Agapé and the spiritual development of humanity

 In one of last summer’s postings here, I reflected on what had been slowly formulating for me from inspirations I’d been receiving for 30 years about the purpose of human life. I spelled out my conclusion in this simplest statement possible: THE PURPOSE OF HUMAN LIFE IS SPIRITUAL DEVELOPMENT. 

Now when I look back on that, those words seem too simple and almost too vague. Now I see that a 2nd purpose statement needs to be added: The purpose of spiritual development is to work with divine energy and guidance to build enlightened communities to become the self-awareness of evolution. And that’s where my understanding about agapé fits in: the primary of many purposes of agapé is the power to produce collective spiritual development.

So that gives us the organizing principle for humanity’s next stage in evolution. The main inspiration I’ve received over the years had to do with the crucial role of agapé in humanity’s growth. So I can summarize into 2 functions the spiritual power of agapé within every human: 

1. to bring humans into relation with divine Presence for guidance, and 
2. to facilitate creative relations with All that Is.    

During the last 40 years, I’ve concentrated my intellectual research about agapé on many studies of 1 Corinthians 13, and I’ve come to several conclusions about what was going on in those extremely important verses. The first conclusion came because of the King James Version translation: those verses were about agapé not about love, which was evidenced by the translation of ‘agape’ as ‘charity.’ Obviously, simple human love didn’t need to be explained, but spiritually powerful agapé did need to be explained.

Here is a summary of the strangeness of agapé as given in the 3-verse introduction: agapé is absolutely necessary for any spiritual meaning; for without living by the power of agapé, any attempt at spiritual understanding amounts to nothing — not spiritual experience, not ecstatic revelation, and not supernatural phenomena. Everything is meant to depend on agapé. It is simply that powerful. And so I add this interpretation: any attempt to weaken the power of agapé leads to nothing.

My research into the meaning of the Greek words used to describe agapé has led me to see the creative power of agapé as a way to overcome the negative fear-based process of trying to develop an ego-identity. Trying to build a defensive, fear-based personal identity leads to nothing.

But unfortunately, humanity’s spiritual development has been held back for thousands of years by societies built upon ego-identifying instead of agapé-identifying. Such societies have caused vast numbers of people to ignore their agapé power when building an identity. So the melancholy of human existence comes from not realizing agapé power as the basis of each person’s identity, but instead trying to build an identity from an ego.

Agapé is crucial for creatively and spiritually connecting each person with all of the human race. That importance comes from realizing that we are all in this together, and so we can help each other’s spiritual development; in fact, we need each other for spiritual development. That’s why I claim that the way agapé works, it not only draws each person into direct connection with spiritual Reality, but also develops throughout the human race the capacity to expand the awareness of Divine Presence.

And that’s why agapé is the key. It is the spiritual power that is creative in the process of spiritual development. It is the spiritual power that draws people together to help in all that needs helping. It is the motivational power that creates the ‘loving’ in loving community. It is the inspirational power that creates in people the awareness that we need loving, sustaining, supportive community. So such is not only the basis of the most profound, creative relationships while also the basis of individual spiritual growth and the spiritual development of the human race.