music :: worship :: life
A footnote to last week’s Messy Meditation on Discipline and Stuff. This doesn’t sum it up; it merely adds another point of view. Maybe it only contributes to the messiness, but here goes:
When we love and care about someone, we care about the things that are important to them. Relationships are built on communication and caring. We want to share the things that matter to us with the other person. And we want to hear about the things that matter to them. We may not otherwise care about those particular concerns at all. But because we care about the person, what concerns them concerns us.
This is one of the primary reasons Christianity won over the Roman Empire. A tiny foreign religion from a remote, backward province completely displaced thousands of years of paganism in a relatively short time. The notion of a god who loved and cared about humanity, who wanted a relationship with each person as an individual, who called his followers friends, and adopted them into his family as sons and daughters and heirs—such a god was completely unheard of. To call this idea revolutionary is a drastic understatement. Despite millennia of tradition, despite deep entrenchment in the culture (Mediterranean and Mid-Eastern culture was built on paganism from its prehistoric inception), despite all the power and authority of establishment, government, wealth, and law— Despite all this, paganism could not compete.
Why? It was all about love. The pagan gods did not care about human beings, and certainly didn’t love them. The only thing those gods cared about was being propitiated with the proper ceremonies and sacrifices. At best, they viewed humans as amusing pets or playthings, and at worst, as vermin to be eradicated. The notion of a god that loves and cares for people as individuals was a very new thing upon the earth, and it was an irresistible force that conquered the Roman Empire. “No weapon forged against it could prosper.”
God went to a great deal of trouble to tell us about the things that matter to him—to communicate his message over the course of 1500 years, and to preserve it for the next 2000 years. As I said above, when we love and care about someone, we want to share the things that matter to us with them. This is what he has done. And he wants to hear about the things that matter to us.
When a little girl comes home excited about how yellow and blue make green, and gleefully demonstrates that over and over, her parents get excited, too. Not because it is any new revelation to them, but because they love their daughter, and what she cares about matters to them. When a little boy falls off his bike and skins his knee, his parents know it’s no big deal. But they care about it because they love their son, and it matters a lot to him.
When we truly love God, we want to hear about the things that matter to him, about the things he wants to share with us, and studying scripture is not a burden, but a natural response stemming from our love. Likewise we want to pray and share with him the things that concern us, because we know that he loves us and wants to know what is on our hearts and minds.
A final thought: “Love your neighbor” is not so much an additional commandment, but a logical corollary of the premise, “God loves us.” The Bible tells us over and over that God loves us. For example:
How great is the love the Father has lavished on us, that we should be called children of God! And that is what we are!
—1 John 3:1a (NIV)
If God loves all of us, then everyone you meet is God’s beloved. To despise your neighbor, no matter what his or her relationship is to you—friend or foe, family or stranger—is to despise God’s own beloved child. Much of 1 John 4 is devoted to the development of this theme. Matthew 25 also drives home the connection between loving God and loving your neighbor. But nowhere is the direct logical significance made clear. Perhaps it seemed self-evident at the time, but it is not so obvious to today’s readers.
Look at it this way: If you have a child, how do you feel if somebody despises your child? How do you feel if someone rejects your child? How do you feel if someone hurts your child? You take it personally—very personally! It wasn’t you that was harmed, but it affects you a great deal—perhaps even more than if they had done it to you. Remember that every person you meet is God’s dearly beloved child. How you treat your neighbor, or how you talk about your neighbor, matters a lot to God. He takes it very personally.
If you were stupid enough to throw a rock at a lioness, she might just ignore you, or even walk away. But hit one of her cubs with a rock and see what happens! Don’t mess with the Lion of Judah.
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