Commanded Love ...?

Dear one,
 
With genuine discomfort, upon numerous occasions, I have found myself stumbling over Jesus’ seemingly very simple and direct words: 
“A new command I give you, in order that you love one another—just as I loved you, in order that you might love one another” (John 13:34).
 
The context of this new command was the upper room: knowing that His crucifixion lay before Him, recognizing that not one of His disciples would willingly perform the duty of a slave, Jesus did what they would not. He washed their feet. Peter, appalled, recognizing the topsy-turvy nature of Jesus’ action, reacted: 
            “Never! will you wash my feet! Never!” (13:8). 
 
However, he quickly recanted, and permitted Jesus to wash his feet (13:9-10). Jesus then used the washing of all His disciples’ feet as an object lesson: “If I, as Lord and Teacher, wash your feet, you also ought to wash one another’s’ feet” (13:14).
 
Although His word is clear and direct, I falter: “Can love be commanded? That is, is love yet another ‘ought,’ another duty to be performed?” Admittedly, to these questions you might immediately reply: “Apparently Jesus thought so.” If such is your response, I fully agree; but then, if I agree, I am now defining love as an action, rather than as a feeling. However, if love is an action, I nonetheless know myself too well: sometimes my “good deeds” are wrongly motivated. Sometimes self-interest prompts me to do the good I might not otherwise do.  
 
Ah, but with this admission, I believe that the heart of Jesus’ love—its motivation—arises. The one who is loved is to benefit, and only secondarily, if at all, does the one who actively loves benefit. That is, I love—a deed in action—in order that the other might benefit from my action. As such, I seek neither a “good feeling” nor the appearance of a deed well done—even within the eyes of God. Rather, if I am to obey Jesus’ command to love, I will discover that I am not the beneficiary. No, it’s all about the beloved; and herein, I believe, lies the great stumbling block to the Christian faith: to love selflessly through overt, demonstrable action. 
 
His disciples benefited by His washing their feet: a prelude to His hanging upon a cross.
 
These days of covid19, racial unrest, and presidential wrangling afford us great opportunity to love. And when we stumble, not if, they afford the opportunity to cry out: “Lord, help me to do what I would not do.”
 
Praying,
            Stan
 

An idiot ...?

Dear one,

You might need to forgive me: I am now rereading Dostoevsky’s, The Idiot. As others have observed, in The Idiot Dostoevsky’s sought to depict a character who is most Christ-like; for him that character is Prince Myshkin. Thus, when Myshkin enters into the upper echelons of St. Petersburg society, others immediately view him as an “idiot”: he is not concerned about his appearance; gives little thought to money; and speaks plainly and openly—like a child he hides little. 

Of course, these stated attributes are mostly “negative”: what Myshkin does not. However, Dostoevsky positively characterizes him as sensitive and caring, as generous and kind, as patient and guileless: Myshkin readily reads the hearts and minds of others, who then marvel at his insights and easily confide in him. Soon they relish his company and yet they resist him; soon they are caught in an approach-avoidance web of their own weaving.

In contrast to Myshkin is Nastasya: she is the epitome of those values most esteemed by Petersburg society. At age twenty-five, her beauty is stunning; she is highly educated and refined; wears exceedingly well the latest styles; lives in luxury amid great art and royal furnishings; and has her own box at the Bolshoi. Nonetheless, she is imperious: cold and callous, argumentative and angry, calculating and capricious. But Myshkin, ignoring those traits most highly esteemed by Russian society, sees in her a woman (or little girl?), who is alone, afraid, devalued, and broken—longing to be loved simply because she is. In his view, she is to be loved, not because of what she has or has not said or done; not because of the “trophy-value” she might confer. She is loved because she is to be loved.

Myshkin (who also is broken) and Nastasya have captured my imagination: when all of the layers of our sophistication—our achievements, acquisitions, expertise, and defenses—have been stripped away, do we not long to be “simply loved”? Do we not repeatedly need to hear and believe:

“But God, who is rich in mercy, out of the great love with which he loved us, even when we were dead through our trespasses, made us alive together with Christ—by grace you have been saved— and raised us up with him and seated us with him in the heavenly places in Christ Jesus”? (Ephesians 2:4-6).  

In a world plagued by pandemics and racial injustice; in world lauding values which devalue, may we live as those who are “simply loved.”

 In hope,

            Stan

Ps. The portrait above is of Dostoevsky.