Passion

The bottom line is that I feel as if I am not passionate about anything. There seems to be no passion in my life. No, I don’t mean that kind of passion. Not romance. We can save that for later on in life. I’m talking about that wholesome kind of passion, if you know what I mean. The kind of passion a good teacher has for their job, or the kind of passion a person has about a political issue. Or, if I may be so specific, the kind of passion we are called to have about the person of Jesus Christ.
Ok. So I am highly passionate. I just don’t show it that much. I am passionate about politics, school, Tar Heel basketball, and my puppy dog, among other things. But the last one got me. Passionate about Jesus? I thought we were just supposed to serve him and do our duty to him and then go to heaven. And I was right for assuming this. This is precisely what we are to do. What we must remember is that we must go about serving Jesus with passion.
Being the introspective person that I am, this got me to thinking. How does one become passionate? The immediate answer is that one doesn’t. You cannot force yourself to be passionate about something or someone. Passion, by its very nature, is not controllable. So I move the previous question: how does one become passionate.
It is my firm conviction that passion is necessitated by need. This means that the things we long for, the things we try hard to get, the things we are passionate about are the things we need or want the most. So if one is passionate about his wife, it means that he needs her; he cannot live without her. If one is passionate about his hobby or job, it means that that job or hobby fulfills some need, desire, or want within that person. Think about yourself. What thing do you want or need the most? This thing is the thing you are most passionate about.
Desperation is the key word here. They tell a story about Socrates and a young man. The man wanted to know wisdom, so Socrates took him to the river and put his head underwater, until the man almost drowned. When he got above the water, Socrates told the man that when he wanted wisdom like he just wanted air, then the man would find wisdom. Imagine wanting God like a drowning man wants water. All the attention and faculties of a drowning man is turned towards the action of obtaining air. What if we acted like that in an attempt to gain God? How different our lives would be! Desperation always leads to passion. Obviously, we need God desperately. But do we know it?
My definition of passion immediately yields a Christological problem. Jesus can certainly be characterized as passionate. Indeed, we often hear of the passion of the Christ. But, Christ did not need anything spiritually. He was, of course, fully God and fully man and was not separated from God. How could Christ be passionate if he needed nothing? The answer lies in the placement of the passion. Jesus was not passionate about his needs; he was passionate about ours. He loved us so much that he took on our needs as his own. Amazing.
So what if Jesus fills our needs (which of course he does)? Will we still be able to be passionate about him? Of course. If you are familiar with the law of diminishing returns, then imagine the inverse of that law. How about a law of increasing yields? The more we get of him, the more we want him. Our needs get smaller and he gets bigger. Dr. Wilton cleverly puts it this way. Our need is to know God. Our desire should be to know God more.
Passion is all-consuming. It doesn’t end, and only grows bigger. But don’t trust your emotions. Passion can cause emotions, but emotions can never cause passion. There is a distinct difference between the two.
So it does turn out that I am passionate. I have a need to feel passion; therefore, it can be assumed that I am certainly passionate about being passionate. I can only hope and pray that I and you increase in passion towards our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. We would do well to remember that. Amen.