Episode 415 - "Nur Wir Zwei"

About this Episode

PZ sets considerable store on the difference between "Either-Or" and "Both-And". 'The world' likes to interpret reality in terms of "Both-And" -- fatal adjectives like "complicated" and "nuanced" abound! The Reality of Life, however, is different. The Reality of Life is "Either-Or Resulting in Both-And'.

The reason I say that is because Only Love Creates (Lasting) Reality; and all else -- aloneness, hostility, rejection, and every single failure of love to reach its object -- results in dissatisfaction, discontent, and the ultimate devaluation wrought by death itself. As Gene Pitney once sang with purest veracity (1962): "Only love can break a heart/Only love can mend it again." So won't you agree that your heart is more important than your head?

For the alternative, which is pure agnostic resignation to futility, listen to Journey's single from 1978: "Wheel in the Sky". That song says it all. Or rather, the opposite of It All.

Recently I revisited the lives of three of my "Five Women of the English Reformation" (Eerdmans, 2001). It struck one, the phrase theologische Existenz" -- which means what it sounds like: the truth of life is theological. Its whole substance -- the substance of life, I mean -- is God and us, or rather, God and you/me! Does He love me, or does He not? Am I loved, or am I not?

Everything hinges on that. Otherwise -- i.e., if I am not loved, i.e., if I am rejected and disliked -- my existence is "sounding brass and a tinkling cymbal" (I Corinthians 13). Paucity of belovedness results in... suicidal empathy. My Five-Women faves were more than that, they felt more than that, and their belovedness (from God) enabled their ultimate Sacrifice.

OK, so now listen to a few bars of one's favorite German-language Disco tune, from 1983: "Nur Wir Zwei". Sound familiar? LUV U.