“All
you need is love, love; love is all you need.” So sang the Beatles. I saw a
bumper-sticker once affirming a similar sentiment: “My religion is kindness.”
My first thought upon seeing this was a twinge of guilt and sadness, because I
took it to imply an indictment on Christianity which many have experienced as
less than kind. But, Jesus said, “This is my commandment, that you love one
another as I have loved you” and “By this everyone will know that you are my
disciples, if you have love for one another.” The measure of our faithfulness
to Jesus is loving others with love like his. And St. Paul affirms that love is
kind. So, when people think of Christianity, they should immediately think,
“Ah, yes, the religion of kindness.” That they don’t is a scandal.
But,
upon a little more reflection, something else occurred to me regarding the
bumper-sticker. “My religion is kindness” suggests that I need not be bothered
by all the other trappings of religion – ideas about God, creeds, doctrines,
prayer, worship, church, etc. Love and
kindness is all there is to it. But is it? It certainly is an attractive
notion. But, is it that simple?
The
Christian religion – the religion of love and kindness – asserts that the
answer is ‘no’. Christians can affirm that the Beatles and bumper-sticker are
definitely onto something. Our story is that the world was created out of God’s
love and humans, created in the image of God, are created for love. And we do
well to remind ourselves of that basic truth. Our fundamental rule of life is
Jesus’ new commandment to love one another as he has loved us – serving one
another self-sacrificially.
To
be followers of Jesus – to be his disciples – means to pursue the disciplines
of love, e.g., humility, kindness, gentleness, reverence, forgiveness, mercy,
patience, hospitality, generosity, reconciliation, self-control. We need to
take that much more seriously. The classic spiritual disciplines like prayer,
worship, fasting, Sabbath, etc. are meant to open us to receiving more of God’s
love and making us better channels of that love.
But
that is only part of the story and insufficient by itself. Our problem is not
simply that we need to know that love (or kindness) is the most important
thing. If it was, then Jesus and the Church would be unnecessary. The Christian
insight is that our problem is much deeper and more serious than that. Our
problem is our inability to love rightly. Or even as well as we want.
We don’t know how to
love as we ought. In her book about St. Thérèse of Lisieux, Dorothy Day wrote, “We
want to grow in love but we do not know how. Love is a science, a knowledge,
and we lack it.” We confuse other things with love – co-dependence,
manipulation, conflict avoidance, being nice, or even being mean and calling it
love. We sometimes define love in the framework of modern western
individualism. We decide that some are worthy our kindness and love and others,
not so much.
We
do not just need to know that love, or kindness, is the point. We need to know
what that means. That is why Jesus doesn’t just say, “love one another”. He
defines love. In fact he declares himself the very definition of love. To know
what love is, we look to Jesus. That means we need to make the effort to know
Jesus and his way of love rather than how we might imagine him to be. By
becoming familiar with the Gospels for starters.
And
what is that way? It is not primarily about how we feel, though Jesus does
demonstrate deep feeling toward others. Love is about desiring good for others.
It is the way of self-sacrificial service. It is the way of forbearing,
cheek-turning patience. It is love, not just of family, friends, political allies,
fellow citizens or other Christians, but extends to all neighbors – and enemies.
It is indiscriminate, profligate love like the love God demonstrates in the
rain that falls on the good and the wicked alike. It is mercy. And our mercy is
to be perfect as God is perfect.
I
can pat myself on the back for being loving. But, if I look to Jesus as the
definition of love, I know that where he has gone I have not gone. I And cannot
go on my own.
And
that is another part of our deep and serious problem. We know love is what we
are supposed to be about. But we aren’t very good at it. We’re not good at the
kind of love Jesus is about. But we’re not even very good at love by more
mundane measures. If we were, the divorce rate would be much lower. We would
all have wonderful, uncomplicated relationships with our parents and children
and extended families. The church would not be divided.
Our
love is skewed by our own fears, suspicions, and insecurities. Our love limps
due to our own emotional wounds. We are masters of rationalization by which we
excuse or deny our own failure to love. We convince ourselves that our words
and actions are loving when those on the receiving end often experience them as
less than loving. We are often selfish and self-absorbed. We are busy,
distracted, inattentive, and indifferent.
Most
of us are aware of the painful realization that even our attempts to love those
who are near and dear to us are so broken that we end up hurting one another.
The Beatles sang, “All you need is love.” And then they broke up. As St. Paul
famously wrote in Romans 7:
I do not understand my own actions. For I do not
do what I want, but I do the very thing I hate. But in fact it is no longer I
that do it, but sin that dwells within me . . . I can will what is right, but I
cannot do it. For I do not do the good I want, but the evil I do not want is
what I do. Now if I do what I do not want, it is no longer I that do it, but
sin that dwells within me.
Our
religion is kindness – the love of Jesus is kindness and then some. But, we
are, to one degree or another, failures at love. That is why I am glad one of
the lines in the Apostles’ Creed is “I believe in the forgiveness of sins” (“We
believe in one baptism for the forgiveness of sins” in the Nicene Creed). I need love. But, that is not all I need. I also need forgiveness for my failure to love. I need to be honest about that failure
and repent. The assurance of forgiveness frees us to do that.
Jesus
doesn’t just say love one another. Jesus doesn’t even stop at showing us what
that means. Jesus bears all our unlove on the cross and makes a way for us to enter
into the forgiveness of God who is love (1 John 4:8). Receiving that
forgiveness does not just free us from the guilt we feel for our failure to
love. It frees us to love better and more fully.
I need love. I also need freedom. I need to be set free from all that keeps me from loving. We need deliverance and healing because we are bound
by our fears, insecurities, and all the emotional wounds that get in the way of
our loving freely and fully. And it is freedom and healing that Jesus brings.
Not all at once perhaps. Not without our participation. But, by the power of
his Holy, healing, liberating Spirit he will work in our hearts to that end.
That
transformation can begin now. But, it will not be complete until the End that
we hear about in the Revelation to John when there is a new heaven and a new
earth. The world is a mess. We are a mess. We are not very good at giving or
receiving love. And the mess of the world is testimony to that. Our fractured
or broken relations are testimony to that. The violence and destruction that is
so much a part of the world is testimony to that.
Even
more troubling, we know that while each of us loves in more or less broken
ways, for some the ability to give and receive love is more profoundly broken –
people suffering from personality disorders, post-traumatic stress syndrome, and
other mental illnesses that will only experience partial healing this side of
the kingdom. "All you need is love" and "My religion is
kindness" are inadequate in light of such brokenness. Without the hope of
healing, that is just sentimentalism. There are therapists who work to bring
emotional and psychological healing. But, for many that healing will only be
partial. Christians are still celebrating Easter and the resurrection of Jesus.
His resurrection is the first fruits, the down payment, on the promise that all
creation will be healed, restored, transfigured, and renewed by and in his love.
And
that is another reason why we need Jesus. We need the resurrection hope of
healing and restoration.
“My
religion is kindness” is a good start. But it is not enough.
“All
you need is love” is a good start. But it is not enough. It is mot all we need.
We
need Jesus.
We
need to know what kindness and love look like. They look like Jesus.
We
need forgiveness for our failure to love. Jesus cries out on our behalf,
“Father, forgive them for they know not what they do.”
We
need freedom from and healing of all those things in us that get in the way of
and sabotage our being able to love as we desire to love. Jesus gives us his
Holy Spirit to heal, liberate and empower us to love.
And
we need hope that love triumphs in the end. Jesus’ resurrection is the
assurance that we will all know resurrection and restoration.
That
is the promise of Jesus. That is the promise of Christianity.
That
is the promise of a faith that is kindness and love – and much, much more.
We
are called to live into that promise.
We
are called to live with love at the center. Jesus is at that center and he will
enable us to grow in that love.
“This
is my commandment, that you love one another as I have loved you. No one has
greater love than this, to lay down one’s life for one’s friends.”
See
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