St. Augustine once said in a sermon, “Love, and do what you like.”1 There is much fruit in that little epigram. And what I think Augustine was hoping we would find is something like this: When a human being is flush with love, supervision isn’t necessary. When our souls become so infused with God’s love, our thoughts, words, and deeds require no restraint. The world becomes our canvas, a block of unfinished marble, a blank page begging for ink.
“In this union of souls,” writes Dallas Willard, “it is not right for one person to always tell the other what to do.”2
Go back and look at how God related to Adam and Eve. He wasn’t a taskmaster, bearing down on them. What we find, if we look very carefully, is a God who gives space—space to be, space to become. He doesn’t name the animals; he asks them to. He doesn’t cultivate the garden; he asks them to. He doesn’t even place cherubim and a flaming sword around the tree of the knowledge of good and evil; he simply asks them not to eat from it.
Somewhere in the heart of God is a smoldering desire to make men and women wild. Wild in the sense of something unrestrained and unbounded. A loving wildness that—on a smaller scale—matches the wildness of God himself. As Walter Brueggemann has written, “We live our lives before the wild, dangerous, unfettered and free character of the living God.”3
Room to Reflect
What does Augustine’s phrase “Love, and do what you like” stir in me? Does it feel freeing, confusing, or challenging?
Do I picture God more as a taskmaster or as someone who gives space for me to grow and create? Why?
What part of me longs to be wild in the sense described here—unbounded by fear, guided only by love?
This is it! We’ve made it to the final post of The Eternal Journey booklet. What a gift it’s been to walk through these thirty weeks together! Thank you for showing up, reflecting, and leaning into the slow work of formation. It’s a joy to be on this path with you!
Translated by H. Browne. From Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers, First Series, Vol. 7. Edited by Philip Schaff. (Buffalo, NY: Christian Literature Publishing Co., 1888.)
Willard, Dallas. Hearing God: Developing a Conversational Relationship with God. (United States: InterVarsity Press, 2012), 40.
Eldredge, John., Curtis, Brent. The Sacred Romance: Drawing Closer to the Heart of God. (United States: Thomas Nelson, 2001), 47.