 |
| St John the Evangelist - Giotto |
The
theme of love is especially prominent in the Epistle and
Gospel for this week, both from John. It is a theme to which
contemporary
Christians warm very readily since it is relatively ‘theology-lite’, so
to speak. If 'God is love', can we not just speak of 'Love' to those who
are puzzled or alienated by references to 'God'? Many Christians take
this line, but the drawback is that it is too easy for talk of 'love' to amount to little more
than the rather banal claim that 'we ought to care about other
people'.
Concern for others is
admirable, certainly. The difficulty from a Christian point of view is that making a case for it doesn't seem to need the story of God's
Incarnation, Crucifixion and
Resurrection. Human decency is enough, surely.
There is in fact a deeper issue here. Is love truly God -- the animating spirit that informs the world in which we
live? Materialism -- to which many modern Christians implicitly subscribe -- takes physical forces and biological processes to be the
ultimate explanatory factors. If materialism is true, we are left to regard happiness as
simply enjoying life to the best of our
abilities, and helping others to do so.
Did Jesus have an enjoyable life? The
question seems all wrong somehow. He tells his followers to "abide in
love", but this love of life, he says, can find its fullest expression in
"laying down one's life for one's friends" -- not ultimate satisfaction, that is to say, but ultimate sacrifice.
 |
| Conversation with God - Nicholas Roerich |
How could that make sense? If the world into which we are
born is indifferent (or even hostile) to what have proved to be humanity's deepest attachments and
aspirations -- love, justice, beauty, truth -- then we only have our own resolve to live in accordance with these as best we
can, while we can, and under the constant shadow of our own mortality. On the other hand, if those things on which our hearts are most deeply fixed lie at the foundation
of reality, if they are the things that called us into existence in the first
place, then there is a profound harmony between the human spirit and the
creative spirit that underlies the world.
'God is love' means love is ultimate, not because we can make it our Ultimate
Concern, but because the Eternal Word has made it the Spirit that infuses all
things. We do not choose God; God has already chosen us.
No comments:
Post a Comment