“Agape” in all people

While I was finding quotes from other religions, I decided to post them in my other blog: www.agapeworker.wordpress.com 

When I got 37 of them posted and then re-read them, I began to realize that the spiritual power referred to in Christianity with the Greek word, agape, is not limited to Christians, but is created in such a way that it’s in everyone, but with different words used to reference it. So I was able to see that when the famous theologian Paul Tillich said that in agape “ultimate reality manifests itself and transforms life and love,” he was speaking in universal terms. 

I understood Tillich to mean that the spiritual manifestation given to everyone through ultimate reality was agape, and so that manifestation has the potential of transforming all life and universal love. Such is the ultimate power of agape over all life and all love everywhere. But with all spiritual reality for humans, there is a catch. That catch involves freedom. Which means that the responsibility is placed on us. To transform the potentiality into actuality, we have to respond.

So if we can act in such a way as to allow agape power to come alive for us and for our relationships with those around us, then we can let agape transform us. This possibility is available to all.

To me, that is what Thomas Merton was referring to when he said, “Only agape can attain and preserve the good of all.”

As I have continued to reflect about that, the universal meaning has become increasingly important for my understanding of what the access to agape can do for solving the problems that are causing such destructive consequences for human interaction and international conflicts.

Short “Agape” insights from M.L. King, P. Tillich, and T. Merton

When I reflected on, and was moved by, the amazing inspiration from Martin L. King, Paul Tillich, and Thomas Merton, some of the insights stood out as more helpful than others, so what follows is a collection of those special insights.
      “When Jesus bids us to love our enemies, he is speaking neither of eros nor philia, he is speaking of agape, understanding and creative, redemptive goodwill for all men. An overflowing love which seeks nothing in return, agape is the love of God operating in the human heart. At this level, we love men not because we like them, nor because their ways appeal to us, nor even because they possess some type of divine spark; we love every man because God loves him. At this level, we love the person who does an evil deed, although we hate the deed that he does. Now we can see what Jesus meant when he said, ‘Love your enemies.’ Have we not come to such an impasse in the modern world that we must have agape for our enemies — or else? The chain reaction of evil — hate begetting hate, wars producing more wars — must be broken, or we shall be plunged into the dark abyss of annihilation. Only by following this way and responding with this type of love are we able to be children of our Father who is in heaven.
      “When I speak of agape I am not speaking of some sentimental and weak response. I am speaking of that force which all of the great religions have seen as the supreme unifying principle of life. Agape is somehow the key that unlocks the door which leads to ultimate reality.” 
                                                         …Martin Luther King

      “Agape enters from another dimension into the whole of life and into all qualities of love. One could call agape the depth of love or love in relation to the ground of life. One could say that in agape ultimate reality manifests itself and transforms life and love. Agape seeks the other one in his center. Agape sees him as God sees him.”  …Paul Tillich

      “To serve the God of agape one must be free, one must face the terrible responsibility of the decision to share agape in spite of all unworthiness whether in oneself or in one’s neighbor.
      “Only agape can attain and preserve the good of all.
      “My true identity lies hidden in God’s call to my freedom and my response to God. This means I must use my freedom in order to share agape, with full responsibility and authenticity, not merely receiving a form imposed on me by external forces, or forming my own life according to an approved social pattern but directing my agape to the personal reality of my brother, and embracing God’s will in its naked, often impenetrable mystery.” …Thomas Merton

And now here are a few of the scripture quotes that inspired the above quotes:
      “I give you a new commandment: have agape for each other. Just as I have agapan you, so you also must agapao each other. This is how everyone will know that you are my disciples, when you have agape for each other.” (Jn. 13:35)

      “Neither death nor life, no angel, no prince, nothing that exists, nothing still to come, not any power, or height or depth, nor any created thing, can ever come between us and the agape of God made visible in Christ Jesus our Lord.” (Rom. 8:39)

      “Agape puts up with all things, trusts in all things, hopes for all things, endures all things. Agape never fails. … Now faith, hope, and agape remain -- these three things -- and the greatest of these is agape.” (1 Cor. 13:13)

More “Agape” insights from the 23 postings

After waiting over a month from the last of the following 23 postings of quotes, as I read them again I’ll continue copying here some of the insights that stood out as especially spiritually helpful, so what follows is a collection of those special insights. 

(And of course, because I had started seeing in modern writing that where the spiritual meaning of love appeared, we could gain new understanding by substituting ‘agape’ for ‘love.’ So I did that in the quotes from those 23 blog postings.)

    “Spiritual power is the animation energy of agape. The light of agape is the energy and motion that have called us to prayer, allowing us to perceive at least bits of deeper reality.

    “Our hearts are like diamonds because they have the capacity to express divine light, which is agape; we not only are portals for this agape, but are made of it.

    “I felt a shift inside, the conviction that agape was having its way with me, softening me, changing my cold stone heart. The feeling grew stronger and stronger, until, unfortunately, church was over. Driving home, I tried to hold on to what I’d heard that day: that having agape for your enemies was nonnegotiable. It meant trying to respect them, it meant identifying with their humanity and weaknesses. It didn’t mean unconditional acceptance of their crazy behavior. They were still accountable for the atrocities they’d perpetrated, as you were accountable for yours. But you worked at doing better, at having agape for them, for the profoundest spiritual reason: you were trying not to make things worse.

    “We don’t transform ourselves, but when we finally hear, the Spirit has access to our hearts, and that is what changes us.

    “You are Spirit, you are agape, and even though it is hard to believe sometimes, you are free. You’re here to share agape, and to receive agape, freely.” …Anne Lamott

“First we need to turn to God, we need to feel God’s agape, we need to open our hearts to God’s agape. As we pray for others, our prayers are gradually transformed, our hearts are softened, and our eyes are opened. Once opened we can never close our eyes again. We begin to see the world through God’s eyes of agape. The process of praying for others begins with God. God already has agape for us. God is already involved in our lives and the lives of those for whom we pray. God calls us into a network of relationships with God and all of creation. When we pray for others, we respond to God’s call and become engaged with God and our sisters and brothers. Our prayer is also an expression of gratitude for God’s ongoing presence in our lives.” …Jane Vennard

    “Life is essentially about learning to share agape. When we have agape for someone from our depths — from Essence — we draw the other’s Essence out from hiding so that he or she can more easily express it.

    “It’s not easy to break free of ego identification and to share agape. When we do, we feel free and happy. And agape, freedom, and happiness are what we all have wanted all along. Agape isn’t something we can understand because its not able to be grasped by the mind. Agape is not in the mind’s or the ego’s domain. It’s a quality of Essence — of who we really are. Yet agape is where fulfillment lies and why relationships are so important to us.

    “To align yourself with Essence and experience agape and the other qualities of Essence, all you have to do is notice agape … choose agape over the ego’s ideas, and that choice brings you into alignment with Essence. From Essence agape flows.” …Gina Lake

    “God’s kingdom is agape. What does it mean to share agape? It means to be sensitive to life, to things, to persons, to feel for everything and everyone to the exclusion of nothing and no one.

    “Agape is already there within you. All you have to do is remove the blocks you place to sensitivity and it would surface.

    “What is agape? It is a sensitivity to every portion of reality within you and without, together with a wholehearted response to that reality.

    “When you are tapping into agape you find yourself looking at everyone with new eyes; you become generous, forgiving, kindhearted, where before you might have been hard and mean. Inevitably people begin reacting to you in the same way and soon you find yourself living in a loving world.” …Anthony DeMello

The word “Agape” used in the following 23 postings

Over 20 years ago, I started every morning’s meditation time by focusing on Paul’s important description of the spiritual basis of hope. When I found out that the original Greek version of Romans 5:5 did not contain what was at that time the common word for love but instead used the unusual, archaic word ‘agape,’ I used that word in meditating.

After a few months of doing that, I realized that ‘agape’ had such spiritual depth that it should be used in English versions because the English word ‘love’ has the same meaning as the Greek word that Paul purposely did not use. So the English version of Rom. 5:5 should read: “Hope does not disappoint us, because God’s agape has been poured into our hearts through the Holy Spirit that has been given to us.” Of course, that gives the basis for ‘agape’ referring to a spiritual power that was created in every person’s heart.

Then I began going thru the whole New Testament and copied the scripture passages with ‘agape’ replacing ‘love’ wherever ‘agape’ appeared in the original Greek. That produced quotes like: “Nothing therefore can come between us and the agape of Christ, even if we are troubled or worried, or being persecuted, or lacking food or clothes, or being threatened or even attacked. … For I am certain of this: neither death nor life, no angel, no prince, nothing that exists, nothing still to come, not any power, or height or depth, nor any created thing, can ever come between us and the agape of God made visible in Christ Jesus our Lord.” (Rom. 8:35-39) Then I used all those reworked passages as the basis for my book, The Seven Steps of Agape Prayer.

That practice ended up giving me new insight into the famous verses in Paul’s First Letter to the Corinthians. I finally was able to see that chapter 13 was actually Paul’s way of explaining to the little Corinthian church what ‘agape’ meant. Before that I had always wondered why Paul felt the need to explain love. Of course, he didn’t. But those Greeks in Corinth must have thought it strange that Paul had kept using an old, unused word to talk to them about spiritual power. So if we mistakingly try translating those passages with the English word ‘love,’ we miss that whole explanation that Paul was giving.

So here is the spiritual impact of what Paul meant in 1 Corinthians 13: “I’m going to show you an even better way. If I speak in tongues of human beings and of angels but I don’t have agape, I’m a clanging gong or a clashing cymbal. If I have the gift of prophecy and I know all mysteries and everything else, and if I have such complete faith that I can move mountains, but I don’t have agape, I’m nothing. If I give everything that I have and hand over my body to feel good about what I’ve done but I don’t have agape, I receive no benefit whatsoever. Agape is patient, agape is kind, it isn’t jealous, it doesn’t brag, it isn’t arrogant, it isn’t rude, it doesn’t seek its own advantage, it isn’t irritable, it doesn’t keep a record of complaints, it isn’t happy with injustice, but is happy with the truth. Agape puts up with all things, trusts in all things, hopes for all things, endures all things. Agape never fails. … Now faith, hope, and agape remain -- these three things -- and the greatest of these is agape.” (1 Cor. 12:31-13:8, 13)

So of course, if we find places in the gospels where ‘agape’ appeared, we get such new understanding as: “I give you a new commandment: have agape for each other. Just as I have agapan you, so you also must agapao each other. This is how everyone will know that you are my disciples, when you have agape for each other.” (Jn. 13:34-35)

Then I started seeing in modern writing that where the spiritual meaning of love appeared, we could gain new understanding by substituting ‘agape’ for ‘love.’ So I have reproduced those quotes in the following 23 blog postings.

Agape in a MARTIN LUTHER KING sermon

Back in 2010 I wrote in this blog about Martin Luther King’s use of ‘agape.’ In his book of sermons, Strength to Love, he talked about agape, in his sermon "Loving our Enemies," when discussing the word that was used in the Greek translation of the command from Jesus about enemies. Dr. King said:

“Our responsibility as Christians is to discover the meaning of this command and seek passionately to live it out. The meaning of love [in that command from Jesus] is not to be confused with some sentimental outpouring. [That] love is something much deeper than emotional bosh. Perhaps the Greek language can clear our confusion at this point. In the Greek New Testament are three words for love. The word eros is a sort of aesthetic or romantic love. In the Platonic dialogues eros is a yearning of the soul for the realm of the divine. The second word is philia, a reciprocal love and the intimate affection and friendship between friends. The third word is agape, understanding and creative, redemptive goodwill for all. An overflowing love which seeks nothing in return, agape is the love of God operating in the human heart.”

So I wondered how Dr. King’s words would read if in the rest of his sermon he would have used ‘agape’ instead of ‘love,’ where he meant ‘agape.’

“At this level, we share agape not because we like them, nor because their ways appeal to us, nor even because they possess some type of divine spark; we have agape for everyone because God has agape for them. At this level, we have agape for the person who does an evil deed, although we hate the deed that he does. Now we can see what Jesus meant when he said, “Love your enemies.” We should be happy that he did not say, “Like your enemies.” It is almost impossible to like some people. Jesus is speaking neither of eros nor philia, he is speaking of agape. Only by following this way and responding with this type of love are we able to be children of our Father who is in heaven.

“Far from being the pious injunction of a Utopian dreamer, the command to have agape for one’s enemy is an absolute necessity for our survival. Agape even for enemies is the key to the solution of the problems of our world. Jesus is not an impractical idealist: he is the practical realist.

“When I speak of agape I am not speaking of some sentimental and weak response. I am speaking of that force which all of the great religions have seen as the supreme unifying principle of life. Agape is somehow the key that unlocks the door which leads to ultimate reality.

“At the center of nonviolence stands the principle of agape. The nonviolent resister would contend that in the struggle for human dignity, the oppressed people of the world must not succumb to the temptation of becoming bitter or indulging in hate campaigns. To retaliate in kind would do nothing but intensify the existence of hate in the universe. Along the way of life, someone must have sense enough and morality enough to cut off the chain of hate. This can only be done by projecting the ethic of agape to the center of our lives.

“Everywhere and at all times, the agape ethic of Jesus is a radiant light revealing the ugliness of our stale conformity.

“A vigorous enforcement of civil rights laws will bring an end to segregated public facilities which are barriers to a truly desegregated society, but it cannot bring an end to fears, prejudice, pride, and irrationality, which are the barriers to a truly integrated society. These dark and demonic responses will be removed only as men are possessed by the invisible, inner law which etches on their hearts the conviction that all men are brothers and that agape is mankind’s most potent weapon for personal and social transformation. True integration will be achieved by true neighbors who are willingly obedient to unenforceable obligations.

“We must never surrender our supreme loyalty to any time-bound custom or earth-bound idea, for at the heart of our universe is a higher reality— God and the realm of agape— to which we must be conformed. This command not to conform comes, not only from Paul, but also from our Lord and Master, Jesus Christ, the world’s most dedicated nonconformist, whose ethical nonconformity still challenges the conscience of mankind.

“We must have agape for our enemies, because only then can we know God and experience the beauty of God’s holiness. The relevance of what I have said to the crisis in race relations should be readily apparent. There will be no permanent solution to the race problem until oppressed men develop the capacity to have agape for their enemies. The darkness of racial injustice will be dispelled only by the light of forgiving agape.

“Agape is the most durable power in the world. This creative force, so beautifully exemplified in the life of our Christ, is the most potent instrument available in mankind’s quest for peace and security.

“Wisdom born of experience should tell us that war is obsolete. There may have been a time when war served as a negative good by preventing the spread and growth of an evil force, but the destructive power of modern weapons eliminates even the possibility that war may serve as a negative good. If we assume that life is worth living and that man has a right to survival, then we must find an alternative to war.”

Agape in THOMAS MERTON’s “No Man is an Island”

Because Thomas Merton was a Trappist monk, in those places in his book, No Man is an Island, where he uses ‘love’ in a spiritual way that the meaning is ‘agape,’ the word was changed to ‘agape’ in these quotes in accordance with biblical tradition.

“If I am to share agape with my brother, I must somehow enter deep into the mystery of God’s agape for him. I must be moved not only by human sympathy but by that divine sympathy which is revealed to us in Jesus and which enriches our own lives by the outpouring of the Holy Spirit in our hearts. I must seek the life of the Spirit of God breathing in him. And I can only discern and follow that mysterious life by the action of the same Holy Spirit living and acting in the depths of my own heart.

“My sharing agape with them must be to them the ‘sacrament’ of the mysterious and infinitely selfless agape God has for them. My action of sharing agape must be for them the minister not of my own spirit but of the Holy Spirit.

“Only agape, which is as strong and as sure as the Spirit of God, can save us from the lamentable error of pouring out on others a love that leads them into error and urges them to seek happiness where it can never be found.

“What all look for in life is our own salvation and the salvation of those we live with. By salvation I mean first of all the full discovery of who I really am. Then I mean something of the fulfillment of our own God-given powers, in having agape for others and for God. I mean also the discovery that we cannot find ourselves in ourselves alone, but that we must find ourselves in and through others. This is summed up in two lines of the Gospel: 'If any man would save his life, he must lose it,” and, “Have agape for one another as I have agape for you.' 

“The discovery of ourselves is always a losing of ourselves— a death and a resurrection.

“To find 'ourselves' then is to find not only our poor, limited, perplexed souls, but to find the power of God that raised Christ from the dead and 'built us together in Him unto a habitation of God in the Spirit' (Ephesians 2: 22).

“True happiness is found in unselfish agape, which increases in proportion as it is shared. There is no end to the sharing of agape, and, therefore, the potential happiness of agape is without limit. Infinite sharing is the law of God’s inner life.

“The gift of agape is the gift of the power and the capacity to share agape, and, therefore, to give agape with full effect is also to receive it. So, agape can only be kept by being given away, and it can only be given perfectly when it is also received.

“In order to let agape flow to others I must be true to them, to myself, and to God.

“Only agape, that senses the designs of Providence, can unite itself perfectly to God’s providential action upon souls. Faithful submission to God’s secret working in the world will fill our sharing agape with piety, that is to say with supernatural awe and respect. This respect, this piety, gives our sharing agape the character of worship, without which our acts of sharing agape can never be quite complete. For agape must not only seek the truth in the lives of those around us; it must find it there. But when we find the truth that shapes our lives we have found more than an idea. We have found a Person. We have come upon the actions of One Who is still hidden. And in that One we also find ourselves.”

Agape in THOMAS MERTON’s “New Seeds of Contemplation”

And again, in those places in his book of inspiration, New Seeds of Contemplation, where Thomas Merton uses ‘love’ in a spiritual way that the meaning is ‘agape,’ the word was changed to ‘agape’ in accordance with biblical tradition.

"It seems that the deep movements of the Spirit of God’s agape keep striving, at least lightly, to impress themselves on every one that God draws into this joyous and tranquil light. What you experience is the emptiness and purity of your own faculties, produced in you by a created effect of God’s agape. These effects are intensified by the light infused into your soul by the Spirit of God and raising it suddenly into an atmosphere of dark, breathless clarity.”


THREE MODES OF CONTEMPLATIVE BEGINNINGS: 

      (1) "a sudden emptying of the soul in which images vanish, concepts and words are silent, and clarity suddenly opens out until your whole being embraces the emptiness and unfathomable incomprehensibility of God;

      (2) "you learn to rest in an inner desert of aridity in which you can find a kind of stability and peace and the assurance of a comforting and mighty presence of God in a light that is painful;  

      (3) "you learn to find a tranquility full of savor and unction in which, although there is nothing to feed and satisfy either the senses or the imagination or the intellect, the will rests in a deep, luminous and absorbing experience of agape. This agape is like the shining cloud that enveloped the Apostles on Tabor so that they exclaimed: “Lord, it is good for us to be here!” You realize, at least in some obscure fashion, that this beautiful, deep, meaningful tranquility that floods your whole being with its truth and its substantial peace is a sign of the mission of Christ."

Agape in THOMAS MERTON’s Mystics and Zen Masters 

“Existential theologians look for a transformation of communal life by the leaven of Christian freedom and agape.

“To say that I am made in the image of God is to say that Agape is the reason for my existence … Agape is my true identity … Agape is my true character. Agape is my name.”