One of the teachers of the law came and heard them debating. Noticing that Jesus had given them a good answer, he asked him, "Of all the commandments, which is the most important?"
"The most important one," answered Jesus, "is this: 'Hear, O Israel, the Lord our God, the Lord is one. Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind and with all your strength.' The second is this: 'Love your neighbor as yourself.' There is no commandment greater than these."
"Well said, teacher," the man replied. "You are right in saying that God is one and there is no other but him. To love him with all your heart, with all your understanding and with all your strength, and to love your neighbor as yourself is more important than all burnt offerings and sacrifices."
................Mark 12: 28-33 (NIV)
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The long and short of it.... |
Love Trap
We live in dangerous times, but aren’t all times dangerous? It seems the two driving forces of our race are selfishness (what’s-in-it-for-me?) and fear (what’s-in-it-for-him?). I feel safe enough in my little town, but what happens when I step out? The farther I get away from what I know, the more dangerous the world becomes.
But what if there were some law by which I could live, by which all people could live, that would
make the world a safer place? What if there was a simple rubric that could govern our interactions and make then safe and productive? What if there was a simple, clearly defined law that directed our path, like gravity directs the apple to the ground?There is such a law, one that is ingrained in the West now–the Golden Rule—love your neighbor as you love yourself. But that’s not quite all there is. The first half of the law is to love God. But there’s a problem with this law, not a problem so much as a challenge. The Golden Rule is not automatic, like a natural law like gravity that exists whether we understand it or not, but it is rather a rule that you can decide to follow or not. It’s a choice. We choose to love, to hate, or to be indifferent to God. We choose to love, to hate or to ignore our neighbors. Sadly, much of human history is an illustration of how we most often choose.
And yet, if I take this rule seriously then I am required to love God and my neighbors. But loving exposes me. Caring opens me up to pain, to suffering, to attack. And what if my neighbor doesn’t love me as I love him? What if he uses my love for his gain at my expense?
Love is dangerous. It’s like stepping on to a battle field with the orders to hug the enemy. When he strikes me, I must turn the other cheek and allow him to strike again. What kind of God allows His people to be exposed to such danger? This is the same God who sent His son to die a horrible death by beating and crucifixion. What kind of God is this? What kind of solution is this love? What good does this sacrifice do? One lone man surrendering to death and brutality is good for whom, for what? Even worse, how does the call for His followers, his call to me to do the same, to become vulnerable and exposed to a vicious world, to be beaten and murdered, how can that possibly factor out to a winning strategy for me?
This love trap is not only dangerous, it is expensive. But my marching orders are to love.
History
How then do I love? How do I know that the God I love is really God? I don’t know God. My friends all have different opinions; I do too, and these all change from year to year, from days of plenty to days of sorrow. I suppose I love myself well enough, but loving other people? There are too many of them. They are too different. I don’t understand their languages; their cultures exclude me because I am not one of them, and I exclude them right back. I am hated and feared simply for the color of my skin, and I am supposed to love them, to sacrifice myself for them?
Relativity rears up. What is “love”? What is “soul”? They can mean anything I want them to mean in my here and now. I don’t know God. I don’t like people. I am supposed to love both? And what is a “soul”—can you see it, feel it, touch it, reproduce it, test it, measure it?
Finding these answers is exactly why we are here. Go back to the first principle – we matter. I am valuable. You are valuable. If this is true, then every human being who has ever existed, exists or ever will exist is valuable and matters. If I matter, then what I do here matters, for better or for worse. I am living out a story filled with meaningful decisions and consequences. It is too easy to think that it is all meaningless, all just random energy.
I am in a story, and the point of the story is to understand my value. In understanding my own value, I can better understand your value. Why else do we exist? We are living out the story of God’s love for us, and in the playing of our part we learn about what really matters to ourselves and to Him. This story we are in is not about defining God, for He is already defined beyond what any of us think or believe about Him. The story in which we live is about refining ourselves in relationship to each other and ultimately to God.
In other words, it’s all about finding meaning, and in the meaning finding our value. This is all about why. Part of finding this is not only looking at what kind of King rules us, but what kind of citizens we are and what kind of kingdom we all live in.
God’s “religion”
It is hard for me to be a “Christian.” When I was young, it was the born-again Christians of an elitist north-eastern Christian College who made my life miserable. They pretended to be my friend, but in the end I was not worthy, I was expendable in favor of other born-agains. I was damned, and I can only guess that they were glad to see me go. Being a questioning Unitarian I learned then that Christianity was about rules, of do’s and don’ts, of rituals, of works. Some of them were sinners cowering in the hands of an angry God, working hard not to burn in eternal lakes of fire. Others were God’s elect, cruising on the free pass of grace that allowed them in to heaven with the other select, privileged few who were like them no matter what any of them did. For still others Christianity was about health, about wealth, about blessings and prosperity and of being chosen for joy over others who are deservedly chosen for suffering. If you are sick or poor, you are “not right with God.” The “faith” they lived out in front of me, all over me, caused me 10 years of hateful, bitter wandering.
That was then; this is now.
I have learned that Christianity is about none of that. Christianity is about resolving your relationship to God, your relationship to others and your relationship to yourself, and from that resolution comes peace. Christianity is about resolution.
At the heart of God’s religion is love demonstrated by real sacrifice. Jesus Christ, Emmanuel, God with us, suffered so I wouldn't have to suffer, died so I wouldn't have to die, conquered death so I could conquer death, built a bridge back to God so I could return home again. He did this for me, for you, for anyone who believes. You are worthy of such sacrifice—you matter. How God loves us matters, for His love allows us to come to Him. In the same way, how you love matters, for the way you love allows you to grow, and may allow someone else to suffer less, to avoid death, to come home. Your existence is valuable. You are valuable to Him. This thing we are in is all about God, about the people who choose Him, and about the people who do not choose Him. It’s about how He loves us, how we love Him and how we love each other.
But you may ask, if all I need is love, then why do I need Christianity, with all of its rules and rituals? Why do I need to follow a God named Jehovah, Yahweh or Jesus when I can love “god” as I know him, as he exists in my life, in nature, in others, in myself? What if I am a homosexual pagan but I love god with all of my heart, mind, body and soul? Wouldn’t I be loving God exactly as a heterosexual Catholic loving God the same way? I am who I am, so if God made me the way I am, then why do I have to be someone else to love him?
This thinking places self before the one you love, and that’s not love at all. It is more like lust. Consider the drug addict who lives by the rule “I am who I am, so if you love me, you must love my heroine.” This kind of “love” is all about him loving himself, and others in his life are forced to choose to follow him or abandon him. He does not consider change for others, but requires others to change for him.
This kind of love is like a baby's love for her mother. To babies and little children, the satisfaction of their desires and needs come first. It is only later, when they understand that “mother” and “father” are separate beings, wholly independent of them, do they begin to understand that love is giving as well as taking. In the same way, when an immature person demands that God accept him “as is” without the willingness to give or change, then it is a childish, infantile kind of love. Perhaps God doesn’t care if you are a homosexual Pagan or a heterosexual Catholic at the moment you realize that you matter, that God loves you and you can love Him. Perhaps these things in the immediate present don’t matter at all in relation to the growth and maturing of the lover in the lasting eternal.
Does a mother hate her son when he fills up his diaper? Does a father hate his baby daughter when she cries all night? A baby wailing in a crib cannot love her parents the same way that a fully mature mother loves her baby. The baby is all about satisfaction. The parent is all about sacrificing for the baby so she will grow into a little girl, a healthy teenager, and finally into a fully mature woman. In all of human history has a baby ever sacrificed in quiet hunger so her mother could get a good night’s sleep?
So what is love?
When you come to God with a list of terms and conditions to be agreed to as part of your loving God with all of your heart, mind, body and soul, then you are not coming with love at all. God requires mature, unconditional love, as this is what He gives you in return. When you love God unconditionally, you are saying to Him, “take me, make me into something other than I am now.” When you come to Him with conditions, you are saying, “These are my terms, you must accept them because they are more important to me than you are. (If you love me, then you must love my heroine.)” Would you love someone like that? By adding demands to your offer of love you are not choosing to love at all, but rather you are requiring the other to make a choice.
I me my.
Keep it simple
In essence, Christianity is about the gift of love that restores us to the presence of God, and this gift can only be claimed by those who love the giver. All of God’s religion is summed up lik
e this... - There is one God, our Creator We are broken (selfishness and fear), and this brokenness separates us from God and from others
- God wants us back because we are valuable.
- God has provided a bridge back to Him, built by the sacrifice of His love
- To cross this bridge, you must believe in and love the builder
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