I can't speak the sounds that show no pain,
I can't hear the echo of my footsteps,
or remember the sound of my own name."
-Bob Dylan, "Tomorrow Is A Long Time"
The other night, as I was driving home after one of those memorable and valuable late night conversations with good friends, I heard this song and these lyrics (performed more beautifully by Nickel Creek) struck me. Dylan is basically saying that he is so wrapped up in his "true love" that he is completely unaware of himself. The first line references Narcissus, a Greek mythological figure who fell in love with his own image reflecting off the water, could not stop staring at himself and eventually wasted away to death. Bobby D is saying that he is so in love with something other than himself that he can't even see his reflection, can't even remember the sound of his name, etc. In other words, true love causes us to be so wrapped up in something other than ourselves that we forget ourselves, not thinking about what we can get from our true love, but simply delighting in it.
What struck me was that I should identify with Dylan's description, not in terms of romantic feelings for a woman, but in the way view Christ. The truth is that I have rarely, if ever, felt this way about Jesus, who is more worthy to receive my praise than myself of any other creation (Rev. 4:11). Certain moments, when I have been acutely aware of his presence, I have lost all sense of self and worshipped him unaware of self, but has God not promised to be ever-present? (Ps. 46:1, Matt. 28:20, Jn. 14:16, Heb. 13:5) So, too often, I fail to live a life of Christ-consciousness. This always carries over to the way I treat others, for the Bible consistently teaches that it is impossible to love God and not love your neighbor (Is. 58:1-14, Matt. 25:31-46, Mk. 12:29-31).
Harvard Literature Professor Elaine Scarry wrote a book called On Beauty and Being Just, in which the thesis is that overwhelming beauty takes an individual away from himself and allows him to distribute his attention elsewhere, outside of himself. When we stop being narcissistic, stop staring at ourselves all the time, and start to realize that there is something out there much more beautiful, then we can live for something besides ourselves.
Tim Keller defines beauty as "a satisfying thing in itself, a delight in itself." Something is beautiful if it is the end, not the means to an end. For example, I might call a thick, juicy cut of steak beautiful, but what is really beautiful is the taste of it in my mouth and the feeling of it satisfying my stomach. A beautiful melody or landscape, on the other hand, doesn't give us anything. These things, and others, are simply beautiful in and of themselves. Would we truly have God at the top of the list of beautiful things? Would we even include God on that list? As C.S. Lewis once asked (and I paraphrase), "What if you died and went to a place where all the blessings of God were, where there was no pain, no sorrow, no death, but Jesus wasn't there?" Would you still want to go? Could you be happy without Jesus?
So many of us view Jesus based on what he gives us. Our end is the blessings of Jesus and that makes Jesus the means to our end. Don't get me wrong; it is natural and Biblical for a Christian to praise him for spiritual and material blessings, but we are not to seek these things first (Matt. 6:33). Many people talk about treasures in heaven, and the Bible talks about this as well (i.e. Lk. 18:22). What if the treasure it is referring to is Jesus himself? How many of us would be secretly disappointed? But he is to be our treasure, both in this life and the next (Matt. 13:44-5). We are to treasure and worship him for who he is, as revealed in Scripture (Ex. 3:14). As if his very being isn't enough to be worthy of worship, he became nothing and was slaughtered that we might have every spiritual blessing in him (Phil. 2:5-11, Rev. 5:9, Eph. 1:3). The crux of the Biblical revelation of his character is the cross, the moment at which all his attributes were exhibited at once; He is just and the justifier (Rom. 3:26).
May you and I be so consumed with his beauty that we forget ourselves and adore the Beautiful One, first with our hearts and following with our deeds!
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