Norman Wirzba’s most recent book, The Way of Love: Recovering the Heart of Christianity, speaks to our current cultural climate within the American brand of Christianity that often values “right doctrine” over the day to day imitation of Christ in the living out of Christian love. It is not that correct theology isn’t important—it obviously is. But, as Dr. Gordon Fee would often say in his classes at Regent College, “Right doctrine has become the idol of many Evangelicals.” What he meant was that too often we become so obsessed with being right that we forget to live out what is good and loving. Or to put it another way, we are so anxious to nail people up for not agreeing with certain points of our doctrine, we forget that Christ has called us to bear our crosses for the good of those very people—that, essentially, is the “way of love” that Wirzba is encouraging Christians to recover.
In that sense, Wirzba argues that Christianity is best understood as “a training ground in the way of love” (4), and a school in which love is learned: “It is an ongoing training session in which the many versions of love on offer are tried and tested” (7). Now, training is not always easy or fun. It often feels like the first day of working out when you are completely out of shape—it’s going to hurt. What’s more, it’s actually harder than that, because it involves dealing with other people who have their own hang ups and flaws as well.
This reminds me of another thing Gordon Fee said, “God has called us to love the unlovable—He’s called us to be part of the Church.” Translation? Being part of the Church is to be part of a community of flawed, often unlovable people, and to somehow figuring out the way of love within that community. To paraphrase the apostle Paul, you can have all the theology, doctrine, programs, or spiritual gifts you want, but if you don’t have and live out Christ’s love within the community, then you’re just a banging gong.
Real Life Examples of Loving Working Out in Life
In order to illustrate how hard the way of love really is, Wirzba offers a number of real life examples throughout his book of Christians who have done some pretty incredible things in their attempt to live out the love of Christ in the real world. Let me relate just two examples. In chapter one, Wirzba tells of Oscar Romero of San Salvador, who was eventually assassinated because he chose to live out Christ’s love and care for the poor.
And then, in chapter 12, Wirzba tells the story of Maggy Barankitse, a Burundian Tutsi who lived through the massacres that engulfed both Burundi and Rwanda in the early 1990s. Although she witnessed unspeakable atrocities and suffered tremendously, she chose to stay and care for the orphans whose parents had been slaughtered. Amazingly, one of those children went to the neighbor who had killed her parents and asked him to ask her for forgiveness. She knew she had to forgive, because if she didn’t, the hate in her would fester, and she’d never be able to live again. She ended up actually asking that man to be her father…and he agreed. That astounding act of love and forgiveness resurrected life out of death and despair.
New Creation
I’ll be honest, I don’t think I’d be able to do what that young girl did, and the fact that I know I couldn’t tells me how much more I need to learn about love. Nevertheless, Wirzba insists that the way of love is, and will always be, a sacrificial act done in community, committed to seeking the good of others. Yes, it’s hard, but that is the way of love, the way of Christ.
That’s also the way of the New Creation. Wirzba makes it a point to emphasize that living out the love of Christ in the real world isn’t just some abstract platitude, but is actually rooted in the very real “deeper reality,” if you will, of Heaven. He is quick to point out, though, that Heaven should not be seen as some sort of escape from this world, but rather should be seen in the way the Bible actually presents it, particularly in Revelation: the Christian hope isn’t to escape from this world, but to have Heaven come down to earth and redeem and transform it. God created this world and declared it good, so good that He is intent on redeeming it. Therefore, part of the Christian’s calling and mission is to help extend Heaven’s reach in this world. Or as Wirzba states, “Heaven is not found by ascending to some faraway place, but by the love of God descending into the lives of creatures” (207).
This is why “the way of love” is so crucial to understand, for it really does lie at the heart of the Gospel. It is the self-sacrificing within the community for the good of others, in the hope that such an expression of love will actually help transform and resurrect God’s good creation. Or to put it even more simply: the death of self for the good of others that leads to resurrection and the new creation.
And the kicker is that that resurrection of life isn’t something one has to wait for far into the future. Yes, the new creation won’t be consummated until Christ’s comes again, but we can get a glimpse of that future Kingdom of God now, because, as Christ himself said, “The Kingdom of God is near.” Heaven has broken into our present world, and is transforming it from the inside out. The Christian life has no other goal than to be transformed by it, and to take part in the transformation of others.
That is the way of love.
No book review will be able to adequately cover all the richness and insights that can be found in The Way of Love, but hopefully this will be an encouragement to pick the book up and read it for yourself.
