Musings on Manning's writings

(Quotations are from A Glimpse of Jesus by Brennan Manning):

"'To be a disciple, and thus different from the unconverted pagan, means being as the heavenly Father is: perfect,' writes Scriptures scholar Donald Senior. 'Luke uses the word merciful (6:36). Both terms can be reduced to the same reality. For perfect in Matthew's context means whole, complete. To be whole or complete, as the Father is complete, means loving with limitless compassion...Following Jesus in his ministry of compassion defines the meaning of being perfect as your heavenly is perfect'" (69-70).

I have always wrestled with that command--to be perfect as God is perfect. I always interpreted it as the latter option in the following quotation:

"Jesus confronts us with a choice...Open up to letting yourself be loved by my Father and living a life of compassion, or return to the regime of secure piety and well-regulated virtue" (71).

But appparently I was wrong? Hmm. It's not that being wrong is holding me up but being wrong for so long about something I thought was so right.
It's not that I've continued to preach that it means "not sinning and following a moral code." I haven't. I've preached the "loving" version, like Manning. But I haven't actually believed it or lived it or let it transform me.

That's why his writings hit me so hard this morning. To do as Jesus commands means loving myself with "limitless compassion" and loving others with the same. That's all that is asked of me. And yet this loving of myself has always been the hardest thing for me to do. But Manning is saying it is what God wants? God wants me to receive His limitless compassion and love myself with it the same way?
I get the connection between loving self and loving others. Weird how I always forget this knowledge that "I get."

So maybe for me, "taking up my cross daily and following Christ" means daily opening myself up to be loved by God which translates into love for myself and moves through and out of me as active love for others.

Cool.