In my last two postings I mentioned that in the teaching about agape in the Gospel of John, we are told that everyone will know the followers of Jesus by agape. That is the great challenge from our Master -- that using the power of agape is the way everyone will know who are the followers of Jesus Christ (John 13:35).
So today, when we continue following in that tradition established by Jesus and spread abroad by Paul, we take to heart that prediction. But what does that mean -- for people to know the followers of the Christ by the actions of living by the power of spiritual agape, and then sharing agape with each other and also allowing the Holy Spirit to extend agape through concrete actions out to others?
In order for us to be true Christians, agape must be seen through our actions. That’s the whole story today. Agape can become like a radiating energy, spreading out from Christian groups to the world around them. And that’s our challenge -- from the very beginning. So the Christian influence to change the world is known through the evidence of agape. That’s it! That’s what changes the world, because that’s how the power of God works.
And yet… and yet…
...most Christians don’t know what agape is. Those few aware Christians, who have at least heard the word, think it has something to do with love, but they know it can’t be what they normally think love is. But they’re not sure what else agape can be. Even they just don’t know what agape is.
So we have this strange condition in the 21st Century: what the world is supposed to know Christians by is unknown to almost all Christians. How pathetic is that?
We have the ancient challenge from Jesus Christ. And it was meant to be the very thing that defines the mission of our whole enterprise. And yet …
...how can we even begin to know how to start to meet that challenge and proceed with our mission …
… if we don’t even know what the main word is that defines our mission?
So the most important investigation we must complete in order to move forward in the 21st Century is to rediscover what agape is. And we have been held back in our prime investigation by weak translations for 600 years. We can no longer rely on translations of the New Testament. It is of utmost importance that, as quickly as possible, we have to discover through deep prayer -- opening up to the power of God -- what God is giving us in agape.
Then of course, we are challenged by Christ to let that spiritual power of agape work through us.
Thursday, April 28, 2011
Monday, April 18, 2011
Agape in John 13-17
In my last posting I went back to the Gospel of John and looked anew at the teachings of Jesus about agape in chapters 13-17. After all these years of reading those verses, this time when I left “agape” where it was meant to be (not translated into the non-spiritual English word “love”), I could more clearly understand that Jesus actually was teaching about agape.
He was demonstrating to his closest followers what that spiritual power could do in human life and in relationships. That’s why he could make the great identity proclamation that using the power of agape is the way everyone will know the followers of Jesus Christ (John 13:35).
Now I have been able to see that those chapters contained an important connection between the two Greek concepts: “agape” and “Paraclete.” Jesus promised to send to his followers, after his resurrection, a special new spiritual power (that was Paraclete, that usually gets weakly translated into English as ‘Counselor’ or ‘Advocate’ or ‘Helper’ or ‘Companion’). That promise followed directly after he commanded his followers to share agape.
I found it to be better, when translating, to just leave Paraclete as ‘spiritual power’ and to leave ‘agape’ untranslated, as in the following: “If you share my agape, you will keep my commandments. I will ask the Father, and he will send spiritual power, to be with you forever. This spiritual power is the Spirit of Truth, whom the world cannot receive because it neither sees him nor recognizes him. You know him because he lives with you and will be with you.” (14:15-17)
Again, of course, this shows connection with Romans 5:5 -- “The agape of God has been poured into our hearts through the Holy Spirit, who has been given to us.” (Common English Bible -- with “agape” untranslated) That was Paul’s way of showing that same connection as in John between agape and the Holy Spirit. Paul seemed to be saying that the spiritual power sent by Jesus continued to pour agape into the hearts of his followers and into the heart of the community of followers. Of course, Paul’s additional point had to do with the need to live by agape in order for it to truly be effective for growth in faith. So those people who do not put agape into action in the relationships of their lives, they remain stunted in a childishly selfish form of faith. (1 Cor. 13:11)
The sad realization, about the increasingly violent world, is that not enough of those claiming to be Christians actually do learn to live by agape. When Christians don’t put agape into action, then the potential influence of Christian compassion and kindness doesn’t get realized strongly enough to produce the desperately needed reduction in violence.
So today, when we continue following in that tradition established by Jesus and spread abroad by Paul, we take to heart that prediction (from John 13:35) that what identifies the followers of Jesus is living by the power of spiritual agape, and then sharing agape with each other and also allowing the Holy Spirit to extend agape through our actions out to others. It must be done through our actions. Agape becomes like a radiating energy, spreading out from Christian groups to the world around them. So the Christian influence to change the world is known through the evidence of agape.
He was demonstrating to his closest followers what that spiritual power could do in human life and in relationships. That’s why he could make the great identity proclamation that using the power of agape is the way everyone will know the followers of Jesus Christ (John 13:35).
Now I have been able to see that those chapters contained an important connection between the two Greek concepts: “agape” and “Paraclete.” Jesus promised to send to his followers, after his resurrection, a special new spiritual power (that was Paraclete, that usually gets weakly translated into English as ‘Counselor’ or ‘Advocate’ or ‘Helper’ or ‘Companion’). That promise followed directly after he commanded his followers to share agape.
I found it to be better, when translating, to just leave Paraclete as ‘spiritual power’ and to leave ‘agape’ untranslated, as in the following: “If you share my agape, you will keep my commandments. I will ask the Father, and he will send spiritual power, to be with you forever. This spiritual power is the Spirit of Truth, whom the world cannot receive because it neither sees him nor recognizes him. You know him because he lives with you and will be with you.” (14:15-17)
Again, of course, this shows connection with Romans 5:5 -- “The agape of God has been poured into our hearts through the Holy Spirit, who has been given to us.” (Common English Bible -- with “agape” untranslated) That was Paul’s way of showing that same connection as in John between agape and the Holy Spirit. Paul seemed to be saying that the spiritual power sent by Jesus continued to pour agape into the hearts of his followers and into the heart of the community of followers. Of course, Paul’s additional point had to do with the need to live by agape in order for it to truly be effective for growth in faith. So those people who do not put agape into action in the relationships of their lives, they remain stunted in a childishly selfish form of faith. (1 Cor. 13:11)
The sad realization, about the increasingly violent world, is that not enough of those claiming to be Christians actually do learn to live by agape. When Christians don’t put agape into action, then the potential influence of Christian compassion and kindness doesn’t get realized strongly enough to produce the desperately needed reduction in violence.
So today, when we continue following in that tradition established by Jesus and spread abroad by Paul, we take to heart that prediction (from John 13:35) that what identifies the followers of Jesus is living by the power of spiritual agape, and then sharing agape with each other and also allowing the Holy Spirit to extend agape through our actions out to others. It must be done through our actions. Agape becomes like a radiating energy, spreading out from Christian groups to the world around them. So the Christian influence to change the world is known through the evidence of agape.
Tuesday, April 12, 2011
Agape helps us get beyond ego-centric behavior
In previous postings when I explored 1 Corinthians and Romans, I discovered that Paul was saying that agape is not only a gift from God to help us, but it is also a witness. Agape witnesses that true spiritual power is on the side of patience, kindness, justice and truth -- and that it helps people overcome envy, conceit, self-righteousness, judgmentalness, and all other results of ego-centric behavior.
So when we put those two together, we see that the spiritual gift of agape is God’s way of helping us turn away from selfish, ego-centric actions. Paul was showing a new way for Christians to develop spiritually. When we read how Paul explained agape in 1 Corinthians 13, then we know we are dealing with the basis for a new faith discipline that motivates us to look for a spiritual training that will help us live fully through the power of God.
I think Paul was comparing selfish, ego-centric behavior with childishness. That's what he meant when he said, “When I was a child, I used to speak like a child, reason like a child, think like a child. But now that I have become a man, I’ve put an end to childish things.” (1 Cor. 13:11 Common English Bible) So in our struggle to get beyond being controlled by our egos, we need agape to help us become fully mature in our faith development; otherwise, we remain childishly stunted in our growth in faith. That’s why I concluded my last posting by realizing that a follower of Jesus needs to stop identifying with her or his ego; and instead, we need to do as Jesus did by building our identity from the eternal essence we find within.
If we don’t do that, then we are challenged by Paul’s warning that we remain childishly stunted. So the first step in faith growth is to admit that we have to get beyond all forms of envy, conceit, self-righteousness and behavior that is judgmental toward all other people. Otherwise, we get stuck in a faith that is childishly stunted as long as we wrongly think that it's good to feel self-righteous and judgmental toward anyone. That’s why the attitudes that Jesus criticized the most were self-righteousness and judgmentalness.
Of course, those attitudes persist as such a major problem among people claiming to be Christian because it's so easy to deny being self-righteous and judgmental. It's so easy to fall into the trap of thinking religion is suppose to make people feel self-righteous and give them the right to be judgmental. We fool ourselves when we suffer under the illusion that our opinions have to be right and anyone who disagrees with us has to be completely wrong (maybe even evil). That's the great temptation that Jesus was trying to get people to overcome.
But unfortunately, we see that happening all over America during these sad days when Christianity is so strongly divided. So as long as Christians keep thinking they have to protect Christianity by struggling against Christians with different opinions, then we will continue to function with childishly stunted faith. Especially when these struggles get dragged into politics, all of that is terribly destructive.
Paul’s point was faith development must help us be patient, kind, just, and truthful. That is why we need to let agape open us up and work in our life. He was also pointing out that the reverse is just as true: people prove they are not open to agape working in their life -- if they remain so controlled by ego identity as to be self-righteous, judgmental, mean-spirited, and bigoted.
That realization is why I went back to the Gospel of John and looked anew at the teachings of Jesus about agape in chapters 13-17. There I found Jesus instructing his disciples to share the power of agape with each other, just as he had showed them what that spiritual power could do in human life and in relationships. To give the strongest meaning possible to this sharing, he told them that everyone will know they are his disciples because they live by the power of agape (John 13:35). That is why he even put it in the form of a new commandment (13:34). He identified so strongly with the spiritual presence of agape that he could refer to it as “my agape” -- as when he said, “Remain in my agape. If you keep my commandments, you will remain in my agape, just as I have kept my Father’s commandments and remain in his agape. … No one has greater agape than to give up one’s life for one’s friends.” (15:9-13)
(The meaning is so much clearer when “agape” is not translated into some weak English word, but is left “agape” in the original Greek, as it was meant to be.) Then we see that Jesus was talking about a special spiritual power that he was making sure they could receive as a gift from God to help them.
So when we put those two together, we see that the spiritual gift of agape is God’s way of helping us turn away from selfish, ego-centric actions. Paul was showing a new way for Christians to develop spiritually. When we read how Paul explained agape in 1 Corinthians 13, then we know we are dealing with the basis for a new faith discipline that motivates us to look for a spiritual training that will help us live fully through the power of God.
I think Paul was comparing selfish, ego-centric behavior with childishness. That's what he meant when he said, “When I was a child, I used to speak like a child, reason like a child, think like a child. But now that I have become a man, I’ve put an end to childish things.” (1 Cor. 13:11 Common English Bible) So in our struggle to get beyond being controlled by our egos, we need agape to help us become fully mature in our faith development; otherwise, we remain childishly stunted in our growth in faith. That’s why I concluded my last posting by realizing that a follower of Jesus needs to stop identifying with her or his ego; and instead, we need to do as Jesus did by building our identity from the eternal essence we find within.
If we don’t do that, then we are challenged by Paul’s warning that we remain childishly stunted. So the first step in faith growth is to admit that we have to get beyond all forms of envy, conceit, self-righteousness and behavior that is judgmental toward all other people. Otherwise, we get stuck in a faith that is childishly stunted as long as we wrongly think that it's good to feel self-righteous and judgmental toward anyone. That’s why the attitudes that Jesus criticized the most were self-righteousness and judgmentalness.
Of course, those attitudes persist as such a major problem among people claiming to be Christian because it's so easy to deny being self-righteous and judgmental. It's so easy to fall into the trap of thinking religion is suppose to make people feel self-righteous and give them the right to be judgmental. We fool ourselves when we suffer under the illusion that our opinions have to be right and anyone who disagrees with us has to be completely wrong (maybe even evil). That's the great temptation that Jesus was trying to get people to overcome.
But unfortunately, we see that happening all over America during these sad days when Christianity is so strongly divided. So as long as Christians keep thinking they have to protect Christianity by struggling against Christians with different opinions, then we will continue to function with childishly stunted faith. Especially when these struggles get dragged into politics, all of that is terribly destructive.
Paul’s point was faith development must help us be patient, kind, just, and truthful. That is why we need to let agape open us up and work in our life. He was also pointing out that the reverse is just as true: people prove they are not open to agape working in their life -- if they remain so controlled by ego identity as to be self-righteous, judgmental, mean-spirited, and bigoted.
That realization is why I went back to the Gospel of John and looked anew at the teachings of Jesus about agape in chapters 13-17. There I found Jesus instructing his disciples to share the power of agape with each other, just as he had showed them what that spiritual power could do in human life and in relationships. To give the strongest meaning possible to this sharing, he told them that everyone will know they are his disciples because they live by the power of agape (John 13:35). That is why he even put it in the form of a new commandment (13:34). He identified so strongly with the spiritual presence of agape that he could refer to it as “my agape” -- as when he said, “Remain in my agape. If you keep my commandments, you will remain in my agape, just as I have kept my Father’s commandments and remain in his agape. … No one has greater agape than to give up one’s life for one’s friends.” (15:9-13)
(The meaning is so much clearer when “agape” is not translated into some weak English word, but is left “agape” in the original Greek, as it was meant to be.) Then we see that Jesus was talking about a special spiritual power that he was making sure they could receive as a gift from God to help them.
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