TRY!: Saint Augustine, Kierkegaard & P!nk on Love, Becoming A Christian and Just Getting By
Trying to love and be loved is the stuff of life. It’s hard, it hurts, but there’s something in our heart that urges us to to not give up on the wonders of love, to do more than just get by….
The gifted artist P!nk hit the top 10 Billboard with her song “Try” from her 2012 album The Truth About Love. I came across this song as I was reading Saint Augustine and it prompted me to think of Kierkegaard.
“Try” could be a kind of anthem for Confessions by the yearning Algerian saint and Works of Love by the heart-broken Dane. Why? you might ask; how?, you might wonder….
First of all, people are people, and lovers in the fourth century and 18th and 21st all experience (and suffer from) the same kinds of desires, passions, jealousies, dreams, lusts, affections, hopes, envies, expectations, and questions.
Second: new is not better, but old isn’t necessarily superior; however, we can learn from those lovers who have desired in ages past on regarding their experiences with warm brotherly love, burning eros love, and boundless forgiving love (the three loves).
Third, I get that almost nobody listens to Saint Augustine or Soren Kierkegaard anymore, and it’s been over eleven years since “Try” broke through the Top Ten (which is an eternity in the music biz).
Fourth: why do I like the catchy “Try”, the surprising Confessions and probing Works of Love? They are all pursuing the truth about the three loves, striving to experience real love while getting back up and trying enduring it’s flames with all their brilliant spirit, sharp-witted mind and hungry body as they get burned and feel like they are going to die.
For Example: Before Augustine became a Christian he fathered a child as a young man with a woman he loved with all his heart; they never married though. Many years later he became a Christian; until his dying day he continued to deeply love his son and her mother, but with a conflicted heart surging with questions, ignoring P!nk’s advice “to never ask why.”
Confessions is a brilliant opening up of Augustine’s heart to being loved by God, to loving God in return, to loving others with the love that comes from God. With surprising candidness he explores his desires, how the heart can be deceiving, and why we fall in love so easy even when it’s not right.
It’s the longest prayer ever written, and every significant philosopher and theologian of every century since has had to reckon with what the African saint wrote about trying to be loved by God in this world as it is.
Another Example: Gangly Soren Kierkegaard fell deeply in love with the tender-hearted Regine Olsen, they got engaged in 1840 Copenhagen. But then he felt like he was ruined, he was afraid that he would burn Regine with his flaming love, and afraid that it was all gonna die in disappointments.
Works of Love is one of his few explicitly Christian writings, expounding in passionate detail the three loves, grounded in the Great Commandment of Jesus (Love God, Love Your Neighbor) and the Great Love Chapter of Saint Paul to the Corinthians (love is patient and kind, it bears all things, hopes all things, endures all things…).
Being a realist about how the heart is deceiving, about how he had been burned and felt like he was going to die, his passionate refusal to just get by also meant a kind of brutal humility about where he stood before God. Kierkegaard (like many of us) was always becoming a Christian, always striving, always trying but never feeling like we arrive: “There is nothing with which every man is so afraid as getting to know how enormously much he is capable of doing and becoming.”
This does have it’s own kind of exhaustion, hence the resonance of P!nk’s Billboard hit “Try.” “You have made us for yourself, O Lord, and our hearts are restless until they rest in You,” is how Augustine confessed it. “For, Christianly understood, to love human beings is to love God and to love God is to love human beings; what you do unto men you do unto God, and therefore what you do unto men God does unto you,” so says Soren.
The boundless forgiving grace of God is a realist kind of love that can bring truth-full healing to our broken kinship loves and our burnt hearts of passion.
For the Algerian and the Dane this kind of grace-full love is not an impersonal force in the universe but is experienced through a Person (Christ Jesus “the man of sorrows”) we can trust, who can be “God With Us” all throughout our becoming ones who want to get up and try, try, try….
On a personal note, in my life of burning flames that makes me want to cry, I’m trying to believe “God is Love.” My refusal to “just get by” (as P!nk puts it) is fueled by my desire (as Augustine named it) to “love Love” and be loved by Love. Funny how along they way I’m becoming a Christian (as Kierkegaard framed it) who in desiring Love, is trying to learn to forgive and let myself be loved by God.
“Try”
Ever wonder 'bout what he's doin'?
How it all turned to lies?
Sometimes I think that it's better
To never ask whyWhere there is desire, there is gonna be a flame
Where there is a flame, someone's bound to get burned
But just because it burns doesn't mean you're gonna die
You've gotta get up and try, try, try
Gotta get up and try, try, try
Gotta get up and try, try, tryFunny how the heart can be deceiving
More than just a couple times
Why do we fall in love so easy
Even when it's not right?Where there is desire, there is gonna be a flame
Where there is a flame, someone's bound to get burned
But just because it burns doesn't mean you're gonna die
You've gotta get up and try, try, try
Gotta get up and try, try, try
You've gotta get up and try, try, tryEver worry that it might be ruined
And does it make you wanna cry?
When you're out there doing what you're doing
Are you just getting by?
Tell me, are you just getting by, by, by?Where there is desire, there is gonna be a flame
Where there is a flame, someone's bound to get burned
But just because it burns doesn't mean you're gonna die
You've gotta get up and try, try, try
Gotta get up and try, try, try
You've gotta get up and try, try, tryGotta get up and try, try, try
Gotta get up and try, try, try
You've gotta get up and try, try, try
Gotta get up and try, try, tryYou've gotta get up and try, try, try
Gotta get up and try, try, try