I have a confession to make. It is a strongly held confession and packed with deep seated sense of angst. It comes as the result staring at the simple command of Jesus and asking myself the tough question as it relates to the command. I am not a lover. I am not someone who loves God and loves others as I should. I thought I was, but I am not. Furthermore, I don't know what to do about it!
Love for God and love for others are the two actions that all of scripture is framed around. The totality of the Law of Moses was summed up in these two actions. The theme behind all of the admonitions of Israel's Prophets was a call to return to an ardent love of God and a call to walk in love toward others. The message of Jesus is summed up within the concepts of loving God and loving others. The Apostle Paul declares that all the Law and all the Prophets are fulfilled in the concept known as love.
So if I am not a lover, what am I? If anything, I am a selective lover. I choose times where God is held in the esteem he so richly deserves. I choose people who I demonstrate affection toward. I choose moments or events where the fortunate chosen ones may receive my bestowal of charity. I may even have a day here and there where I hold God in high regard and show love toward someone at the same time. Those are good days. No, those are really good days. They are special and rare and I hope that someone is watching and taking note of it. I hope that they see this as normal. But that is not my normal. My normal is preoccupation with life, with challenges, with struggles, with busyness, with things, with television, with computer, with......you get the idea.
For purposes of this writing, I want to deal with God's call to love him. Love is a funny word. Everything in me as a 21st century western culture participant wants to equate love with emotion. I want it to be something that I feel. As a young man, I remember falling "in love" with a girl for the first time. It was wonderful. I tingled. If I had been a peacock, my tail feathers would have fanned without any effort at all. But that really wasn't love. It was a bunch of chemicals in my body being awakened and creating a hormonal high. It was that and more but it wasn't love as God defines it because love is not an emotion; it is not a hormonal or chemical reaction. Love as God defines it is active obedience and heartfelt devotion to Him.
Common to the faith of Israel was and continues to be the reciting of several passages of scripture upon awaking in the morning and retiring for bed at night. These scriptures form what is called the Shema. The Shema begins, "Hear O Israel, the Lord is our God, the Lord is one. You shall love the Lord your God with all of your heart, with all of your soul, with all of your might." It served as a morning reminder that today belongs to God and I must spend it in full devotion to him and as an evening reminder that the day just lived belonged to God and asks if I spent it in full devotion to him. It was a solemn reminder that God was central to everything called life and the primary responsibility in everything was to love him.
Shema 's command is to love God with every part of heart, soul, and might. By using the term love, the text implies that these truths must be fulfilled through relationship rather than through cognitive affirmation. In other words, love is not what I affirm, or think, or feel, but something that I express out of relationship to God. This relationship passionately transcends legal obligation and demands the mobilization of all the dimensions and resources of one's being. How is this love preserved and guaranteed? The answer: by intentional, structured mindfulness.
So what is heart within the concept of Hebrew text? What does it mean to love God with all of my heart. Heart is desire. It is that part of us that sets affection or attaches significance to things like sports, family, hobbies, food, or chocolate. Desire generates enthusiasm, passion, and devotion. Shema says that all of this desire belongs to God first and to everything else second out of the overflow of the first and because of it. Jesus confirmed this with his difficult statement that "If anyone comes to me and does not hate his own father and mother and wife and children and brothers and sisters, yes, and even his own life, he cannot be my disciple." He is simply interpreting the Shema for his followers and declaring that God has first rights to our desires and affections.
The Hebrew understanding of soul differs a bit from our Greek model that we are most comfortable with. Soul to the Hebrew was a person's life. To love God with one's soul was to give oneself totally in all that one did to the action of loving God. We could apply the word loyalty to this and understand the concept partially. Shema says that everything we do even to the point of death must be done with a loyalty and devotion to God regardless of the consequences. In this sense, martyrs demonstrated a soul-love for God as they chose to be loyal to him and him only at the cost of death. Short of martyrdom and in a more practical sense, to love God with all of our souls requires of us a determination to faithfully serve God through obedient choices. In other words, there is no such thing as compartmentalizing life into sacred and secular. Or to put it more plainly, loving God is a 24/7 proposition rather than an hour on Sunday. When Jesus spoke, "For whoever would save his life will lose it, but whoever loses his life for my sake will save it." he was declaring his interpretation of loving God with the soul.
The Hebrew understanding of might is something that we might not suspect. To love God with all of our strength or might is love him with our resources. Shema demands that our love for God be expressed in generosity. Our possessions and material goods are the means to actively loving God with our strength. The idea of strength goes back to the idea of the "sweat of our brow" or labor in making a living. What we get through our efforts are to be offered to God first and if required, offered to God in totality. Jesus' statement to the rich young ruler to sell everything he had and give it away was simply an application of this aspect of Shema.
So here I sit contemplating my response to the Holy Spirit's quest to engage me with the call to love. I haven't even gotten to the love your neighbor as yourself part of the equation and I'm reeling a bit. I take only slight comfort in the Heidelberg Catechism that deals with the Shema in question #5 "Can you live up to this perfectly?" and answers "No, I have a natural tendency to hate God and my neighbor." The comfort comes in knowing that my lack of love is real just like yours and that it is being addressed through the cross of Christ. In my Gethsemane moments I wrestle with this deeply. I can state that I certainly love God more today than ever. My prayer is that I would be consumed with this love even more in the days to come.
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