Pitiram Sorokin in his book The Ways And Power Of Love tells
of how in 1918 he was hunted down by the Communist Government
of Russia. He was imprisoned and condemned to death. Everyday
he expected to be shot as he witnessed the shootings of his friends
and fellow prisoners. For 4 years he underwent endless horrors of
human cruelty, death, and destruction. In spite of all this he was an
excellent example of the power of positive thinking.
He wrote this in his diary while in prison: "Whatever may
happen in the future, I know that I have learned 3 things which will
remain forever convictions of my heart as well as my mind. Life,
even the hardest life, is the most beautiful, wonderful, and
miraculous treasure in the world. Fulfillment of duty is another
marvelous thing making life happy. This is my second conviction.
And my third is that cruelty, hatred, violence, and injustice never
can and never will be able to create a mental, moral, or material
millenium. The only way toward it is the royal road of all-giving
creative love, not only preached but consistently practiced."
This all-giving creative love he writes of is the agape love of the
New Testament. God spared Sorokin that he might preach and
practice this love. He became one of the most voluminous writers of
modern times in the area of Sociology. He established the Harvard
Research Center in Creative Altruism. Altruism is another word for
the love of others. After years of study and experiments Sorokin
believes he has established the following truth scientifically:
"Unselfish love has enormous creative and therapeutic
potentialities far greater than most people think. Love is a
life-giving force, necessary for physical, mental, and moral health.
Altruistic persons live longer than egoistic individuals.
Children deprived of love tend to become vitally, morally, and
socially defective.
Love is the most powerful antidote against criminal, morbid, and
suicidal tendencies; against hate, fear, psychoneuroses.
It is an indispensable condition for deep and lasting happiness.
Only the power of unbounded love practiced in regard to all
human beings can defeat the forces of interhuman strive.
It is goodness and freedom at their loftiest."
He feels he has established the fact scientifically which the New
Testament proclaims, and that is that love is the supreme virtue. It
is the pinnacle of perfection. It the weapon that will ultimately win
over all the forces of darkness. He says that the finest fruit of
scientific thinking is identical to the finest fruit of the Spirit, which is
agape love. Science is a precise method for interpreting and
controlling nature, and when it comes to human nature the key
factor in interpreting and controlling it is love. More and more
people in the fields of psychology, psychiatry, and sociology are
recognizing this fact that life without love just will not work.
Smiley Blanton, and American psychiatrist, has written a book
titled Love Or Perish. He writes, "For more than 40 years I have sat
in my office and listened while people of all ages and classes told me
of their hopes and fears, their likes and dislikes, and of what they
considered good or bad about themselves and the world around
them....As I look back over the long, full years, one truth emerges
clearly in my mind-the universal need for love. Whether they think
they do or not, all people want love.....They cannot survive without
love: they must have it or they will perish."
A psychiatrist at a mental institution in Peoria, Ill. Says: "No
matter what a psychiatrist knows he cannot cure a patient with
knowledge. Someone has to love that patient, for the lack of love
produced the neurosis. And only love can cure it." Dr. Karl
Menninger, the noted authority in the world of medicine and
psychiatry, said, "Love is the medicine for the sickness of the
world." He tells his staff, which includes doctors, nurses, orderlies,
and cleaning people, that the most important thing they can offer a
patient is love. When people learn to give an receive love they
recover from most of their illnesses. The biggest health problem in
the world is the inability to love and receive love. Love is the
greatest gift, and God gave us this gift in the giving of His Son.
Paul made it clear in I Cor. 13 that he could have all gifts and
powers that anyone could ever hope to have, but if he lacked love he
would be nothing. Peter agrees with Paul, and that is why he puts
love at the top. We can be a very fine person with many virtues, but
without this supreme virtue of love we can never be Christ-like in
the way that really counts. There would be no Gospel if God lacked
this love, and there would be no communication of the Gospel if
Christians lack it. It is far more comprehensive than brotherly love.
That is a love that is exclusive for those who are brothers in Christ.
Agape love is that which covers all that the New Testament says
about our love for neighbors and enemies. It is a universal love. It
is the only kind of love adequate to meet the human situation
because it is not a matter of affection, but a matter of unconditional
acceptance.
A love that depends upon feeling and affection would be so
limited as to be of no value at all in relation to enemies, and of little
value in relation to most other people. You can only have true
affection for very few people, and so we have to get the idea out of
our mind that when we speak of agape love we are speaking of some
kind of emotion or affection. Agape love is unconditional acceptance
of another person. It does not demand anything. Emotional love
demands attraction, affection, and some kind of benefit, but agape
demands nothing. The only perfect example is God's love for us. It
was while we were yet sinners that Christ died for us. This means
that God's love was expressed before we responded in faith. God
loved man in an absolutely unconditional manner, and He required
nothing of man before He gave His Son to die for their sins.
This was the kind of love Jesus displayed as He went about doing
good and healing all manner of disease, both physical and spiritual.
The law said, if you do this I will accept you, but the love of Christ
said, I accept you, therefore, do this. Agape love is the difference
between law and grace. The only way we can carry on the
effectiveness of Christ is to add to our lives this supreme virtue of
love.
Paul Tillich looking at it from the practical and scientific point of
view wrote, "You cannot help people who are in psychosomatic
distress by telling them what to do. You can help them only by
giving them something and by accepting them....Only then can one
accept himself. It is never the other way around. That was the
plight of Luther in his struggle against the distorted late Roman
Church which wanted that men make themselves first acceptable
and then God would accept them. But it is always the other way
around. First you must be accepted. Then you can accept yourself,
and that means, you can be healed. Illness, and the largest sense of
body, soul and spirit, is estrangement." The power of the Gospel is,
therefore, the power of love and reconciliation. God was in Christ
reconciling the world unto Himself. The sense of estrangement is
not necessary, for God because of Christ accepts everyone
unconditionally.
We do not love in the New Testament sense unless we can accept
people unconditionally. If we demand anything of people before we
accept them we fall short of agape love. This great truth can be
perverted if we assume that God's acceptance of the sinner is the
same as the salvation of the sinner. The liberal tends to do this, and
by doing so weakens the Gospel of love by not going beyond
acceptance by God to repentance and salvation. The conservative
on the other hand is repelled back from the idea of telling the world
they are reconciled to God, and they weaken the Gospel of love by
changing its unconditional nature. This puts the sinner in the position
of having to do something to win God's love and be accepted.
Both of these perversions of love have hindered the cause of
Christ. The liberal perversion brings into the church those who are
not made whole by conversion. The conservative error keeps out of
the church those who would be converted and made whole if they
were accepted in love. This greatest weapon for spiritual warfare is
like any major physical weapon. It is complicated and technical,
and it calls for a trained and skilled operator. To be effective uses of
love we cannot afford to be ignorant of its nature anymore than a
soldier can afford to be handling atomic weapons when he does not
understand them.
It is one thing to be down on the launching pad of faith, but quite
another to be way up in orbit controlling the ship of love. When we
come to the top position in any field we have a great deal of
responsibility, and so when we come to this supreme virtue and
ultimate weapon against evil we have a great responsibility as
Christian soldiers. If we want to be successful in soaring high into
the atmosphere of Christ-like love, there are some important things
we need to know about love. We cannot deal with them all now, but
the major thing we need to understand is that-
LOVE IS EXTREMELY EXPENSIVE.
None of the weapons of spiritual warfare come cheap, but in
comparison to love they are the parachute and love is the airplane.
It costs to climb to love in Christian maturity. It cost God His Son to
love, and it cost Christ His life to love, and a great deal of sacrifice
while He lived. Richard Trench has put into poetry some of the
things that Jesus didn't do because He loved.
He might have reared a palace at His word,
Who sometime had not where to lay His head;
Time was when He who fed the crowds with bread
Would not one crust unto Himself afford.
Twelve legions, girded with angelic sword
Where at His beck, the scorned and buffeted.
He healed another's scratch, His own side bled,
Side, feet, and hands with cruel piercings gored,
O wonderful the wonders left undone.
And scarce less wonderful than those He wrought.
O love divine, passing all human thought,
To have all power yet be as having none.
O self-effacing love that thought alone
For others needs, but never for His own.
Self-sacrifice is the very essence of agape love. It is costly because
it is always giving regardless of whether it is receiving or not.
Stephen Neill writes, "Love in the Bible sense of the word is always
concerned with self-giving. It is never merely feeling; it always
includes a steady direction of the will toward another's lasting
good." Now that is easy to say, and love is easy to define, and fairly
easy to understand, but if you think it is easy to practice, you are
deceived. This kind of love is unnatural. Love for family, friends,
and brothers in Christ is easier because there is a natural bond, but
to love the stranger, the unlovable, and the enemy is to love across a
chasm with no bridge. It is contrary to the natural tendencies of
man. That is why agape love is so expensive. It is custom made, and
can only be possessed as we participate in the divine nature. This is
demanding and calls for costly commitment.
Soren Kierkegaard, the great Danish theologian, in his Works Of
Love recognized this truth and said, "It is easier to become a
Christian when I am not a Christian than to become a Christian
when I am one." It is easier to enter the kingdom on ground level by
faith in Christ than it is to climb to the heights of the kingdom by
taking up the cross and following Christ all the way. To take up the
cross and to add love to your life amounts to the same thing, and this
is costly. Kierkegaard said that the Christians of his day
rationalized and said that the command to love your neighbor as
yourself was intentionally severe. It was like setting the clock a half
hour ahead so as to be sure not to be late. This is really not
necessary, however, if you are wise and careful, and so they made
love easy and cheapened it.
Another way to cut down on the expense of love is to limit it to
language. Love language can be beautiful and the cost is almost
nothing. Beautiful expressions can be easily learned and used like
well written poems for birthday cards. They make it easy to take
care of a love obligation. This loving by words is like a tree with
beautiful leaves but no fruit. It has aesthetic value but no practical
life sustaining value. Leaves are allowed to take the place of fruit. It
is easy and cheap, but in the long run more costly than sacrificial
agape love. Israel was cut off because of its fruitlessness, and Jesus
says every branch in Him that does not bare fruit shall be cut off.
That is why John warns Christians in these words: "My little
children, let us not live in word or in tongue but in deed and in
truth." This is the hard way, and the expensive way, but the only
way to be truly Christ-like and fruitful.
The reason it is so hard and costly to love in action and sacrifice
is because it is so contrary to our natural tendencies, and to the
value system of the world. We can only be Christ-like when we
make Christ the supreme object of our devotion. We cannot bear
the cost of love apart from a full commitment to Christ who alone
can impart such love. The burden can be made lighter, but not the
cost. The poet put it-
Love came to me with a crown, I took it and laid it down.
Love came to me and said, Wear it upon thy head.
Tis too heavy, I cannot wear it, I have not strength enough to bear it.
Then my soul's beloved spake, Saying, wear it for my sake.
When lo! The crown of love grew light, and I wore it in all men's sight.
When we do all we do for the sake of Christ, the burden is lighter,
but the fact remains that the cost is no cheaper. It would all be so
easy if we just had to love God, for He is unchangeable and there is
security in loving Him. But there is great uncertainty and risk in
loving those close to you, let alone the neighbor, the stranger, and
the enemy. St. Augustine in his confessions tells of how the death of
his friend Nebridius plunged him into despair. This is what comes,
he says, of giving your heart to anything but God. All human beings
pass away, and so he reasons, do not let your happiness depend on
something you may loose. If love is to be a blessing, not a misery, it
must be for the only Beloved who will never pass away."
Augustine's thinking is clouded by his grief, for what he is doing
is seeking a love that is not so expensive. He wants an easy and
secure love in God alone where there is no risk. Scripture
commands us to love Him supremely, but not Him solely. C. S.
Lewis read this passage from Augustine and responded like this in
his book The Four Loves: "Of course this is excellence sense. Don't
put your goods in a leaky vessel. Don't spend too much on a house
you may be turned out of. And there is no man alive who responds
more naturally than I to such canny maxims. I am a safety-first
creature. Of all arguments against love none makes so strong an
appeal to my nature as "Careful." This might lead you to
suffering."
But he goes on to say that when he responds to that appeal he
feels a thousand miles away from Christ. He writes, "If I am sure of
anything, I am sure that His teaching was never meant to confirm
my congenital preference for safe investments and limited liabilities.
I doubt whether there is anything in me that pleases Him less."
There is no way to make love cheap and please Christ. Love costs,
and there is no escape. It is a risk every time, and loss is certain. To
think you can love and escape tears is to be blind to the risks of love.
You cannot love a dog and escape suffering, for the dog will die or
be killed. If you love, you are opening your heart to suffering and
disappointment. All the sorrows of Jesus were due to His loving.
He wept at the tomb of Lazarus his friend. He wept over Jerusalem.
His heart was saddened because the rich young ruler, whom He
loved, turned and left Him. There is no easy way to love by which
you can escape the suffering it brings.
C. S. Lewis wrote, "The only place outside heaven where you can
be perfectly safe from all the dangers and perturbations of love is
hell." Lack of love is even more costly, however, for the price of it is
hell. In the long run love is the best bargain in the universe, but we
must ever be aware that it is nevertheless extremely expensive. A. J.
Gossip put it, "You will not stroll into Christ-likeness with your
hands in your pockets shoving the door open with a careless
shoulder." You will be Christ-like only at great expense and
sacrifice. So lets stop kidding ourselves, and get out of our safety
zones and begin to march into enemy territory and claim it for
Christ. We do this by paying the cost to love all whom God loves. It
is expensive, but it is worth the cost for when we have this we are in
possession of the Supreme Virtue.
