie” was the ‘word of the year’ recently, indicating how important and used that word became in today’s world. The very word reeks of narcissism.

For all our self-absorption and focus on ourselves, we seem to be chronically unhappy. Study after study says so. In a 2019 article published by the American Psychological Association, the percentage of young Americans experiencing certain types of mental health disorders has risen significantly over the past decade, with no corresponding increase in older adults. In 2022 Gallup published a book entitled “Blind Spot: The Global Rise of Unhappiness and How Leaders Missed It.”

Most Christians are familiar with the verse where Jesus said he can sum up the law and the prophets in a couple of sentences: “Love the Lord your God with all your heart, soul, and mind, and love your neighbor as yourself.”

Unfortunately, the words from that verse that seem to stick with us are “buzz buzz buzz love noise noise noise yourself!”

I’m not suggesting we shouldn’t love ourselves. What I am saying is that loving ourselves is pretty easy. Even those of us who are not happy with the way we are seem pretty consumed with our own misery and insecurities and how we don’t think we match up to whatever the “ideal” is. We can be consumed with both how great we think we are as well as how lacking we think we are, and both are indications of an over-absorption with self.

That verse just quoted above is what we usually call “the Greatest Commandment” (followed by “a second that is like the first”) and it says nothing about loving ourselves.

Don’t misunderstand what I’m saying. There is a real value in a certain amount of self-study. Scripture acknowledges this: we’re told to examine ourselves in 2 Corinthians 13:5; examine our ways in Lamentations 3:40; keep a close watch on ourselves in 1 Timothy 4:16; keep our hearts with all vigilance in Proverbs 4:23; look carefully at how we live in Ephesians 5:15, and to not think more highly of ourselves than we should in Romans 12:3. These commands require us to do some soul-searching and looking inside ourselves.

But not to the extent society says we should. Today, everything is about “how I feel” and “respecting my feelings” and “being real” (whatever that means). There is an entire psychological teaching called “SEL,” which stands for social-emotional learning, which is often used in our schools to teach kids about personal reflections, teaching them “self-awareness,” “social awareness,” “relationship skills,” “self-management,” and “responsible decision-making.”

That all sounds good. But if all this “self-awareness” is supposed to help us feel better about ourselves, why isn’t it working?

It seems to me (and other studies I have looked at) that this type of extreme over-kill of self-study reinforces our own natural self-centeredness and self-absorption, which I believe is the crux of original sin.

This may go against common theology, which puts “pride” as the gravest of all sins, because it leads to all the rest. But what is pride, if not excessive self-awareness?

There is an eight-verse transition in the book of Genesis that I’ve always thought was fascinating. In the last verse of chapter 2, it says “Adam and his wife were both naked, and they felt no shame.” Then in chapter 3 verse 7 it says, “Then the eyes of both of them were opened, and they realized they were naked; so they sewed fig leaves together and made coverings for themselves.” In other words, they became ashamed.

What happened? Oh, I know Eve was deceived by the serpent and ate of the forbidden fruit, and then Adam went along with her. But how did they go from naked and no shame to naked and ashamed?

No one told Adam and Eve they were naked. No one told them to be ashamed. But with one simple act of “self” they suddenly became aware of their own nakedness, their own faults and flaws, and became ashamed.

Maybe – and this is just me spit balling here – but maybe original sin was self-awareness, thinking of yourself rather than God. I don’t think Adam or Eve had ever seriously done that, at least not thought of themselves as individuals apart from God.

And when they discovered they could do something on their own, without God, that changed the dynamics of everything.

I always wondered, did they ask God for forgiveness? I don’t see it anywhere in the story. I doubt they even knew the concept of forgiveness because it had never been part of their consciousness before. They’d never done anything that required forgiveness. They had never done anything to offend God. They may have never even realized forgiveness might have been possible.

(But God did. And in doing so set in motion the act of ultimate forgiveness that millions of us depend on for our eternal destiny.)

If Adam and Eve were how we were created to live, then perhaps the most important things we can learn about ourselves is the lesson in the Great Commandment: love the Lord our God with all our heart, soul and mind. That doesn’t leave a lot of time for focusing on self.

The second part of that verse – love your neighbor as yourself – helps us, I believe, to find our true worth.

Maybe I’m wrong, but if you are confident and happy with yourself, then love others with the same confidence in and happiness for them. See them as you see yourself – and encourage them to be confident and happy. Don’t make your self-confidence based on how you compare to other people (thinking more of yourself than of others); see others as being just as capable and worthy as you see yourself. Celebrate them like you would yourself.

If you have what we call a “poor self-image,’’ meaning you think of yourself as lacking and worthless and unlovable, and you want to overcome that, then start by treating other people the way you wish you could treat yourself, the way you’d like to see yourself. Look at them as if they believe they are lacking and worthless and unlovable, and help them get over that by encouraging them, telling them how wrong they are, reminding them of what they have and how worthy they are and how much you love them. I can be around people who tell me how much they believe in me all day, and no matter how I feel about myself I always walk away wondering if they might not be right!

In turn, you just might find yourself. Psychologists or psychiatrists or whoever it is that studies people always point out that the people who are involved in other people’s lives tend to be happier and better adjusted. Maybe it’s getting involved in a program that feeds and clothes and builds houses for other people; maybe it’s as simple as talking to a stranger and telling them how great you think they are. But it’s been proven over and over again that when you focus on other people and get engaged in causes outside yourself, you end up feeling happier about yourself, better about yourself, and what we call “well adjusted.”

Crazy, isn’t it? The less we focus on ourselves, the more in-focus we seem to become.

The disciple John often referred to himself as “the disciple whom Jesus loved.” Now, John may have thought of himself as being special in some way – and there are conversations he had with Jesus and the other disciples that could lead you to believe that – but I think John was simply saying what all of us can say; we are all the “people that Jesus loves.”

John, in 1 John, writes “Beloved, we are God’s children now, and what we will be has not yet appeared; but we know that when He appears we shall be like Him, because we shall see Him as he is.”

Looking to Jesus is not only how we learn who Jesus is, and what love is, but also who we are and who we are meant to become.

I can’t learn that by studying myself.