Lesson 15: Concerns About Christian Love
I had originally decided to use Dr. King’s sermon in order to take a three week vacation break and was thoroughly unprepared when so many people sent me probing responses. They seemed to indicate a desire for conversation about how Christian love applies in our modern situation, as every one brought up specific problems, particularly the school shooting at Parkland High School. Here are some of the primary insights:
Luann raised a basic question when she asked if Christian love that includes forgiveness extends to individuals forgiving someone who sinned against other people. For example, am I to forgive the shooter at Parkland School?
Paul asked if our understanding of Dr. King’s thoughts adequately addresses “the sociological systems and structures we establish that shape our relationships and options.” The civil rights leader spoke of the evil embedded not only in segregation but also in our military and economic systems. Yet Paul wonders if his thoughts adequately help us make sense of a 12 year old girl forced into the gas ovens at Auschwitz. His insights would necessitate our dealing with the evil role played by the NRA and our gun culture in the Parkland shooting.
Lupe, who has paid the price for going against “the system” by serving time as a political prisoner, wrote of the difficulty in rebuilding “trust or closeness or warmth with those who deliberately harmed me.” She observed Dr. King helped by showing that “love, as expressed here, is not emotional, at all, not a sentiment or feeling or even way of life. It is the acceptance of humanity with its shadings, its obscurities and lights. It means, what I felt, a wish for good to come even to bad people, and even more, not to classify them as evil in themselves, but acknowledging the evil in their actions.” If I apply her thoughts to Parkland, I think they see Christian love considering not only the evil action and the evil system in which it occurs but also “the education, or family or skewed experiences or frustrations, or most often, sheer ignorance” of people like the shooter.
The extreme complexity involved in this and most human actions leads Kerry and Rita, who represent religious vocations, to suggest Dr. King’s sermon also serves for self examination. Our love is always tested to some degree by Jesus asking forgiveness for his executioners, because they did not know what they were doing. Incidents such as school shootings force us to rethink our thoughts and actions and especially to commit ourselves to paying the cost of making societal changes.
None of this in any way lessens the horror of the situation or trivializes our response. If anything, it demands a realistic understanding of evil that focuses on recovery in the present and prevention in the future. A number of the responses wondered about forgiving President Trump as a politician, indicating I think the difficulty of separating person and system. One suggested the best she could do right now is to pray for his conversion.
I personally find it helpful to see Christian love in two contexts. The first is the development that takes place throughout the Bible controlling the violence of vengeance. It begins with the Torah’s justice that calls for an eye for an eye and concludes with Jesus’ love that returns good for evil. To love then is to desire not the punishment or the annihilation but rather the transformation of those who sin against you or others. To forgive is not passively accepting the evil perpetrated by the enemy, but rather refusing to accept things remaining as they are, even though change might mean my suffering. In this context President Trump’s constant assertion, “I love you more than anyone else; but if you strike me, I will utterly destroy you” is downright profane. It also means our response to Parkland should primarily be creating new conditions rather than placing blame.
The second context is the divine-human covenant relationship that also runs throughout the Bible. From this perspective all humans are God’s beloved children. Christian love then participates in and responds to the Father’s love rather than the enemy’s sinful actions or systems. Confronting the Parkland shooting or any other problem begins with this assumption..
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