Loving Like Jesus

The assumption of everything I will say forward in this blog entry is that our religious experiences should influence us to love like Jesus, in His multivalent way of loving people. I pray that you all will grant me this assumption moving forward.

The reason I bring this up is because I want to explore the human ideal of loving, and in particular look at how structures enable or disable us to love like Jesus does. To start, we need to provide a definition of how Jesus loves without becoming idolatrous. In short, our religious and political structures do not help us to love like Jesus, because they build imagery and favor certain images of love while downgrading others. Also, our structures define an "us" and a "them" inhibiting love as it restricts love to certain worthy people who are deemed deserving of humanity, while others are ignored or rejected, both are bad.

First, we must build an image of loving like Jesus loves. Many people tend to use agape to describe the love of Jesus. Agape is described as a self-sacrificing love which is other centered. While this described the intent of Jesus' love, it also has severe limitations. Oftentimes eros is defined against agape, so agape tends to look at love which is not necessarily bodily in the touch or desiring sense. Agape tries to draw desire away to prevent particularly sexual interactions, which are the key example of eros. Too much focus on agape ignores God's desire in love as shown by the fact that an Incarnation even happened. Of course, eros can be overdone, where we love only other people whom we find desirable. So we need an image of love that desires and sacrifices for the other. Also, an image of love needs to include the different ways that love is shown. Words, presence, touch, giving, Jesus presents all of these in his ministry in reaction to loving other people. So love must be able to do many things, be inclusive, and desire and sacrifice at the same time, just to give a limited image for definition here.

Structures prevent a multivalent love, because they have a preferred image of what love is. Certain actions, gestures, presence styles, and terms of affection are used and favored in structures. Society, as seen through advertising, tends to promote a physical love based on feeling good. People are useful and good for us inasmuch as they make us feel good. As soon as people do not make us feel good, or are useful for us, then people can be replaced with others with better qualities. This hinders our ability to love like Jesus, because people aren't the end of society. The end of society is to function and enable people to exist, though it doesn't care which people exist or where. This is how we get broken societies where the poor are taken advantage of and exploited for resources. However, religious structures do not fix this model, they take a different object and present us with the same problems. The growing religious trend is that spiritual love is preferred, one which emphasizes time with God and existential discovery to find one's purpose/vocation in life, but discourages community as seen in certain ritual effects in liturgy and encouragement of devotion among other sources. This spiritual love promotes sacrifice and discourages desire, agape over eros. This dichotomy between society and religion leaves loving like Jesus unfulfilled because we need love that desires, because Jesus desires people in loving, and we need love that sacrifices, like Jesus performs in His miracles for suffering people that he didn't necessarily know.

In building preferences, structures also create an "us" and a "them". People that think like the structure and are favored, and others who are on the outside. Power, influence, money, and many other qualities can be examined in looking at who influences and benefits from the structure. However, when looking at the structure, if we're going to think about loving like Jesus, we must understand how structures encourage or discourage interactions with those on the outside. Many communities in the modern era are becoming more like-minded and hostile to others. This is incompatible with loving like Jesus as Jesus even loved those who crucified Him, as seen in His forgiveness of His persecutors, and loved the Pharisees with whom He disagreed by eating with them and offering to spend peaceable time in their presence.

Our hope for the future is that community and structures do not have to be this way. Communities can listen and people can try to reach out to others and understand their experiences. We can be people that don't ignore others, and our outreach can be both because we desire other people and want to sacrifice for their good. We can touch, give time, listen, and all those activities that inspire the common good in individual relationships that flow over to others. However, as our structures are, many things need to change, and this is not including problems in particular structures due to "emotional illness, personality differences, and sin." (When Ministry is Messy, Richard Brown). My hope is that we can build relationships where we love in these deep ways and build our community. Please God may it be so.

Aristocrates