Love is the Greatest Doctrine

I know I promised to post sometime soon on non-violence, power and the way of the cross (for those just joining this blog or stopping by, please note this is NOT an attempt at a definitive essay on the matter as I'm hardly a theologian and probably a heretic by some Christian standards, but I do spend lots of time thinking and reading about these issues!) I have started that post, and am still working on the topics, but today I want to start with the underlying premise without which none of the rest will make sense. And that premise is that the only way to begin to approach any of these issues, particularly issues which are forced into false dichotomies (eg personal salvation vs. social gospel, individual vs. communal, reconciliation vs. justice), is through the lens of love.

One of the most powerful sermons I have ever heard is entitled 'The Relational Way' by Greg Boyd at Woodland Hills Church. It was back in November, and I was driving home from a several-day meeting where there had been a great deal of emphasis placed on the primacy of intellectual and academic understandings of theology--to the point where I had become both intimidated, dispirited, and yet also somewhat irate (perhaps due to being intimidated). Driving home, I put on the podcast of this sermon and was very much enjoying hearing Greg discuss the different concepts of love in ancient Greek, contrasting the spirit behind his sermon to the meeting I had been in, and wondering why I felt so much soothed by the sermon after feeling so agitated at the meeting. He talked about love (agape) being the foremost commandment. He showed us where in Scripture we are reminded to put love first (Colossians 3, 1 Peter) above all virtues, above all doctrines. And that love is the greatest doctrine (although as we all know the church has sadly not always mirrored this truth in its actions). And then Greg said one of the most profound things I have ever heard, so much so that I almost drove off the highway in shock (but thankfully recovered). It was so powerful that I had to hear it three times, and I quote it here:

"It doesn't matter how right you are, if you are arguing in some motivation other than love, you are wrong... Saying a true thing, believing a true thing, but in an unloving way is just another way of lying. Speak the truth in love. If you are not speaking the truth in love, to that degree you are lying. Love is the thing that makes truth speaking a valuable thing."

In that moment, he put into perspective for me all discussions, debates, arguments and wonderings I have ever had about religion and theology (and I've had a few). I have come down on the un-loving side many a time, hot in pursuit of being 'right'. And I have also been at the receiving end of fear-based righteousness and legalism which was hard to refute because while the words and even the concepts were true, the spirit seemed wrong, and yet I could not find ground to stand on to refute the argument. Those discussions have always left me feeling tired, wary of God, and somewhat rebellious against Scripture and religion in general.

The simple idea that the spirit behind what we are saying is what gives it truth or not-truth is stunning, and revolutionary in a world that believes that information is truth, and knowledge is power. But I for one find I am greatly relieved that those criteria are not those to which I am called to be answerable. And in that difference I find life grows bigger and grander and ever more beautiful, full of possibility and limitless horizons, rather than smaller and narrower and strangled by righteousness and rigidity.

So it left me wondering, why is this the case? Why is it the case that I am freed by love and strangled by legalism? I have come to believe it is about relationship. We are hard pressed when we have 'theology' but no relationship to God. (Although if theology itself means knowledge of God, how can we claim to have knowledge of God without relationship? Or does that say something about the mindset of the modern Western world, that we believe we can truly know something even though we only know it intellectually but not relationally?) But when we live in relationship to God--experiential relationship within which we truly come to know, indeed feel, His love--then the many truths of Scripture are opened to us in new ways and doctrine becomes a description of an experiential reality rather than a belief system to which we are supposed to give a mental 'assent', and bow our lives under. As God works within us, healing us, and through us, healing the world, we become integrated instead of fractured, peacefully living in the arms of the truth rather than frightened of being cast out of the truth. Life becomes one with our faith as we are made whole and returned to the life I have come to believe we were created to live--in loving harmony with God and with each other, full of peace, grace, compassion and, as CS Lewis once wrote, surprised by joy. In the doctrine of love, we finally become fully human.