All You Need Is Love...

"For God so LOVED the WORLD that he gave his one and only Son, that WHOEVER believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life." (John 3:16)

I'm sitting in one of my most frequented places on the planet...my local Starbucks after a pretty long couple of days. I'm on my second Americano today which can only mean that my heart is working overtime due to the amount of caffeine and that I am exhausted enough to have felt that a second Americano was necessary. Amidst the craziness of the past couple of days I have found myself thinking about - LOVE.

I just received a CD that is a compilation of four great musical artists and on the front cover, is the word "LOVE". The main track on the CD is "All You Need Is Love". A pretty famous song but also a statement of great truth. But the question that is running through my mind is what do I do with the love I have been given or received? What kind of love is this? Romantic? Brotherly? Godly?

My first thought and belief is that if I could grasp God's love for me and would in turn love God, then both the way I love romantically or in relationship with my "brothers and sisters" would be more complete and more appropriately understood. With this as my main idea it would only make sense to explore what kind of love is this Godly kind of love? What does it mean? What does it look like?

On Sunday, I had a student say that they didn't believe that love existed outside of the love that he knew and experienced within his family. The kind of love, he explained, that was based upon a deep connection, that, when tested due to negative action, still existed because they were family. This got me thinking. Although I disagreed that love didn't exist outside of this relationship, it sparked the thought process about connection, as he called it, within family and Godly love (love in its greatest form).

Using this familial form of love as a picture of what Godly love looks and functions like I was led to think about how that translates to the whole world. After all, the Gospel of John states that God so loved the WORLD. If I claim to love God and Jesus has commanded me to love others as well, should I not also love this way? What does that look like? What did Jesus teach about love?

If familial love is about connection and loving those within your family even when they disappoint you, hurt you, curse you, betray you; and if this kind of love is a great picture of what Godly, unconditional love looks like then there is a statement made by Jesus that blows my mind and in turn, based upon another teaching of Jesus, challenges me to the core.

First, Jesus statement on the cross could be seen as a commentary on family and the Kingdom of God. Jesus, while dying on the cross, looks down to one of his disciples and to his mother, Mary, who is standing at the foot of the cross weeping and broken. The Gospel of John describes this moment saying: "Near the cross of Jesus stood his mother, his mother's sister, Mary the wife of Clopas, and Mary Magdalene. When Jesus saw his mother there, and the disciple whom he loved standing nearby, he said to her, 'Woman, here is your son,' and to the disciple, 'Here is your mother'. From that time on, this disciple took her into his home."

Is it possible that in this moment Jesus is teaching something about what it truly means to love when you are part of the Kingdom of God? Is it possible that Jesus was teaching that in the Kingdom of God it isn't about shared DNA or chromosomes that makes one related or family, but rather, we are to see everyone as family? It's as though Jesus is exploding the boundaries and understanding of family by shifting the paradigm from DNA and chromosomes to each human being because they all share the Divine imprint from the very beginning of time. Furthermore, if Jesus was to see each person through the lens that everyone was to be loved unconditionally, as evidenced by His death on the cross, shouldn't we too live with this kind of love seeing each person as our brother or sister regardless of shared DNA or not?

This thought stretches my mind, however, this thought challenges the very core of the practice of my life when Jesus teaches us the following.

"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 children of your Father in heaven...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 own people, what are you doing more than others? Do not even pagans do that? Be perfect, therefore, as your heavenly Father is perfect." (Matthew 5:43-48)

If Jesus explodes our view of family by extending it to all, and this familial love is a paradigm for what Godly love is, AND Jesus is telling us to LOVE our ENEMIES, is it possible that Jesus is saying that we are to treat our ENEMIES as we would our FAMILY with absolute unconditional love? How about perfect STRANGERS?

This absolutely blows my mind.

If we loved this way how would that change the way we view the conflict in Iraq? How would this impact the way we view and interact with the homeless man who asks us for our loose change? How would this impact the way that we interact with our boss or coworker? What if we no longer saw people as enemies or strangers, acquaintances or even friends, rather we saw them as FAMILY?

I've heard people say that only God can love this way. I would have ask, then why would Jesus teach us what he has? Perhaps it's because Jesus believes we can and it is the only natural response of a life that claims to love God.

If "all we need is love", it may do us some good to change the way in which we view love - not emotion, affection, or a chemical reaction of the brain but instead the deeply rooted connection and spiritual discipline that finds it's origin in the God whose very nature is LOVE.