Deus Ex Blog

For thousands of years, there was an argument amongst the followers of the Jewish faith. The Torah proscribes over 600 commandments that need to be followed and some of these commands conflict with each other. So people argued over which of the commandments should take precedence. In all the time spent discussing this problem, they only managed to come to agreement on the first commandment: Love the Lord your God with all your heart, all your soul, and all your mind. The second was not so easy, as the majority, the Pharisees, believed the second should be “Be holy as God is holy.” When Jesus enters the scene, he affirms the greatest commandment but sides with the minority on the second: “Love your neighbor as you love yourself.” However, being Jesus, he does not leave it there. He takes it a step beyond and declares, “On these two hang all the laws and the prophets.”

So Jesus is saying that all the laws in the Torah can be broken down eventually to these two simple commands. Everything the Prophets were talking about also comes down to this. So the Bible is really a book about Love. Loving God, Loving each other, Loving ourselves. And while that is cool and all, what exactly does it mean? It’s so simple, Love God and Love each other, and yet that simplicity belies a wonderful complexity. By unpacking these two commands, we will eventually reach all the law and the prophets. By living according to these commands, we will fulfill the law. If presented with a moral quandary, the correct answer is whichever one is more loving.

So Love is all you need. Unfortunately, our culture does not readily understand the concept of Love. Love is a feeling, something you fall into. Love is a strong like, something that can as easily refer to a pair of shoes as to a person. Love is a marketing ploy, something full of pink hearts and red balloons, cards and chocolates. Love is an excuse, something to justify leaving a wife and children to run off with someone else. Love is sex, something to make you feel good. Love is temporary insanity, something that afflicts you and then fades away leaving you stuck and miserable. Love is a cliche, something that moves plots along in our literature and movies regardless of its believability: Character A falls in love with Character B because that’s just how stories work. Love is volatile, something that starts off well and then fades away or explodes violently. Love is desire, something that wants this and if it can’t have it nobody will.

So what is love? When we are instructed to love God, do we desire to possess Him? Is it a romantic call? When we are instructed to love each other, is that a call to promiscuity? Obviously not. Scripture must be calling for some other form of Love. The apostle Paul speaks about a love that is patient and kind. A love that is forgiving and welcoming and inviting and trusting and pure. A love that lasts, a love that does not fail. How different this is from the love we think about in our culture. In fact, anyone pushing this kind of love today would be called whipped, a pussy, a wimp.

There is such a difference between the biblical version of love and what we think of when we talk about love in our culture that the two could be called opposites.  I have taken to calling the love our culture encourages “Inlove.”

Love is patient.  Inlove can’t wait.

Love is kind.  Inlove can be completely cruel.

Love does not envy, Inlove is characterized by it.  Can you think of a single romantic comedy that didn’t use “Trying to make the other person jealous” as a plot point?

Love does not boast, inlove yells it from the rooftops and brags about it in the locker room.

Love is not proud, inlove flaunts itself. Inlove bagged a hot one, but would dump them in a second for someone further up the social ladder.

Love is not self-seeking, inlove is trying to get everything it can out of this relationship.

Love is not easily angered, inlove explodes at the least provocation.

Love forgives, inlove keeps a record to take out and beat the other person with when they eventually screw up.

Love is truthful and honest, inlove keeps spinning the web of lies bigger and bigger in a vain attempt to save face.

Love trusts, inlove takes any negative rumor as truth.

Love perseveres, inlove calls it quits at the first sign of trouble.

So what we are talking about here is different kind of love, a kind of love that is counter to our culture’s selfish way of life.  The implications are immense and brings up all sorts of questions.  What does it mean to love God?  What does it mean to Love another as you love yourself?  What does that say about loving yourself?  If being holy is not in Jesus’ top two, where does it fit in?  How does all the murder, adultery, hatred, and general unpleasantness in the Bible relate to Love?  How about all those laws?  How do we behave in our current culture in a way that shows God’s love?  What does the God kind of Love have to do with romantic love or friendship?  What about hate?

Loving God and Loving each other encapsulates the law and the prophets in one easy to swallow sound-bite but it seems to also encompass ever more questions.  If you start to ponder the meanings and the implications, it will work its way into the entirety of your life.  It complicates things.  Pouring a glass of water may suddenly take on a moral component.  You might suddenly find yourself wishing well a person you previously detested.  You might be forced to rethink your political views or join people you previously disagreed with.  If you start down the path, if you start pulling on the threads, you will find the pursuit of Love, God’s kind of Love, a life-changing journey.