#BTColumn – Let there be love

The views and opinions expressed by the author(s) do not represent the official position of Barbados TODAY.

by Guy Hewitt

Too often we complicate the meaning of life. Even in matters of religion we tend to focus on the external facets: reading scripture, singing hymns, offering prayers, reciting creeds, and works of charity.

While these are all important practices, sometimes they can detract from the essence of being Christian as told in 1 John 4:16 “God is love, and those who love in love live in God, and God lives in them.”

In Mark 12:28-34, our Lord Jesus Christ explains the meaning of life in two bite-sized lessons: love God completely and love your neighbour as yourself. We are told, on these two love commandments hang all the law and the prophets (Matt 22:40).

Jesus doesn’t pull any punches in describing the love we owe to God. It is to be all-consuming: with our heart, soul, mind, and strength. But even at its most intense, our love for God is only a pale reflection of His love for us, which surpasses all understanding. Further, when He links the love of God to the love of neighbour as oneself, He elevates the wellbeing of others above all other duties and obligations, including religious ones.

While we hear the words – love of God and neighbour – over and over, the challenge is to live them; allowing them to shape our thoughts and actions, rather than being sweet sentiments reserved for Sunday mornings. It is not just what or how much we do that is pleasing to God, but the love we put into the doing.

While the Gospel seems to resonate in the Beatles’ song “all you need is love”, the challenge of our time, beyond a focus on romantic love, is the ascendancy of self-centred love. Too many people are preoccupied with whether they are getting the “amount” of love they “need” or “deserve”.

The type of love that is referred to in the Gospels is of a very different nature. Here we encounter agape love, which is a complete and selfless love and motivates self-giving as told in Acts 20:35, “It is more blessed to give than to receive.” This love is not a solely emotional state, but rather, points to the relation in which one person lives toward another.

On the cross, Jesus acts with this agape love as told in John 15:13 “No one has greater love than this, to lay down one’s life for one’s friends.” But agape love doesn’t have to mean death. At its heart, what it really means, is simply putting others first.

“Love your neighbour as yourself.” There’s something important here that people often overlook with love; you cannot give away something you don’t possess. How can someone love another if they don’t love themselves?

As a precondition of loving others, we need to accept ourselves – our circumstances and imperfections – knowing that even though we may not be where we need to be, we are created “in the image of God” (Gen 1:27) who can transform our life.

If we want to complete our faith journey to agape love, our focus needs to shift. We need to realize that our real purpose is realised when we live to love, when we make others’ welfare as important as, or more than ours.

We need to shift our focus from “am I loved” to “am I loving”. We need to shift focus from dying to be loved to living to love.

Often our most significant exposure to complete, unconditional agape love is often with children. Some couples are blessed with this as well. To love unconditionally simply means total acceptance of another without restrictions or stipulations.

Regrettably, too often this doesn’t happen in key relationships which serious repercussions.

Empathy, the ability to sense what someone else might be thinking or feeling, is crucial to agape love. Empathy is not intuition, mind-reading, or some mystical power but simply the ability to understand another.

While sympathy leads us to feel for another, empathy guides us towards others by a sense of togetherness and connection with them. Empathy is more powerful than sympathy because it moves beyond feeling to action.

John 3:16 reflects the Father’s empathy for humanity. As written in our Eucharistic Prayer, “when we had fallen into sin and become subject to evil and death, you [God], in your mercy, sent Jesus Christ, your only and eternal Son, to share our human nature, to live and die as one of us, to reconcile us to you, the God and Father of all.”

Christ is the epitome of true empathy. Jesus demonstrates empathetic understanding that undergirds his compassion. He is moved by our suffering, and he takes initiative to relieve it. In my work on the Windrush Scandal in the UK and with Black Lives Matters in the US, I, like many others, felt compelled to act, appreciating that there, but for the grace of God, go I.

Empathy is not passé. Last week the US pharmaceutical giant Merck & Co showed great empathy in agreeing to license drugmakers worldwide to produce its potentially lifesaving antiviral pill molnupiravir for the treatment of COVID-19.

Earlier this month, Merck revealed that a recent study of molnupiravir showed that it cut hospitalisations and deaths from COVID-19 in half. Millions of lives, particularly in the developing world, could be saved.

The Good News is simple: love God and love your neighbour. May we all, empowered by the Holy Spirit, learn it, live it, and rejoice in it, just as God rejoices in us.

Guy Hewitt serves God and remains committed to Barbados. He can be reached at guyhewitt@gmail.com