Love. That’s the last item on the list from 1 Corinthians 13, but it’s the greatest. Yet, as much as love is touted as the premier Christian virtue, I’m afraid what it means to be Christian has been hijacked lately by some really nasty ruffians. Look at the venom that passes for Christian virtue in the national news and on the political circuit.
Not that I mind. I suppose when you get right down to it, I gave up the right to complain about Christian behavior when I stopped being a Christian. Still, I grew up being taught that being Christian meant something good and decent and special—that you were somehow above the petty fray of this mundane existence and lived a life devoted to love on a supernatural scale.
I know those people are still out there but you don’t hear from them much anymore. I think that’s sad. It’s sad that all those good people have gone silent and into hiding—I’m sure even within their own churches. It’s sad that nearly all you hear from Christians anymore is a tsunami of bitterness and strife.
Anyway, 1 Corinthians 13 has a lot to say about that. I can’t help but hold up every faux-religious political candidate, every bloviating televangelist and every media whoring pastor to the standards in this Bible passage.
Love is patient, love is kind. It does not boast and it is not proud. It is not self-seeking and it is not easily angered. It always protects, always trusts, always hopes. Compared to this, talking-head Christianity is a boatload of fail.
The message is clear. Even if your sanctimonious self-righteousness is measured on the Richter scale, your inability to show a modicum of compassion throws a white-hot light on your diseased and festering character.
I don’t mind hypocrisy, so long as I’m not forced to treat it kindly. And, like I said, I don’t really have a dog in that fight. If Christianity wants to self-destruct in heartless, self-idolatrizing preening, who am I to get in its way? But what of love?
Interesting that you should ask. I’ve made a remarkable discovery. All my life, I was told that love flowed from a relationship with God. When I gave up God, the love remained. I’m not sure I really expected that, and when I talk to believers I know they don’t expect it because they have said as much. In reality, though, love not only remained, it grew bolder. It expanded into all the little churchy nooks in my life and cleansed me. Without my religion telling it who to love, when to love and how to love, it took root and spread through my life. It was an amazing and beautiful thing. Still is.
In our culture, perhaps the pendulum is beginning to swing the other way. In the wake of last Friday’s Supreme Court ruling that legalized gay marriage, I’ve seen several Christian writers speaking about how it might be time to let compassion take a greater role. “Let’s not be jerks,” one editorialist wrote. I’d be enormously pleased to welcome Christians back onto the love wagon, even though I’m sure most will act like they never stepped off in the first place. For a very few, though, that will be true. May they step forward and lead the way.
Looking back at the passage, I have to agree with St. Paul. No matter what list you put it on, the greatest of these is love. Whatever is said in these pages in the days to come, I hope you can tell it was said in love. I hope it inspires you to love. I hope I can help you see love where you never imagined it could exist. I hope love transforms your life.