Dean on passion (again)

"God's passion is not synonymous with human passion--divine freedom allows God to choose a pathos that lies beyond either the incapacity for suffering or fateful subjection to it. This 'third form of suffering,' observes Richard Bauckham, is the 'voluntary laying oneself open to another and allowing oneself to be intimately affected by him, that is to say, the suffering of passionate love.'

The church, therefore, came to teach many passions. The suffering Passion of Christ inspires a life of passion for Christ, by which the disordered passion (or desires or appetites) of being human become realigned with the holy passion (or self-giving love) of God. To simplify, we can think of 'passion' . . . as loving something enough to suffer for it. The 'suffering' implied here is the willingness to place that which we love on Abraham's altar, our willing surrender of ego in actions that give witness (marturia) to the self-giving love of God. 'Dying to self" in the biblical sense restores one's true identity as God's beloved . . . .

Human passion, in other words, is imprinted with the divine passion even when human desires run amuck. While 'the passions' (plural) have historically described uncoverted human desires or appetites, passion (singular) reflects a deep yearning to love and be loved authentically, a universal human longing to be united with the One who makes 'something out of nothing'--whose love can negate adolescents' overwhelming sense of negation. Passion also impels young people, often in ways that go unrecognized to keep looking for 'true love' even when human love fails them. Since adolescents seek a caliber of love no human can possibly sustain without disappointment, the discovery of the one Love who really is worthy of sacrifice . . . is a discovery that reorders the self.

Passion, then, is not primarily about suffering, but about love--the love God gives and the love God longs to have returned."

Kenda Creasy Dean, Practicing Passion: Youth and the Quest for a Passionate Church (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2004), 20.