I was trying to get across the biggie of ethics again to my youngest two this morning:
2. Do to others what you would have them to do you.
Then of course my daughter, who goes to Justice Middle School, brought up the person who takes advantage of your generosity to them. I shifted to a second rule.
3. Love must be tough.
We punish and bring justice first to try to reform and help others. Then at some point we sequester them to protect others from them. Then finally when there is no apparent hope we banish them from society all together.
Of course often more abstract but actually the first rule of living is:
1. Serve God.
Christians do this through the other two, but also through worship. However, the key effect serving God has on us is that it decentralizes ourselves from the throne of our lives as an idol. It says that we do not live simply for what is in our best interest but in service to God and others. It says that truth and the greater good are ultimately more important than us as individuals.
Showing posts with label loving neighbor. Show all posts
Showing posts with label loving neighbor. Show all posts
Tuesday, April 10, 2012
Tuesday, March 20, 2012
6.2 Loving Neighbor
What does it mean to love our neighbor? Jesus himself summed it up when he said, "do to others what you would have them do to you, for this sums up the Law and the Prophets" (Matt. 7:12). This is of course the Golden Rule. To love your neighbor is to do things that benefit them and not to do things that harm or hurt them.
Love is a matter of intent even more than action. It means that you actually intend others well and act accordingly. It is a matter of the heart. Jesus says, "it is from within, out of a person’s heart, that evil thoughts come" (Mark 7:21). And it is from the heart that truly good thoughts and actions come.
Jesus of course goes one step further. We are not only to love our friends, but our enemies as well (Matt. 5:44). No one is left. We are to love everyone, both our friends and our enemies. We will look at Matthew 5 a number of times in this chapter, but the overall point is summed up in its last paragraph (5:43-48).
You have heard to love your neighbor, but the general sense was also that we hate our enemies (Matt. 5:43). Indeed, if we are honest with ourselves, not a little of the Old Testament certainly feels hateful toward Israel's enemies. One psalmist says of the Babylonians, "Happy is the one who seizes your infants and dashes them against the rocks" (Ps. 137:9). A whole collection of psalms, the "imprecatory psalms" call on God to destroy the enemies of Israel (e.g., Pss. 7, 58, 109). The prophets Nahum and Obadiah seem to rejoice in the impending doom of Assyria and Edom respectively.
Certainly these are not the only attitudes toward enemies in the Old Testament. The book of Jonah indicts the prophet Jonah for his unwillingness to abandon a prophecy like the book of Nahum. Jonah strikingly extends perhaps the core description of God in the Old Testament to the enemies of Israel: you are a gracious and compassionate God, slow to anger and abounding in love, a God who relents from sending calamity" (Jonah 4:2). [1]
Jesus says that while they have heard it was okay to love their enemies, they must be complete as their Father in heaven is complete (Matt. 5:48). They must love not only their neighbors, but their enemies as well. Look at how God acts. He sends the precious rain that waters the earth not only to those who serve him but to the unrighteous as well (5:45). He gives the warmth and light of the sun not only on Israel, but on the Romans and other nations as well. So we are to love everyone, including our enemies.
When we are formulating a biblical theology on a topic, the New Testament provides a more complete understanding than the Old. And we don't have to decide between the message of Jesus and the rest of the New Testament, for the New Testament is unanimous in its teaching on loving one's enemies (e.g., Rom. 12:17-21). God will take care of judgment...
[1] This description of God appears across the Old Testament. Cf. Exod. 34:6; 2 Chron. 30:9; Neh. 9:17; Ps. 86:15, 103:8, 145:8; Joel 2:13; Jonah 4:2)
Love is a matter of intent even more than action. It means that you actually intend others well and act accordingly. It is a matter of the heart. Jesus says, "it is from within, out of a person’s heart, that evil thoughts come" (Mark 7:21). And it is from the heart that truly good thoughts and actions come.
Jesus of course goes one step further. We are not only to love our friends, but our enemies as well (Matt. 5:44). No one is left. We are to love everyone, both our friends and our enemies. We will look at Matthew 5 a number of times in this chapter, but the overall point is summed up in its last paragraph (5:43-48).
You have heard to love your neighbor, but the general sense was also that we hate our enemies (Matt. 5:43). Indeed, if we are honest with ourselves, not a little of the Old Testament certainly feels hateful toward Israel's enemies. One psalmist says of the Babylonians, "Happy is the one who seizes your infants and dashes them against the rocks" (Ps. 137:9). A whole collection of psalms, the "imprecatory psalms" call on God to destroy the enemies of Israel (e.g., Pss. 7, 58, 109). The prophets Nahum and Obadiah seem to rejoice in the impending doom of Assyria and Edom respectively.
Certainly these are not the only attitudes toward enemies in the Old Testament. The book of Jonah indicts the prophet Jonah for his unwillingness to abandon a prophecy like the book of Nahum. Jonah strikingly extends perhaps the core description of God in the Old Testament to the enemies of Israel: you are a gracious and compassionate God, slow to anger and abounding in love, a God who relents from sending calamity" (Jonah 4:2). [1]
Jesus says that while they have heard it was okay to love their enemies, they must be complete as their Father in heaven is complete (Matt. 5:48). They must love not only their neighbors, but their enemies as well. Look at how God acts. He sends the precious rain that waters the earth not only to those who serve him but to the unrighteous as well (5:45). He gives the warmth and light of the sun not only on Israel, but on the Romans and other nations as well. So we are to love everyone, including our enemies.
When we are formulating a biblical theology on a topic, the New Testament provides a more complete understanding than the Old. And we don't have to decide between the message of Jesus and the rest of the New Testament, for the New Testament is unanimous in its teaching on loving one's enemies (e.g., Rom. 12:17-21). God will take care of judgment...
[1] This description of God appears across the Old Testament. Cf. Exod. 34:6; 2 Chron. 30:9; Neh. 9:17; Ps. 86:15, 103:8, 145:8; Joel 2:13; Jonah 4:2)
Monday, March 19, 2012
6.1 Loving God
I didn't quite finish the Jesus chapter on Jesus' followers but wanted to keep moving rather than go for days trying to get inspired to finish it. So I move on to the next chapter, on the Sermon on the Mount and some of Jesus' miscellaneous teaching.
____________
The three Synoptic Gospels all present a scene during the last week of Jesus' earthly mission when he is asked what the greatest commandment is. His answer, while not unheard of at the time, has provided the cornerstone of Christian ethics for the last two thousand years. "'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.' All the Law and the Prophets hang on these two commandments" (Matt 22:37-40).
It is indeed possible to see all the teaching Jesus gave while he was on earth as the working out of these principles into everyday life. These are the two great absolutes of Christian living. For almost any other specific guideline in the Bible, we can think of an exception, a situation where a higher principle can trump another one. But these are the highest values--love God and love neighbor. They never come into conflict with each other, and there is no situation where God would want us to make an exception to the rule.
What does it mean to love God or to love your neighbor? I proposed in the previous chapter that to follow Jesus means to submit to his will over any competing authority or interest. Loving God with all one's being means that God's will takes precedent over family or any other human authority.
But we must be careful not to trick ourselves into thinking God's will conflicts in any way with the love of our neighbor. Justice can actually be an expression of love, when we are trying to steer our children in the right direction or when we are protecting society from someone who is dangerous. In the end, most of us are not even in a position as individuals to administer justice. But we are constantly in a position to show love to others.
The danger is when we use the command to love God as an excuse not to love our neighbor. For example, some might say that loving God means to hate homosexuals and thus that in this instance the command to love God trumps the love of our "enemy." This is nothing less than a trick of the Devil, using the idea of God's will as an excuse to get out of doing God's will, which is to love even our enemy. Jesus would have none of it.
Others have a tendency to turn the love ethic into rules. Loving God means to follow a set of dos and don'ts and to follow them without exception. But to reduce loving God to a set of rules is to go against the very example of Jesus himself. It was not his style to treat rules as exceptionless absolutes, but to make exceptions to general rules because loving people in concrete ways was more important than always following the rules.
The best example is probably when his disciples were picking some grain on Saturday, the Jewish Sabbath. Some Pharisees complained to Jesus that they were breaking the Ten Commandments, working on the Sabbath (Mark 2:23-24). What is interesting is that Jesus doesn't deny it. He doesn't say, "That's not working on the Sabbath." He doesn't say, "The Sabbath is about worship, not about working."
What he says is that there is a time to make exceptions to the rules because loving people concretely often trumps the rules, in this case the Sabbath rule. The example he gives is a time when one of the high priests gave David and his fighting men some of the sacred bread from the sanctuary, something that was completely inappropriate because it belonged only to the priests (Lev. 24:9). There is no wiggling out of this conclusion because Jesus himself said it was unlawful (Mark 2:26). Jesus' point is clear: in concrete situations, loving others will sometimes take precedence over keeping rules, even when we're talking about one of the Ten Commandments!
What does it mean to love our neighbor? ...
____________
The three Synoptic Gospels all present a scene during the last week of Jesus' earthly mission when he is asked what the greatest commandment is. His answer, while not unheard of at the time, has provided the cornerstone of Christian ethics for the last two thousand years. "'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.' All the Law and the Prophets hang on these two commandments" (Matt 22:37-40).
It is indeed possible to see all the teaching Jesus gave while he was on earth as the working out of these principles into everyday life. These are the two great absolutes of Christian living. For almost any other specific guideline in the Bible, we can think of an exception, a situation where a higher principle can trump another one. But these are the highest values--love God and love neighbor. They never come into conflict with each other, and there is no situation where God would want us to make an exception to the rule.
What does it mean to love God or to love your neighbor? I proposed in the previous chapter that to follow Jesus means to submit to his will over any competing authority or interest. Loving God with all one's being means that God's will takes precedent over family or any other human authority.
But we must be careful not to trick ourselves into thinking God's will conflicts in any way with the love of our neighbor. Justice can actually be an expression of love, when we are trying to steer our children in the right direction or when we are protecting society from someone who is dangerous. In the end, most of us are not even in a position as individuals to administer justice. But we are constantly in a position to show love to others.
The danger is when we use the command to love God as an excuse not to love our neighbor. For example, some might say that loving God means to hate homosexuals and thus that in this instance the command to love God trumps the love of our "enemy." This is nothing less than a trick of the Devil, using the idea of God's will as an excuse to get out of doing God's will, which is to love even our enemy. Jesus would have none of it.
Others have a tendency to turn the love ethic into rules. Loving God means to follow a set of dos and don'ts and to follow them without exception. But to reduce loving God to a set of rules is to go against the very example of Jesus himself. It was not his style to treat rules as exceptionless absolutes, but to make exceptions to general rules because loving people in concrete ways was more important than always following the rules.
The best example is probably when his disciples were picking some grain on Saturday, the Jewish Sabbath. Some Pharisees complained to Jesus that they were breaking the Ten Commandments, working on the Sabbath (Mark 2:23-24). What is interesting is that Jesus doesn't deny it. He doesn't say, "That's not working on the Sabbath." He doesn't say, "The Sabbath is about worship, not about working."
What he says is that there is a time to make exceptions to the rules because loving people concretely often trumps the rules, in this case the Sabbath rule. The example he gives is a time when one of the high priests gave David and his fighting men some of the sacred bread from the sanctuary, something that was completely inappropriate because it belonged only to the priests (Lev. 24:9). There is no wiggling out of this conclusion because Jesus himself said it was unlawful (Mark 2:26). Jesus' point is clear: in concrete situations, loving others will sometimes take precedence over keeping rules, even when we're talking about one of the Ten Commandments!
What does it mean to love our neighbor? ...
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
