Week 4: June 21-28

I find in this section a prayer that is, all at once, heartfelt and humble and philosophically sophisticated.  MacDonald takes for granted that “Nothing can draw the heart of man but good” (June 23)—therefore, any evil inclination in humankind is not evil in and of itself, but a misdirected good, misdirected because it is rooted in the human heart rather than God’s heart.  The language of the June 22 poem is difficult for me, and I do not think I fully understand it, but it gives several instances of how this  can work; e.g., a desire for justice can easily be bent to a desire for revenge.  Dante’s Purgatorio depicts Purgatory as a seven-tiered mountain, one tier for each of the traditional “deadly sins,” and systematized a similar concept: all sin is in some way deficient love.  So Pride, Envy, and Wrath, the first three tiers, are misdirected love; Sloth is insufficient love; Avarice, Gluttony, and Lust are excessive love of various kinds.

MacDonald’s prayer in these poems is that God would perfect his love—“Blow on me till my love loves burningly” (June 24).  He prays that God would purify his anger—make him angry as God is angry, only ever out of love for others and not out of self-love.  This is a good prayer for me, I think.  Anger is a powerful drug.  To give just one example, I think a lot of what is worst in our politics in this country is a direct result of love for the good, praiseworthy desire for justice, being misdirected into anger at one’s opponents.  Righteous anger is such a powerful emotion that it can easily become an end in itself.

Not that we should allow our consciences to become dull against injustice and wrong.  But let our anger be joined to humility, to introspection, and to forgiveness—another prayer of MacDonald’s that I would do well to take up.  As long as we approach the world from the perspective of our own desires, perfect love is impossible.  MacDonald’s prayer, and ours, is that Christ would so rule in us that we would love as God loves.

I think that 1 John 4 could be a very helpful companion to the poems for this week.