One of the things I really love about Jesus is that he could cut to the chase. When an ‘expert in the law’ (in other words, a bloke who knew the 600+ rules people were expected to follow to be considered ‘good’ in that particular religious culture & probably thought he did it well enough to consider himself better than other people) came to test him by asking what was the most important of these 600+ rules, Jesus comes back at him by quoting the Old Testament:
Jesus replied: “‘Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind.’ This is the first and greatest commandment. And the second is like it: ‘Love your neighbor as yourself.’” (Matthew 22:37-39)
In his reply, Jesus cut through centuries of religious baggage & got to what was really important – loving God & peopl
e. On the one hand, it’s incredibly beautiful in its simplicity. But then, when we start to dive into what it means & how it looks in daily life, it becomes amazingly profound. It has been said that this is the heart of what the Bible is all about & everything else is just commentary on it, showing how it works & what happens when we don’t. Interesting thought…
I guess one of the biggest challenges this command throws up at us is how we understand love. The way I read the culture around us, we think of love primarily as a feeling. One mistake I think we’ve made in our particular religious tradition is that we’ve understood love, especially love of/for God, as a primarily intellectual activity, to the exclusion of people who have been emotionally-driven in their understanding of love. To go to one extreme is as dangerous as going to the other. Instead, Matthew has Jesus (mis-)quoting Deuteronomy 6:5 to emphasise that there is an emotional element to love of/for God, just as there is an intellectual element to it, but it is also so much more to a biblical understanding of love as well. Jesus points to it involving our whole person – our heart, mind, and soul – which include our thoughts, emotions, will, decisions, morals, ethics, really the whole person!
So how does that look in real, practical ways? When I look at Jesus, I see a bloke who was more about what he could give to the people around him than what he could get from them, even to the point where he gives his life on the cross for unloving people. This is basically my working definition of love right now – it’s about what we can give, not what we get. God is a loving God because he gives us everything that is good, especially forgiveness for the flawed & imperfect ways in which we love him & the people around us…
And that’s another thing I love about Jesus – when I fail to love the way he wants me to, his love for me never fails. I wish I could love my heavenly Father the way he deserves to be loved for all of his goodness to me, and I wish I could show the people around me & the people closest to me the love I believe God wants me to, but for a whole range of reasons I fail at it. I don’t say that to make excuses or to justify myself. Instead, it’s because one way or another, at some stage or another, we all fail at loving like God wants us to. As I’ve said before on this blog – the solution isn’t to try harder. Neither do I believe is about retreating into a sanctuary of ‘self-love’. Instead, the answer is to return to God’s love, shown to us as his Son hangs on the cross, given to us in his promise of forgiveness and the bread & wine of Holy Communion, and in that relationship finding the love of God for us that will inspire & create in us the love God wants us to show.
So I (we?) end up with a few things to think about – Do we love God like he wants us to & deserves to be loved, with all our heart, soul & mind? Do we love others the way we want to be loved by them? Or are our lives more about what we can get from our relationships, instead of what we can give?
A God who sees me as I am, whose view penetrates even to my heart of hearts, and who still loves me unconditionally, perfectly & infinitely – that’s a God I reckon is worth loving…
So give it a go – if you’re in a relationship of any sort which is in trouble, try turning around your focus. Make it more about the other person than yourself, making your goal to give more than you get, and trust that God will provide what you need. Then, let me know how it goes for you.
Peace.
