On Love

This is something I've been mulling a lot recently, prompted by an excerpt from a sermon of Augustine of Hippo on what it means to "take up your cross".

As sacrifice is a central theme of the Christian faith it is worth wrestling with what exactly we are being called to do; what "taking up your cross" means. The key, as I see it, is love.

I used to think of love as a kind of moral imperative, a bitter pill that one needed to swallow to be that “good person” you’re supposed to be. I assumed that constant love could be coaxed/forced out of me and that the resulting process would build me into this morally superior, unimpeachably good human. I reached and strove for love because I thought it was a hard thing worth pursuing and that the challenges and battles would purify me in a way. This notion preceded my renewed embrace of Christianity but it found a new model in the martyrdom and sacrifice embodied in Jesus. To live a life of love was not going to be easy but it was the “right thing" to do. To love one’s neighbor (and one’s enemies). To turn the other cheek. Whatever setbacks would arise I could applaud myself for trying to be a true Christian; pat myself on the back and declare that I wasn’t like everyone else because I tried to place love first.

I now recognize that though the end result I aspired to was correct--love--my method had a great flaw beyond the smug self-satisfaction hinted at above. If love is to truly rule me I cannot care what others think. I recognize that this seems counter-intuitive--doesn’t love require some sort of feedback or response?--but by “others” I mean the crowd, the public, the amorphous ‘they’ that we assume to be watching and considering and judging our every action. My pursuit of love as a moral good was, in the end, for ‘their’ benefit. It was to receive congratulations and praise (as much as I told myself I didn’t want or need those things); it was to build a solid reputation; it was for plaques on walls, a packed, weepy funeral, admiring biographies, and maybe a sainthood at the end of it. It was to be an Oscar Romero or a Mother Teresa. To live and embody sacrifice in a way that no one can easily object to.

But that misses the point. God doesn’t want us to love because it’s the right thing to do, nor we are not supposed to love because it will reflect well on our moral qualities. We are called to love (all of us--every single human being) because to live a life of love is infinitely better than not. To lead with love is the best thing we can do; love is its own reward. Yes, God wants us to love but that has nothing to do with Heaven or Hell or Karmic reincarnation or whatever sort of afterlife (or lack thereof) you want to imagine. God wants us to love because to live a life of love is to be a closer to God or put another way, to live a life of love is to be closer to your truest self. Love has nothing to do with judgment (either divine or human); it does not care two wits what an action means or what it costs. To be ruled by love is to embrace everything that comes at you with presence and openness, a desire to see God (and yourself) in the people right in front of you. Yes, this approach to life does require sacrifice but in love sacrifice is not sacrifice. As St. Augustine shares in one of his sermons: “What is hard in precept is made easy in love.”

This is not to say that I or any one person is truly capable of living into this ideal. We cannot embody love all the time, and even when we try to, our actions may still come from more selfish motivations than we care to admit. Altruism feels good; knowing that you are “doing something” feels good. A little smugness might just be inevitable. I would also readily admit that good works, regardless of motivation, are better than inaction. But to be the person that God wants me to be I have to recognize that martyrdom isn’t about suffering or pain--it’s not about gritting your teeth and just being a "good person" like you're supposed to be. Sacrifice isn’t about abandoning yourself for the sake of others. Love doesn’t make you less. Love means that you give and give freely. We find it in relationship with parents, with children, with partners, with friends. It’s crazy and illogical and counter-intuitive. It is not easy and can seem like more than we are capable of.  But it’s how God sees us, and I'd like to try to see with God’s eyes.