More on fear, love and hate
Lets continue my thoughts about fear, good, evil and what this is all about; me. Yeah. I won't even try to pretend that this is something else then my raw thoughts. You get them fairly uncensored and no bigger points is guaranteed.
Back to my fear. I am struggling with my who I think that God is. This is very personal and to reinforce the personal aspect of this Im posting a quite naked picture of myself taken a few minutes ago. If you get angry with what I write just look on the picture and imagne me, a naked and confused person just trying to get a hunch of who God is. You don't have to worry, I'm not compleatly naked and you don't have to imagine that, just the frank kind of naked.
Right now I have got tangled in Jesus Sermon on the Mount. Have you seen Monty Python's Life of Brian? Well of course you have, I don't know if I would let you read my blog if you hadn't seen it.
When I saw that movie the first time and the scene with the beatitudes came I froze. I don't know how old I was when I first saw it, I think I was 14. Already back then I had big problems with what Jesus said on that mountain so I guess that I don't have to feel all stressed out about it. If I have felt weird about what Jesus said up there on the mountainside for the last 13 years then I can struggle with them for a while longer. I don't mind the beatitudes they are strange but I can accept them just because they are so poetic and they actually make some sense.
"You have heard that it was said, 'Love your neighbor and hate your enemy.' But I tell you: Love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you, that you may be sons of your Father in heaven. He causes his sun to rise on the evil and the good, and sends rain on the righteous and the unrighteous. If you love those who love you, what reward will you get? Are not even the tax collectors doing that? And if you greet only your brothers, what are you doing more than others? Do not even pagans do that? Be perfect, therefore, as your heavenly Father is perfect.
I think that what Jesus says is weird. Not only is it weird, it is stupid and impossible.
Love your enemy... The first times I read that it seemed sort of nice. It sounds good to be loving even to those that does not deserve it. But then I grew up and I don't get it any more.
Of course love is good, I am all for love. But wait. Love your enemy? If I try to be perfect like the Father for a while... I have a son as well so I guess me and the Father has something in common. Good to know if I would be placed close to him at some dinner party and run out of things to say. But to love my enemies like I love him? I don't get it. I can understand why revenge isn't the best and I can easily be friendly to my enemies and wish them well. But to love them? To be willing to sacrifice my life and let what is best for them define me, that sounds weird.
I know a few who loves their enemies. One friend of mine comes to my mind, she loved her enemy and he beat her up as soon as he had a problem he didn't know how to solve or whenever he was drunk. She really loved him and tried to do what was best for him. After a couple of years she realized that she didn't love him any more. She said that the moment when she stopped loving him was the moment when she could start to really help him. She moved out, didn't put up with his bullshit and when he did something wrong to her she didn't do that overrated other cheek-thing, instead she called the police. She kept the contact with him, he was physically disabled and she did his laundry and got his groceries. She did it with a smile on her face and was so happy that she didn't have to love him any more.
Her actions was loving but she loved her self and God, not her enemy, she showed him compassion and she never followed her bitterness and she never took her revenge. That sounds so much more healthy then how she responded to his actions when she loved him.
I love my son. If anybody would deliberately hurt him I would get wrathful. I have no intention of loving that person. I wouldn't hurt the person I would try to get her to understand how I or more important my son felt but I would never try to love that person. I can't se the point of loving a enemy. Not be revengeful and feeling love is not at all the same thing.
Another thing. If everyone felt true love to everyone, how could I ever be special? I would rather have 10 people hate me and 10 people love me because they could help them self then 20 people trying to love me because their religion forced them. If a friend of mine express great contempt for someone I feel affirmed. I don't surround my self with people that express a lot of contempt, the only thing in common for all my friends is that they are positive and loving and I love that about them. But I also like their ability to like me more then their enemy.
I think you have to be emotionally torn to love your enemies in the same way you love your friends and family.
I think Jesus was wrong. Don't love your enemy. Be empathic towards your enemy, try to do good, remember that it is a person loved by God, a brother that could have been you. But love only your family, friends and a handful more. The ability to love is a gift and give it to people you like.
I pray for the people who expresses hate towards me, but I do pray that they will change. I don't like them och what they do. I can greet them nice and give some of my time to them. But love is a different thing that I am more careful with.
Over to something different. A poem about how fear can take over the part of you that probably would be better off filled with some love. Don't get me wrong, I am all for love and showing love. But I think love is to special to devaluate to what you can feel towards your enemys. This poem is not my ideal or anything near, it is just a way of handeling all of my thoughts about fear, love and what's right.
I want you
I need you
I need you to long for me
So I can feel that I belong to you
To something
Anything
Everything I want from you is to prove myself
Always myself
Want proof
Need proof
I am everything I ever cared about
Please prove that I am special
I failed when I tried
I want you
I need you
I need to know that someone think that I do
Because I know that I don't
7 comments:
Funny, this is coming to haunt me. It was talked about at church last week and the day after I encountered a new 'enemy'.
I think to love your enemies means those things that you said - compassion, set boundaries when behaviour is unacceptable. But not having to LIKE them.
You said: "Don't love your enemy. Be empathic towards your enemy, try to do good, remember that it is a person loved by God, a brother that could have been you." I think that's love in the God sense of love, not necessarily the emotional sense. That's for your family and friends.
And I'm sorry, I've not seen Life of Brian, despite trying to borrow it from people.
WOW.
I think that your blogs are some of the most thought-provoking, beautiful pieces of writing I've ever read. I'm deeply touched by all of it. You have great perspective on life and especially (well, rather of course) on yourself. Nobody will ever know you better than you know yourself, but let me just say that who you are is amazing.
p.s. Thanks for the comment on my blog. ;)
Calia77: I still think that it sounds strange. Why talk about love if it is not about the emotion? Didn't Jesus know what true love was? I think he did. Did he think that the rest of us didn't know love? Or did he just have a very limited vocabulary? I know most Christians think I sound stupid or ignorant asking questions like this but I want to get it and I don't.
elliot: wow, thank you!
I don't think that Jesus had a limited vocabulary - I think that we do. Have you encountered the 4 loves by CS Lewis? There's a brief description of them on Wikipedia: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Four_Loves
In a number of ways our vocabulary, our language limits us to really understand Jesus. We have 1 word for love - He had 4.
I hope that this helps you in your understanding of what Jesus was talking about. I don't think that asking questions is stupid or ignorant - we only learn through questioning and exploring the Bible for ourselves, and meeting Jesus through our own experience.
I hope that you get it.
I agree with Elliot - your writing is thought-provoking.
I have read the C.S. Lewis book in swedish but I think I was 16 and maybe it is time to give it a new try. In swedish it is called Kärlekens fyra ansikten the four faces of love.
I don't hae one word for love, I have many. I have read several books and heard way to many sermons about eros, agape, philia and storge. Mostly about the two first. The faithmovement in sweden (witch is called trosrörelsen, with means both faithmovement and pantiesmovement, thats wierd) often talk about agapen and eros and the more I have heard about it the less i get it. I have read about how Plato used the words and other acient texts but maybe I am not ready for it yet.
Another passage about love (agape) is in 1 cor 13 when Paul says "Love is patient, love is kind. It does not envy, it does not boast, it is not proud. It is not rude, it is not self-seeking, it is not easily angered, it keeps no record of wrongs."
If love keeps no record of wrongs, did my abused friend do wrong when she left her husband?
I'm sorry for being such a pain.
It's such a complicated one this. It takes time to understand - take that time, because once you get it, it will be so much part of you, as much as breathing. I offer you my opinion, my understanding humbly and in the knowledge that I may not have got it at all and there is so much more for me to learn.
Your friend was not, in my opinion, wrong to leave her abusive husband. Love does not mean to become a doormat and allow everyone to use and abuse you: even loving your enemies does not mean that. Love provides support, but also boundaries. For example: to say to someone, such as an abusive husband, I love you as a person because you are a child of God, but I do not love your behaviour and the way that you hurt me. Jesus told people to go and sin no more - He still loved them, but expected them to stop the things they were doing wrong.
As a lover of all things readable, there's a very good book called Boundaries that also looks at how we love people without letting them hurt us, destroy us and take our all.
I love that title, the four faces of love. It is so poetic.
Oh, and I've just realised that I posted with my name not my Blogger ID... I am Jo and Jo is I!
Post a Comment