Perspective: Reading Well, Loving Well, Living Well

I share these thoughts hoping they are of help to someone else.

Comments are always welcomed.

If you find these thoughts helpful, please share.

Reading Well, Loving Well, Living Well

You have heard that it was said, "You shall love your neighbor and hate your enemy."  But I say to you, Love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you, so that you may be children of your Father in heaven; for he makes his sun rise on the evil and on the good, and sends rain on the righteous and on the unrighteous...  Be perfect, therefore, as your heavenly Father is perfect.

Matthew 5:43-45, 48 (NRSV)

Love is not proud

Love does not boast

Love after all

Matters the most

From "Love Never Fails" by Brandon Heath

In Jesus' day, there were religious scholars who helped the Jewish people to apply their religious Law to their lives and interpreted the Law concerning specific situations people brought them.¹  In the Gospel of Luke, we read that, one day, one such scholar approaches Jesus and asks, "Teacher, what must I do to inherit eternal life?"²

Jesus responds with a couple of questions of His own, "What is written in the law?  What do you read there?"  Notice that Jesus does not simply ask the scholar what the Law says, which the scholar would know well since it is his job to study it.  Jesus wants to know what the scholar reads in the Law.  Perhaps it could be said that Jesus wants to know how the scholar reads the Law.  In other words, Jesus is asking the scholar about his hermeneutic - his method for interpreting the Law.³

The scholar replies, "You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your strength, and with all your mind; and your neighbor as yourself."  He could have replied to Jesus' question in many ways, since there are as many as six hundred thirteen individual instructions in the Jewish Law, but he has chosen to reply with part of the Shema,⁴ which is basically the creed of Judaism,⁵ and a particular instruction from Leviticus.⁶  Both of these instructions concern love, suggesting that the scholar's hermeneutic is one of love.

In the other Gospels, Jesus names the instructions to love God with all one's heart, soul, mind, and strength and to love one's neighbor as oneself as the greatest and second greatest commandments respectively.⁷

Jesus says, "You have given the right answer; do this, and you will live."  Jesus' response teaches us two things.  First, it teaches us that to read Scripture with a hermeneutic of love is to read it correctly.  Second, it teaches us that what the scholar calls "eternal life" is a life of love for God and love for others.  Reading Scripture well teaches us to love well, and to love well is to live well.

The discussion is not yet over.  Wanting to make a point, the scholar asks Jesus, "And who is my neighbor?"  The scholar might read Scripture with a hermeneutic of love for God and love for neighbor, but his definition of neighbor apparently does not include all people.  In other words, he doesn't believe that a person is expected to love everyone.

Jesus responds to the scholar's question with a story commonly known as the Parable of the Good Samaritan, which forces the scholar to consider that maybe the people he hates the most are among his neighbors.⁸  In another Gospel, Jesus calls us to love our enemies and to pray for those who would do us harm, reminding us that God gives the sunshine and the rain, both of which are blessings, to both good people and bad people.  Jesus calls us to be perfect as God is perfect by loving as indiscriminately as God loves.

Not long from now, a certain conference will host a panel discussion about the supposed dangers of social justice to the Church.  When people saw advertisements for the event, they noticed a lack of diversity among the panelists, all of whom happen to be white men.  One of the panelists suggested that diversity among the panelists is unnecessary because they "have the sufficient Word of God."⁹  Maybe the Bible is sufficient, as this man says, but my concern is that he hasn't taken into consideration the temptation for privileged people to misuse Scripture to reinforce their privilege and to justify unloving actions and attitudes toward others.

Reading the Bible is important, but we need to be mindful of how we read the Bible.  We know we're reading the Bible correctly if it helps us to grow in love for God and love for all people.  May we read well so that we love well, and may we love well so that we live will.


Notes:

1. William Barclay.  The New Daily Study Bible: The Gospel of Mark.  2001, Saint Andrew Press.  pp. 35-36
2. This perspective is based primarily on Luke 10:25-29.  Quotations are taken from the New Revised Standard Version.
3. Wikipedia: "Hermeneutics"
4. Deuteronomy 6:4-9
5. William Barclay.  The New Daily Study Bible: The Gospel of Matthew, Volume Two.  2001, Saint Andrew Press.  p. 324
6. Leviticus 19:18
7. Matthew 22:34-40 and Mark 12:28-34
8. Luke 10:30-37
9. https://twitter.com/JoshBuice/status/1130520388839116802

The Scribe Stood to Tempt Jesus was painted by James Tissot in the late 1800s.