In the wisdom teachings of Jesus, there are several pretty explicit (and challenging) teachings about love. Consider these words:
- “Love God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your strength and with all your mind.” Luke 10:27
- “Love your neighbors as yourself.” Mark 12:31
- “Love one another, even as I have loved you.” John 13:34
- “Love your enemies.” Matthew 5:44
The teaching “love your neighbors as yourself” deserves some unpacking. I always interpreted it to be basically a two-parter: 1. Love your neighbors, (as you) 2. Love yourself. But this summer I was at a conference with Rami Shapiro, and he challenged me to see it more nondually: love your neighbor as yourself means to love the neighbor as if you and your neighbor are one. I like that interpretation, I think it’s faithful to the original Hebrew that Jesus is quoting (from Leviticus 19:18), and it tracks with contemplative experience. But either way you interpret this, it still means “loving yourself” is essentially linked to “loving your neighbor” — and then the teaching from John 13:34 reminds us that our love for one another (and ourselves) ultimately comes from God anyway, which is also echoed in I John 4:19 — which is also the same chapter in the Bible where God is described in this simple way: “God is Love.”
Loving one’s enemy is not easy or intuitive, but it seems to me that anyone who is committed to the practice of loving God, loving neighbors (and one another), loving self and recognizing that all this love comes from the Spirit, sooner or later will recognize that the circle of love must include everyone, with no exceptions — even the people we experience as adversaries. This is not an easy teaching. But it is a clear teaching of Jesus and there are clear echoes of this in the teachings of the Buddha (“Hatreds do not ever cease in this world by hating, but by love; this is an eternal truth” — Dhammapada 1:5). But how do we do this?
For years now I have been talking about love, figuring that was my job as a contemplative writer and teacher in the Christian tradition. But I have noticed something interesting especially in recent years: people are getting cynical about love. We’ve used that word so much, and in so many different ways, that it seems to have lost its shape — and its meaning. Culturally, love is a codeword for romance — or sex. In the shadow of that, how can we talk about Jesus’s teachings in a meaningful way?
We can look at the Greek, of course. ἀγάπη (agápē) is the word used in all four of the verses quoted above. It implies the kind of love that parents have for children or other family members have for one another: it is a love that transcends affection and positive feelings to represent a conscious and committed will for the good of the one who is loved. So Jesus is telling us: want the best for God, for yourself, for others, even those you experience as enemies, and it all comes from how God wants what is best for you.
But I still keep thinking about the cynics who think love has become a useless word. Can love be saved? Perhaps one way to do this is to think of synonyms or equivalent meanings. Agápē has given us one such equivalency: to want what is best. But let’s try a few others on for size. Here are the verses quoted above, rewritten with caring, charity, compassion, kindness, graciousness, fairness or justice, and responsibility. This is an exercise, of course, and not all of these words may work for you (I decided not even to bother with affection since I figured most people would quite understandably draw the line at “Be affectionate with your enemies”!) I offer these to you now, just so you know that when I talk about love, these (taken all together) begin to express the richness of what I mean. I suspect this is true for other contemplative writers and teachers as well. Yes, love is still a useful word, for it is a word that encompasses all that follows. But please, read on and see for yourself: do these ways of talking about love work for you? Why or why not? Maybe some work in some contexts but not in others? My hope is that you will approach this as its own kind of meditation: a meditation on the spirituality of Divine Love.
- “Care for God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your strength and with all your mind.”
- “Care for your neighbors as yourself.”
- “Care for one another, even as Christ has cared for you.”
- “Care for your enemies.”
- “Give to God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your strength and with all your mind.”
- “Give to your neighbors as yourself.”
- “Give to one another, even as Christ has given to you.”
- “Give to your enemies.”
- “Be compassionate with God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your strength and with all your mind.”
- “Be compassionate with your neighbors as yourself.”
- “Be compassionate with one another, even as Christ has been compassionate with you.”
- “Be compassionate with your enemies.”
- “Be kind to God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your strength and with all your mind.”
- “Be kind to your neighbors as yourself.”
- “Be kind to one another, even as Christ has been kind to you.”
- “Be kind to your enemies.”
- “Be gracious with God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your strength and with all your mind.”
- “Be gracious with your neighbors as yourself.”
- “Be gracious with one another, even as Christ has been gracious with you.”
- “Be gracious with your enemies.”
- “Be fair and just with to God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your strength and with all your mind.”
- “Be fair and just with your neighbors as yourself.”
- “Be fair and just with one another, even as Christ has been faith and just with you.”
- “Be fair and just with your enemies.”
- “Be responsible to God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your strength and with all your mind.”
- “Be responsible to your neighbors as yourself.”
- “Be responsible to one another, even as Christ has been responsible to you.”
- “Be responsible to your enemies.”
I hope this helpful and that it encourages you to pray.
