RECEIVING LOVE

“We love because He first loved us.” (I John 4: 19)

Back in Leviticus we are first instructed to love our neighbors as we would love ourselves. Love is understood in this instruction as not as a sensation, but as a cultural ethic. We are to treat others as we would want them to treat us. When there is a communally understood mutual respect for property and safety then the community is more effective. There is little to no reference in the Old Testament to this type of love for enemies. In fact, while the original readers were instructed to treat enemies with some degree of mercy, it was perfectly acceptable to “hate” the stranger. Hospitality in the Jewish faith is central. Hospitality is so valued because of this delicate balance between loving (upholding community standards) one’s neighbor while hating (protecting against enemies) strangers. The value and action of hospitality challenged one to treat even one’s enemy with hospitality. There was a significant discipline to this. In the New Testament Christ teaches us that everyone is our neighbor meaning that we are to love everyone. He introduces this by first referencing the Leviticus code that presupposes a difference between neighbor and stranger. This was a revolutionary idea and one that calls us to even greater hospitality. Ironically, in many cases, the result has been a loss in the discipline of hospitality and a breakdown in community standards and treating enemies with respect.

When Christ calls us to love our neighbor as ourselves then he is not only expanding our understanding of who our neighbor is, but is identifying the basis of all faith action: love God, love others. How we are to measure this action is to hold it up against how we love ourselves. The implication here is still that love is not sensational, but rooted in action. We are to treat others with hospitality, grace, mercy, respect, etc. It does not mean that we are to have an affinity toward them. However, this is when it gets even more layered. We are also taught that the type of love that Christ calls us to, the kind that is a laying down of one’s life for even one’s greatest of enemies, requires that we first, or at least sequentially, receive love from God. I John 4 tells that that we love others because God first loved us. This is often addressed as being perfected in love. So while we may acknowledge that we should treat others, even those who don’t deserve it, with the same degree of respect that we wish they would treat us- if we are going to ever know real love we must love us completely the same way we have experienced love from God. This means that no more do we simply have a baseline ethic that is now extended to everyone, but that if we are ever going to participate in this new Body that we have selected into that we have to love others completely. Here is the hitch: while we can love others while we are learning love from the perspective of community ethics, we will have to receive love completely from God in order for it to “overflow” to others. Why is this so troubling? Because while even the most insecure can still have an understanding of mutual respect and non-judgmentalism (not a word), to truly become part of the Body of Christ we have to learn to receive love from others.

Each of us has our own reasons and degree of difficulty with receiving love from others. Many, thank God, find it fairly easy and are able to demonstrate to the rest of us what that looks like. While those individuals do find it easier than it is for others, each of us has to address certain barriers to receiving love. For me, I have three primary barriers. The first is that I am not completely sure I understand what love means. This is my hyper-analytical approach to life, but it is a word I am not confident in its meaning. The second is that I am not sure that I deserve it. I think this is a fairly universal barrier. I know how incredibly screwed up I am and therefore can’t imagine what people would find redeeming enough about me to dare to use the word love. But the third barrier is probably the most significant for me. I am not sure that I can live up to that kind of claim. My wife? No problem. My kids? Easy. My weekly guys group? Okay, that’s a little harder.

In my recovery in and from Christianity this has been a difficult issue to address. Most significantly because I feel that so many people are better at this than me. Point being that I have no intention of arguing that Christianity, even in its most fundamental form, lacks the ability to encourage and facilitate this issue. It doesn’t seem to matter what one’s religious affiliation is within Christianity, the message of receiving love is foundational. But where I think the church falters on this and what has ultimately been challenged in me is that this massage and struggle is universal. Every religion and philosophy throughout history has had an evolutionary stance on community, spiritual, and self love. And each system has addressed the importance and struggle of loving oneself and receiving love from others. As a follower of Christ with a Christo-centric belief system, I hold to the conviction that the Christian belief accompanied by the power of the Holy Spirit is the best approach to dealing with the challenge of receiving love, but the message is still universal. I think that contemporary Christianity also is guilty of minimizing this struggle and establishing steps to receiving love, but it is the lack of a shared narrative that is most problematic to me.

There is a fear within contemporary Christianity in the postmodern world of becoming so diluted in its integrity and message that it resists “conforming to the patterns of this world.” Perhaps that is a legitimate concern for many of the issues facing humanity today. But love should not fit into that category. Christ clearly took absolute stances on many issues that challenged others, but love was never one of them. While he may have insulted others by challenging them to love more openly, his message was always to love more openly. Christianity must put aside its fear of assimilating to this world when it comes to dialogue about love. It is a universal struggle and at the core of spirituality and faith. It is the foundation of community ethics, world missions, neighborly friendships, and intimacy. Too often this discussion is approached by Christianity as telling others how to receive love, but it must acknowledge that it can’t fully receive love, even from God, when it refuses to acknowledge what Christ acknowledges- we love because he first loved us, even before we knew who he was.