Love Or Charity?

I came across this quote I wrote down in my journal a while back.  It’s from The 9 Best Practices of Youth Ministry:

“Spiritual growth is a lifelong process of loving God more and loving people more.”

I think sometimes we forget that spiritual growth, like everything in the Christian life, is not all about us.  It’s about us and others.  Here’s where the charity part comes in.  In various versions of the Bible, the Greek word agape is translated sometimes as “love” and others as “charity.”  I think charity is actually a better choice.  For most of us today, love is a feeling.  It changes.  We may love something or someone one day, and take an aversion to it later.  Love is focused on us.  Charity, on the other hand is defined as kindness and tolerance in dealing with others.  Even if we don’t have that warm, fuzzy, “love”  feeling, we can behave charitably toward those around us.  That means trying to understand them, seeing their point of view, controlling our tongue, thinking the best of them.

The famous “love” verses in 1 Corinthians 13 have a lot to say about attitudes and actions, rather than feelings.

^“Love is patient, love is kind. It does not envy, it does not boast, it is not proud. It does not dishonor others, it is not self-seeking, it is not easily angered, it keeps no record of wrongs. Love does not delight in evil but rejoices with the truth. It always protects, always trusts, always hopes, always perseveres.

Love never fails. But where there are prophecies, they will cease; where there are tongues, they will be stilled; where there is knowledge, it will pass away. For we know in part and we prophesy in part, but when completeness comes, what is in part disappears. When I was a child, I talked like a child, I thought like a child, I reasoned like a child. When I became a man, I put the ways of childhood behind me. For now we see only a reflection as in a mirror; then we shall see face to face. Now I know in part; then I shall know fully, even as I am fully known.

And now these three remain: faith, hope and love. But the greatest of these is love.“

So, test your spiritual growth.  Are you behaving more and more like this?  Are you loving and charitable to others? Are your decisions and actions leading you into a better relationship with God and with those around you? Do you understand the true meaning of agape? Or are you following momentary feelings?

True agape love expresses itself through charity.  This is the love that will remain and will enable us to see through the eyes of Christ — clearly!

 

Love the One You’re With

Does anyone out there remember this song?  I looked it up and it was released in 1970 by Stephen Stills and became a number one hit.  I used to make fun of it … I mean how pathetic can you get,  saying, if you can’t have the person you really care for, just give up and love the one you’re with — any old person, it really doesn’t matter.  However, thinking about it from a Christian perspective, isn’t this exactly the kind of preposterous love Jesus calls us to?

“You have heard that it was said, ‘You shall love your neighbor and hate your enemy,’ But I say to you love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you, so that you may be sons of your Father who is in heaven.  For he makes his sun rise on the evil and on the good, and sends rain on the just and on the unjust.  For if you love those who love you, what reward do you have?  Do not even the tax collectors do the same?  And if you greet only your brothers, what more are you doing than others?  Do not even the Gentiles do the same?  You therefore must be perfect, as your heavenly Father is perfect.”  Matthew 5:43-48

We’re to practice agape love, the kind of love God shows to us and the rest of the world.  So love your neighbors, love your enemies, love your coworkers, love your fellow church members,love those who are different and unlovable, the people who really annoy and irritate you and yes, love the one you’re with!

Martin Luther on Married Love

“The first love is drunken.  When the intoxication wears off, then comes real marriage love.”

Martin Luther

Which kinds of love is Luther talking about?  Eros and then agape? storge?  philia??  Or is married love really a combination of all of these?  We feel different sorts of love for each other at different times?

Entertaining Angels– Movie Review

Do not neglect to show hospitality to strangers, for thereby some have entertained angels unawares.  Hebrews 13:2

The other night my husband and I watched the movie, Entertaining Angels:  The Dorothy Day Story.  If you don’t know anything about Dorothy Day, I can only say that learning more about her will challenge you to a more radical kind of Christian love (agape).

As a young woman, Dorothy was not a Christian, but she was always concerned with social justice.  She converted to Catholicism after bearing a child out of wedlock.  Returning to work as a journalist, she felt called to do more than simply write about the plight of the poor — she wanted to do something.  Encouraged by her friend, Peter Moran, she started the Catholic Worker Movement which published a newspaper and established “hospitality houses”  to minister to the physical needs of the homeless and hungry.  Dorothy (and her young daughter) lived with the poor and shared their lives.  Later in life she was jailed multiple times for protesting war and nuclear armament. Some have called her “the American Mother Theresa.”

Dorothy took the words of Jesus literally.  She tried to live her life as He did.  This made many people, even fellow Christians, uncomfortable.  She lived her faith.  She welcomed and loved people most of us would find undeserving and unlovable.  Was it easy?  No.  The movie depicted her frustration, anger and loneliness. Why did she continue?  She felt it was God’s call to her.  What is His call to you?

Martin Luther on God’s Love (Agape)

God’s love gives in such a way that it flows from a Father’s heart, the well-spring of all good.  The heart of the giver makes the gift dear and precious, as among ourselves we say of even a trifling gift, it comes from a hand we love, and look not so much at the gift as at the heart.

Martin Luther