Love is all you need?

Jesus is said to have summed up the entire Christian life in terms of love: “‘Love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul, and with all your mind.’ This is the first and great­est com­mand­ment. The sec­ond is like it: ‘Love your neigh­bor as your­self.’ All the law and the prophets depend on these two com­mand­ments” (Mat 22.37–40).

But Jesus didn't actually say that! Shock! Horror! It was the expert in the Law who says them. Jesus agrees with the answer (Lk. 10.28), but he’s not the one who actu­ally puts forth that trans­la­tion of Deuteronomy 6.5. In Matthew 22.37 Jesus does say “Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind” and in Mark 12.30 he says “Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind and with all your strength.” (NIV2011) We have in the Gospels three cita­tions of Deuteronomy 6.5 (two of them spo­ken by Jesus) and each uses dif­fer­ent word­ing.

 But regard­less of whether or not these are accounts of the same event, we don’t nec­es­sar­ily have the exact words that Jesus spoke, or even know if they were orig­i­nally in Hebrew, Greek or Aramaic. The gospel authors record Jesus’ mes­sage in Greek (a dynamic trans­la­tion?) but for the most part we sim­ply don’t know pre­cisely what Jesus said. The mes­sage that the Gospel writ­ers are try­ing to con­vey is that Jesus replied by quot­ing Deuteronomy 6.5:

Deuteronomy 6:5
You must love the LORD your God
with all your heart (leb),
all your soul (nephesh),
and all your strength (me’od).

Luke 10:27
You must love the LORD your God
with all your heart (kar­dia),
all your soul (psy­che),
all your strength (ischus),
and all your mind (dianoia).

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

These com­mandments cap­tures the essence of who we are. We can’t fully love God, we can't fully love ourselves or others,  if we only love emo­tion­ally, we can’t fully love  if we only  offer intel­lec­tu­ally sup­port  — we can only truly and fully love [God] if we do so with every­thing we have.

These com­mands aren’t sim­ply feel-good plat­i­tudes, they are a pow­er­ful call toembrace a spe­cific and active love. The real­i­ties of life chal­lenge love at every turn, and love alone, as a dis­em­bod­ied feel­ing adrift on the Platonic ether, can­not save us. But love as a prac­tice, love as a way of life, love as an expe­ri­ence of God, love that encom­passes the total­ity of God’s plan — that love can save us. Love requires par­tic­i­pa­tion, it requires main­te­nance, it requires atten­tion: “Above all, main­tain con­stant love for one another, for love cov­ers a mul­ti­tude of sins” (1 Pet. 4.8).

Love doesn’t obvi­ate other aspects of a Christian life, love holds those aspects together. Love is not a soli­tary require­ment, it is the thread that uni­fies and empow­ers all the other require­ments. If we don’t have love, noth­ing else works. If we don’t show love, we can’t expect to receive it. If we don’t love God, how can we hope to love our neigh­bor? “But love your ene­mies, and do good, and lend, expect­ing noth­ing back. Then your reward will be great, and you will be sons of the Most High because he is kind to ungrate­ful and evil peo­ple. Be mer­ci­ful, just as your Father is mer­ci­ful” (Luke 6.27–36).

Love is a means of relationship - not only between human beings, but between humans and the rest of nature. Having been privelaged to be at the birth of my kitten and seeing the love, the nurturing between the new mother and her kittens, and between Ginger - my kitten - and myself there is more than just just chemical impulses and pheremones. Love is also the means by which the Divine, all that is Holy can be related to.
  “All you need is love” may be inac­cu­rate in a strict sense, but to those who accuse some of us of putting an inor­di­nate amount of empha­sis on love, one must remem­ber that it was Jesus him­self who set the prece­dent. Love, prop­erly enacted and expressed, sub­sumes the dis­trac­tions of the­ol­ogy and over­pow­ers our per­sonal ten­den­cies to judge and criticize.

Religion and Language

In the Graphic Novel "Promethea", Alan Moore speculates that without langauge there could be no God (or at least, no idea of God, yet alone religion) because there would be no way of expression an experience of the Divine to others, no means of communicating that relationship.

"Promethea" explores various faith traditions, including Paganism and Jewish mysticism, especially the Qaballah. He has this to say on the monotheism of the Abrahamic religions:

"Monotheism is, to me, a great simplification. I mean the Qabalah has a great multiplicity of gods, but at the very top of the Qabalic Tree of Life, you have this one sphere that is absolute God, the Monad, something which is indivisible. All of the other gods, and indeed everything else in the universe, is a kind of emanation of that God. Now, that’s fine, but it's when you suggest that there is only that one God, at this kind of unreachable height above humanity, and there is nothing in between, you’re limiting and simplifying the thing. I tend to think of paganism as a kind of alphabet, as a language, it's like all of the gods are letters in that language. They express nuances, shades of meaning or certain subtleties of ideas, whereas monotheism tends to just be one vowel and it's just something like 'oooooooo'. It's a monkey sound."

More "God" ponderings....

 God is not an object but an idea. The object of God is extinguished in the mind when we realize that All / Everything is God. God is the whole of the Universe in action. God is not a separate thing. God is Everything The bigger and bigger we find the universe to be, the farther and farther away any God actually seems to be. All current religions are worried about that. I'm not, of course, because I'm a Unitarian, I have grown to understand that God is not what mankind has thought God to be. There is no Creator God Being in the traditional "Genesis" sense, but there is a Life Force of the Universe that is at work in all that we do, see and have.

 When  you realise God is everything, you can consider that God is nothing, but when God is everything, I consider God to be everything. So the Life Force of the Universe is for me the perfect way to express this God in everything. Then instead of praying to a God, worshiping a God and caring about a God - we can begin to pray to and for others, worship and respect all others as well as all creation, and care about others and all of creation, which is God. There is not God and us, there is only God as us and everything else as well.

 God is the Spirit of Life Itself everywhere present throughout the Universe, that connects all Life to all other Life, and that created and continues to create all that we know and have, that's the real God. The Life Force of the Universe, which for me explains what God really is


Whatever God is or might be, and certainly no one knows anything for sure about the concept we call God, we do know, or should know, that God is Universal. God does not take sides. The sun shines on the good and the bad. The rain falls on the crops and the weeds. When God is seen to be for everybody, when God is seen with an "extra O", as in Goodness, then the world can start to become the Kingdom of God, that all religions say they want, but only humans can make it so.

All scripture is innerant

On the Unitarian facebook group recently, a Conservative, Literal Christian posted the well-known and well-abused passage from Timothy: (2 Timothy 3:16) “All scripture is inspired by God ...”

But the Greek text raises a number of problems:  πᾶσα γραφὴ θεόπνευστος καὶ ὠφέλιμος πρὸς διδασκαλίαν, πρὸς ἐλεγμόν, πρὸς ἐπανόρθωσιν, πρὸς παιδείαν τὴν ἐν δικαιοσύνῃ

First of all, there is no “is” (ἐστίν) in the Greek text, and there are a number of different ways one can construct the syntax.

Second, the term γραφή, which is often translated as “scripture,” is just the basic Greek term for any “written text.”

Third, the Greek term θεόπνευστος (often translated as “inspired by God”) is a pagan term meaning “inspired.” Indeed, in the New Testament there is no definition of “inspiration.”

The New English Bible (my preferred translation) translates the first part of 2 Timothy 3:16 as: “Every inspired scripture has its use for teaching…” But it could just as easily be translated as: “Every writing, both inspired and useful, is for teaching …” Thus the claim that 2 Timothy 3:16 claims that “All scripture is inspired …” is debatable. Furthermore, in the context of 2 Timothy 3, the written text in question does not and cannot possibly include the New Testament because it did not exist: it had not been written yet! It might refer to the Hebrew scriptures as they are now known, and certainly not to the Chrsitian Old Testament.  Rather it refers to the texts which Timothy may have read from early childhood and were in use in Judaeism in the 1st Cenutry CE. We don’t know what Timothy read from early childhood, but it might have contained some Old Testament book, and it might have contained other non-canonical books of the early Christians.

Thus, as Rev. Ant Howe pointed out, the Unitarian stance that "All scripture is inspired by God" (i.e. more than just the Bible) can be seen as just a valid interpretation - if not more so - than the Literalist view that "All Scripture( i.e.Bible only) is inspired....."

Naming "God"

When we were kids in Sunday School, we were taught that God was a white man with a beard who sat on a throne and did nothing but have people stand around him and bow and tell him how amazing he is.

A Quaker friend of mine asked this question “What sort of omnipotent, omniscient God demands to be worshipped?”. Well, none. But just imagine if you applied the traditional imagery and personality we apply to God to a human being: all-knowing, all-powerful but yet with such low self-esteem that they want others to tell them how amazing they are, even try to control you and if they don’t get it they hate you. You’d send them for therapy! Would you want to even be friends? But yet this is the image many have of God: and indeed I and my atheist friends do not believe in exactly the same God – the one outlined above!

Personal Training for the soul

What do we mean by “fitness”. Anybody? Well, no it’s not about getting muscles or losing weight. To most people getting “fit” is an abstract idea, a notion, an idea, bantered about with no real meaning. As a Personal Trainer, to me “Fitness” is defined as:  a complete feeling of and state of physical, mental and emotional well-being.  Being a Personal Trainer or Fitness Instructor isn't just about about showing people how to lift weights!

Personal training and religion have a lot in common, and you know, I think we can apply a lot of the techniques of personal training for health and well being to our spiritual health as well.

Our American cousins define Fitness (or as they term it “Wellness”)as having six dimensions: Physical, Emotional, Intellectual, Social, Vocational and Spiritual.

 

“Physical wellness encourages all issues concerning your physical body and daily life Emotional wellness emphasises awareness of and acceptance of feelings. An emotionally well person maintains satisfying relationships with others while feeling positive and enthusiastic about his life. You also maintain minimal levels of stress, develop healthy feelings and use nondestructive emotional outlets.

Intellectual Wellness encourages creative, stimulating mental activities including learning and adapting to and understanding change and the world we live in.

Social Wellness encourages contributing to human community and environment. A socially well person emphasises interdependence with others, with nature and within his own family and self.

Vocational Wellness is the growth and happiness in your own work, and jobs that are satisfying and enriching; vocational wellness emphasises being fit for purpose.

Spiritual Wellness is the universal quest for meaning and purpose. A spiritually well person develops, evolves and practices his religious, political, environmental and personal beliefs with integrity, truthfulness.”

Love your Dalek

“Love your enemy”

Who doesn’t know what a Dalek is? Who, when they were young didn’t cower behind the settee from those maniacal pepper-pot shaped baddies, armed with nothing more than a sink-plunger and egg whisk? Evil killing machines that couldn’t be stopped by the best that human arsenals had to offer? (Apart from a flight of stairs)