Love Suffers Long

Chinese summary of Rev Smedes' passage

Love is an uncommon power to cope with common suffering.
Suffering is having to endure what we very much want not to endure.

The sufferer is a prisoner, stuck with unwanted misery.

The paradox of longsuffering is that we must choose to suffer long. To suffer is to be a victim; to be long-suffering is in a sense to be free.. Longsuffering is when we make a decision for what we do not want, choose to live indefinitely with what we hate. This is the paradox that makes longsuffering a creative art of living: the power to be a creative victim.

Longsuffering is not passive, it is a tough, active, aggressive style of life. The power of affirming and creating life in the midst of suffering.

The source of power is divine love.
- --> Agapic love is the liberating power that moves us toward our neighbor with no demand for rewards.
Erotic love, on the other hand, has no power for longsfuffering. Eros is desire. It drives us toward something because we are at a loss without it. Eros reaches out beyond one's lonely self becasue alonesness hurts. Eros is always the passion to overcome suffering, but it can be frustrated, betrayed, burned out, eros is destined for suffering, as Eros cannot wait.

There are limits to longsuffering.

Love's power make us able to suffer long. We don't know when it ends, it is long but it is not endless. God draws that line to stop when it is time.

Love is your power to suffer longer than you think you can. But only you can tell (from God) when you ought to stop. Do not lost contact with love, before you decide to stop suffering. For the rest, keep attuned to the Spirit and keep your eyes open to what is really going on in your life.

Marriage is a special case because martial longsfufering is done within a covenant. Covenants are broken because people live by eros alone and turn their backs on the power of agape. Agape is the power to suffer the pains of frustrated and rejected and betrayed erotic love, and it is the power to suffer them long. How long? No one can draw the line for others. Maybe when I turn off suffering for the sake of my pleasure, I turn it off too soon.

Longsuffering is not acceptance of evil.
To suffer evil takes patience and courage: to bear with it even though we reject it. It is a power developed within reality.
To accept evil is to capitulate/affirm to it that it is good in order to escape its horror. It is a denial of reality.
We are sinners, but God accepts praise from us in the midst of evil. He will have no praise for evil.

Suffering long has a positive purpose.
Love is the courage to love life and be glad for it.
Love is the courage to discover that life is not completely tied to the precious goods we have lost or have not yet found.
The model of longsfuffering love is God himself. Why does hi not let us finish ourselves off with all our sins?
Love suffers long so that time can be created for redemptive powers to do their work, so that justice can be fought for without hasty and needless violence, so that reconciliation may be possible.
Love suffers long so that suffering can finally cease..

And when love gives us the power to suffer long, love also gives us the power to see reasons for rejoicing while we suffer.

Chinese version: 愛是恆久忍耐

Summarize from L. B. Smedes. Love withing limits: realizing selfless love in a selfish world

撮要自 已故牧師Rev. LB. Smedes之「愛在限制中: 在自私的世界中實踐無私的愛Love within limits: realizing selfless love in a selfish world. Grand Rapids: William B. Eerdmans, 1979. 」 Rev. Smedes was a retired minister in the Christian Reformed Church, a former ethics professor at Fuller Theological Seminary. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lewis_B._Smedes