I've been touching upon the subject of loving God and loving others; that the center of Christian living rests in the vicinity of these two great commandments. Because they are so central to biblical teaching, it isn't difficult to talk about almost anything in Christianity and relate it to these two themes. Recently I've also been dancing around social justice, and it is a case in point, for to be concerned with and act on behalf of social justice is a manifestation of loving others and, by extension, of loving God. The question is, if you turn that statement, does a necessity result? Does loving God and loving others necessarily mean that you are concerned with and act on behalf of social justice? I believe so, and would like to open up some personal opinions on the issue.

I write once in a while on a problem I have with the fact that many people have characterized the word love by labeling it as an action. Now, with respect to using this classification in order to separate actively loving somebody from the idea of simply having an emotional feeling for them, I agree. Similarly, it is a good idea—as well as a useful admonition to myself—to perform this same separation with respect to a purely intellectual view of what love should be. That is to say, it doesn't do much good to have beautiful, profound ideals of what Godly love might be, if you never act upon them. Where I have a problem is in settling for the idea that love is merely an action, and nothing more. The problem I have with this is that it places love in the position of being one more thing which Man can claim as his own, as if love does not and could not exist—doesn't happen—without Man. So, rather simply, I take the stand that Love with a capital L, Love that comes from and is God, exists within Man but also transcends and exists independently of Man. Having said all that, I claim that the Love with which we are supposed to concern ourselves as Christians is the Love of God that is God, that it can be and must be experienced, that it can be and must be entered into, and that we can and should literally become a part of it in both the ontological and the active senses. In so doing, we become Love's inspired action in this place we call the world.

Because I have this view my interpretation of 1 John, as an example, is when the writer says "[if you know God, you'll love. If you don't love, you don't know God]" what he means is that if you've experienced God, you can't help but become a part of his love, which leads to action in the world. And he also means that if you aren't a part of that love, then obviously you haven't experienced God. To me this seems much more matter-of-fact and spiritually sound than a more typical, legally based interpretation which substitutes the presence of actions accepted as loving for any actual knowledge of God; the latter being a matter of confusing simple action with a state of spiritual being. But, as I've also noted previously, this creates a great area of concern for me in regard to my own Christian faith. Without going into the specifics all over again and yet including some of my most recent posts, the issue is this: if one is not primarily concerned—genuinely concerned in a deeply inspired and actively loving way—with the social injustices and suffering that other people endure in this world, then that person really must question whether he or she knows God at all. If, for example, I can sit and see in the newspaper the plight of millions of people who are starving or otherwise being systematically slaughtered by individuals or institutions while I blithely sip my Starbucks and circle my thumb around the wheel of my iPod, well—there is almost certainly something seriously, seriously wrong with me as a child of God. There is no way around this. There is no way around it, and I am rapidly reaching a point in life where I am unwilling to accept the aversion to, excuses concerning, and complacency toward this issue; all of these being inherent in my personal, formal Christian tradition.

In line with the posts on loving God, loving others and social justice, over the next few weeks or months I will be offering a few posts dealing with these aversions and excuses.