I was talking to a friend earlier this week and we started talking about what is the essence of Christianity. He grew up attending a mainline denomination and had been told that the message of Christianity is to love other people. If he were to sum up the core message it would be to love others. Of course this is a great principle and is definitely something a person ought to do. However, I don’t think this is the first thing.
As we sat in my living room I suggested that the highest goal for a person is to first love God. In fact, if you do not know and love God then your perspective of loving others will be based on emotion and sentimentality. Let me share a story and comment from Jesus to make my point.
The religious leaders of the day were challenging Jesus trying to trap him in His teaching or to contradict the Old Testament at some point. In the heat of discussion one of the leaders asks Him what is the greatest commandment. Jesus answered, “The foremost is, 'HEAR, O ISRAEL! THE LORD OUR GOD IS ONE LORD; AND YOU SHALL LOVE THE LORD YOUR GOD WITH ALL YOUR HEART, AND WITH ALL YOUR SOUL, AND WITH ALL YOUR MIND, AND WITH ALL YOUR STRENGTH.'” (Mark 12:29-30)
He then adds this without pause, "The second is this, 'YOU SHALL LOVE YOUR NEIGHBOR AS YOURSELF.' There is no other commandment greater than these." (Mark 12:31)
This is not an idea that originates with Jesus here in the New Testament. If you turn to the Ten Commandments in the Old Testament (Exodus 20 or Deuteronomy 5) you will see that the first four commandments relate to our relationship with God and the last six deal with our relationships with one another. I believe that the priority of loving God first is important. Loving God gives you the proper basis for loving others. Think of the alternative.
If loving others is the greatest good then I must ask myself what is the greatest good of another? This may seem axiomatic on the surface but it is not. How do I decide what is the greatest good of another person? Without a fixed reference point I am left to my own feelings or thoughts or else the feelings and thoughts of others. Perhaps the greatest good is to make the other person happy. Well, what if that person’s happiness involves injuring himself or others? Perhaps the greatest good is contentment but what if that person is only content with heroin running through her veins? Maybe I am using hyperbole here but there is an underlying issue, how does one determine what is right or wrong, good or bad for others? Does loving others mean always giving in or giving him what he wants? Do I then decide what it means to love others based on what the majority thinks?
If Christianity were only about loving others we would be blindly stabbing around in the dark. It is only by knowing and loving God that we both have an understanding of what it means to love others and the true ability to do that to the full. When I entered into a love relationship with God by accepting His love and forgiveness through the death of Jesus I begin a daily love relationship. Furthermore, as I continue in that relationship I understand more fully who God is and the moral order of the universe. Since He is the Creator He has the right to establish what is right and wrong. He has the prerogative to determine how things out to be and how we ought to live out our lives. Since He created us He knows what is best for our lives. The greatest good then is living in line with God’s standards.
The more I love God and know Him the greater understanding I will have for how things ought to be. I then have the ability to love others based on what is truly best rather than what is best in my own eyes. If someone is making a choice that is self destructive or harmful to others I am showing love, not by going along with it, but by challenging him with the error of his choice.
This is why Christians are sometimes viewed as narrow and bigoted. Our culture says that love means allowing people to think, feel or experience anything regardless of the moral consequences (some will add “as longs as it doesn’t hurt others"). For the Christian, the truly loving thing to do is to help a person make choices that are in line with what is pleasing to God. From the Christian’s perspective true love at times needs to speak up. If I truly love someone how can I say nothing while he makes choices that are going to hurt him now or sometime in the future? How can I say nothing if she is going to make a choice which hurts someone else? Our choices have unintended consequences that we don’t always see immediately.
It is possible to “love the sinner and hate the sin.” Granted some Christians don’t do this well or at all but that is not my point here. I can love a person with the deepest of love and have the deepest dislike for the choices he or she is making. Loving people does not mean I have to compromise my beliefs or set aside my morals. In fact, the greatest example of this was Jesus who was the holiest man who walked this earth yet was regarded as the “friend of sinners.” Never did He compromise but no greater love was ever shown.
What are the practical implications of this? First, I think that for the Christian he must first love God in order to love others rightly. If your only focus is on the horizontal you will end up feeling you have to accept their behavior in order to truly “love” them. Second, love for people divorced from love for God will degenerate to sentimentalism and some form of situation ethics. Having said this you need to ask yourself, how well do you know God? Do you really love Him with your whole heart, mind, soul and strength? When you do this you are able to love others truly like Christ did.
I asked this friend, “Have you ever felt that I have judged you?” “No,” he responded. “Well, do you know that I love you and that you are one of my best friends?” “Yeah, of course,” he said. “But you know that I don’t agree with a lot of things that you are doing?” Again he said yes. I looked him in the eye and said, “This is what I believe the Bible means about loving God and loving others.”
4 comments:
Sounds like you had a very good conversation. This issue came up in youth group once and I fell back on part of the Westminster Chatechism(?) "The chief end of man is to glorify God by enjoying Him forever."
i don't think christians are veiwed as narrow and bigoted for caring about people, period.
i think christians are viewed as narrow and bigoted when they forget the second commandment there in mk 12:31.
i know it's not your point, but christians not "loving the sinner" n any real sense, are the reason christians are typed as narrow-minded.
[edited for spelling]
Adam, I think that you are very right. I also think that there is a direct connection between the first commandment and the second. When people don't truly love God or understand the love of God their view of loving others is narrow. I've been in church long enough to see the difference. Of course there is a huge difference between actually loving God and saying that you do. I have found that the ones who really do the first naturally will do the second. The inverse is also true, the ones that do not do the second are at some level not really doing the first.
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