The Opposite of Love?

I've been reading Greg Boyd's book "Repenting of Religion" which has been a great read for me (although the first couple of chapters were pretty slow for me). One of the points that Boyd makes has to do with the forbidden tree in the middle of the Garden of Eden.

Boyd says he always wondered why a tree with the fruit of the knowledge of good and evil was a bad thing.

Consider, why was the fruit of the forbidden tree a fruit that was said to give the knowledge of good as well as evil? Isn't the "knowledge of good" a good thing? Aren't we Christians supposed to be promoting "the knowledge of good"? Isn't following God all about increasing our "knowledge of good and evil" so we can side with "the good" and resist "the evil"? And yet, whether it fits our preconceptions or not, in the Genesis narrative the nature of the sin that separates us from God is said to be the "knowledge of good and evil."

A conundrum indeed. Boyd continues:

We have failed to understand and internalize the biblical teaching that our fundamental sin is not our evil--as though the solution for sin was to become good-- but our getting life from what we believe is our knowledge of good and evil. Our fundamental sin is that we place ourselves in the position of God and divide the world between what we judge to be good and what we judge to be evil. And this judgment is the primary thing that keeps us from doing the central thing God created and saved us to do, namely, love like he loves.

Coming from a not-quite-fundamentalist background, I really had to wrestle with this concept. After all, I was always taught that holiness meant separation, that "we" are somehow different from "them." To be sure, there are biblical commands that we should be "different" But the question is, "In what way should we be different?"

What really interested me in Boyd's book was in chapter three when he talks about the "center." He writes,

Christians sometimes try to assess how they or others are doing on the basis of such things as how successfully they conquer a particular sin, how much prayer and Bible study they do, how regularly they attend and give to church, and so forth. But rarely do we honestly ask the question that Scripture places at the center of everything: Are we groing in our capacity to love all people?...Are we increasing in our capacity to ascribe unsurpassable worth to people whom society judges to have no worth?

That's the center--LOVE. The way we are different or peculiar (I love that word) is that we love wholly and completely. Jesus said they will know we are his disciples by our LOVE, not by our "knowledge of good and evil."

Boyd then raises the object that some people have.

Even as I write these words, I can hear someone saying, "Yes we must love. But we must balance love with truth." "Love has its place, but we must not forget God's wrath." "Love must never take the place of correct biblical doctrine."

The problem is that nothing "balances" love. Love is the pinnacle. 1 John says that God IS love. It doesn't say that God IS wrath. There is nothing that balances out love.

Peter Kreeft says:

What is the wrath of God...? Is it real or not? It is real, but it is not part of God himself. God is not half love and half wrath, or 99 percent love and 1 percent wrath. God is love. Wrath is how his love appears to us when we sin or rebel or run away from him. The very light that is meant to help us, appears to us as our enemy when we seek the darkness.

Back to the Garden...When we realize that judgment falsely puts us in the place of God, we become free to more truly resemble him by loving. Judgment creates and "us vs. them" mentality. It becomes easy to look at people from afar and make sweeping generalizations about them. But love doesn't allow us to separate ourselves from others on any basis, even if it's what we consider to be the greatest sins. Love is blind to that kind of thinking.

Will there be judgment for sin? Absolutely, but we can leave the judgment up to God and just love people--as Boyd says "ascribe unsurpassable worth" to them.

For God did not send his son into the world to condemn the world, but to save the world through him. (John 3:17)

It's taken me a while to grasp this principle and it's actually one that I still wrestle with, but at this point, I can't deny its truth.

Behind the Curve

I've been thinking some about why it's so hard to live out faith in a real and tangible way. I was reading through Ephesians 4 and started thinking about verse 14, "Then we will no longer be infants tossed back and forth by the waves and blown here and there by every wind of teaching and by the cunning and craftiness of men in their deceitful scheming."

As I was reading it, it occurred to me that the Church as a whole has always seemed to be behind the curve of social good and change. I think the exception to this was the early church (first 300 years or so). Rodney Stark notes that the church's greatest growth came during the two major epidemics of the Roman Empire in 165 and 250 AD. Durning these epidemics, up to a third of the population of the Roman Empire died.

During these epidemics, while pagans (who had no moral ramifications of their religion) fled to the hills, Christians stuck around and cared for the dying. What historians say is that the very fact that Christians stuck around saved an innumerable amount of lives. During these epidemics, a large number of people did not die from the disease itself, they died of starvation or unsanitary conditions. Such deaths could be prevented just by someone making sure they have their basic needs met.

Christians stuck around and made dent in society. But it seems that since that time, the Church has been much less on the cutting edge and often has to be dragged kicking and screaming through societal changes.

To be fair, often great movements were led by individual Christians living out the teachings of Jesus. Movements for religious freedom (Pilgrims), abolition (William Wilberforce), care for lepers (Mother Teresa), women's sufferage, and American Civil rights (Martin Luther King Jr.) were all led by individuals with Christian convictions. The Church at large always seemed to be fighting them.

Back to Ephesians 4. Could it be that the Church just isn't very mature? It seems as though we are often "tossed back and forth by the waves" of society and that the church reflects and subscribes to culture more than it transforms it. While the church in the first 250-300 years of existence, knew who it was and sought to follow purely the teachings of Jesus and the Apostles, it seems as though the church (after Constantine?) has become preoccupied with other things, namely tradition and power.

Maturity is the ability to live consistently by the truth, even when opposing forces seek to derail. Has the Church lived by the truth of Jesus or have we subscribed more to society?

Lately, there has been a great movement in the church emphasizing love for our neighbors and awareness of global poverty and social issues. It seems the church is starting to take up the cause. But my question is, "shouldn't we have been doing this all along?" I think in many ways, we're trailing the government and even MTV in our awareness and support for the value of life. What took us so long to follow the teaching of Jesus (and even the Old Testament) to love our neighbors and care for the poor and outcast?

It might be that we still have more maturing to do. When Jesus was asked what is most important in the law, he replied, "Love the Lord your God with all your heart, soul, mind and strength and your neighbor as yourself." That seems a pretty simple thing. When they ask Jesus what's the most important thing, he states it pretty plainly. So if we figure out what that means in our church and societal context and stick with that, no matter what movements appear, we're bound to be right on the edge of progress.