Can you imagine a truly loving parent or guardian that will sit idly by and watch their child/ward tread dangerous paths that they’re fully aware will inevitably lead to their death. It doesn’t matter whether my son thinks he’s gonna be safe sitting on the road on a highway. It doesn’t matter what my son’s rights are at the time. His rights won’t keep him safe from the impending danger. Our rights are only beneficial while we’re living. So how foolish would it be of us to focus so much on our rights at the expense of our very lives. My goal at that point is not to be tolerant but to love my son enough to not idly sit by and watch his life end right in front of me. Instinctually, I’ll go grab him! That’s what love does! And when we equate love to blind tolerance, we short-change ourselves. We end up doing the very opposite of what love will do. Blind tolerance may buy us a temporary high of “winning” and maybe an ego boost..but we’ll soon look up to see that truck rushing towards us at the speed of lightning. Love on the other hand might cause a bruise on our hand from being swiftly grabbed just in time to save us. The bruise might sting temporarily but at least we won’t be dead. We short-change ourselves when we expect people to just tolerate us/accept us for who we are without challenging us even if who we are is literally causing our very demise. Love is courageous. Courageous enough to run into the road and grab you as swiftly as possible, at times risking temporarily being hated  by you. Love hopes that after you have come to your senses, you’ll trade that temporary hatred/anger for gratitude. Gratitude that you were loved enough to be saved.

 LOVE = TOLERANCE?

Our society is obsessed with tolerance. Tolerance is unequivocally the most cherished trait of our society. Why? Because tolerance is interpreted as loving your neighbor. This world is convinced that the measure of love is by blindly tolerating people’s lifestyles, choices, decisions  and actions no matter what they are and in spite of their consequences, whether we agree or not. Ironically, the tolerance doctrine seems to come with a caveat- “be intolerant towards anyone that you deem intolerant.” But is the tolerance doctrine so appealing because we genuinely love our neighbors, or is it so appealing because it is a way to look out for our own selves. It seems to function like reverse psychology. If I can indoctrinate everyone to uphold the virtue of tolerance above everything else, I can successfully catechize people not to hold me to any standards. If I can fight for tolerance for all people, then I never have to worry about people criticizing my lifestyle.

On the surface, the tolerance doctrine and movement might appear rather selfless- it’s all about inclusiveness and acceptance and not being judgmental. However, the surface layers quickly peel off to reveal that proponents of this tolerance agenda, are so passionate about it not out of love for their neighbors, but as a way to ensure that they themselves are covered. It is essentially the very opposite of a love for neighbor, it is strictly a love for self, masquerading as a love for neighbor. The tolerance doctrine basically places “me” at the pinnacle of morality. I determine my own right and wrong and no one can expect anything of me. Yet there are many Christians who cling tightly to this doctrine, because they believe they are loving their neighbor. I believe that these Christians jumped straight to the second commandment without even considering the first one.

Once upon a time, Jesus was approached by a Pharisee who asked Him what the greatest of the commandments were. To which Jesus replied, “love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul and with all your mind.’ This is the first and great commandment. And the second is like it: ‘You shall love your neighbor as yourself.’ (Matthew 22:37-39)

There’s a prerequisite to loving our neighbor. And no, it’s not loving ourselves. I’m often amazed to hear people preach on the importance of self love as a prerequisite to loving others. They interpret the scripture above to mean that we cannot effectively love our neighbors unless we first learn to love ourselves. How we come to such a striking conclusion that’s directly opposite to  what the Gospel stands for, beats me. Right at the very beginning when Jesus beckons us towards Him, the first thing He bids us to deny ourselves and pick up our crosses. (Matthew 16:24; Mark 8:34; Luke 9:23). And if that doesn’t drive the message home enough, He later on makes it plain as day when He says that whoever does not hate his own life cannot be His disciple. We can deduce from these scriptures that we don’t have a self-love problem. There’ll be no need for Jesus to require us to deny ourselves if we naturally hated ourselves. Jesus’s command for us to love our neighbors as we love ourselves is literally based on the premise that we are self-lovers naturally and He’s urging us to love others just like we already love ourselves. Remember the commandments that condensed into “love your neighbor as yourself?” Let’s refresh our memories:

• *Honor your father and your mother
• *You shall not murder
• *You shall not commit adultery
• *You shall not steal
• *You shall not bear false witness against your neighbor
• *You shall not covet your neighbor’s house; you shall not covet your neighbor’s wife, or his male servant, or his female servant, or his ox, or his donkey, or anything that is your neighbor’s.

Paul says in Romans 13:9, “for the commandments, “You shall not commit adultery, You shall not murder, You shall not steal, You shall not covet, and any other commandment, are summed up in this word: “You shall love your neighbor as yourself.” If self-love wasn’t man’s natural state and had to be learned, these commandments will be useless. Those commandments were necessary in the first place because we love ourselves too much and our natural tendency is to look out for ourselves, at the expense of others. Stealing, coveting, bearing false witness, committing adultery, murder all have one common root- a love for self at the expense of others. In fact the very false belief that we need to first learn to love ourselves so we can love our neighbor is nothing but evidence of how much we love ourselves. We don’t say that because we want to love our neighbors so fiercely. We say it to justify our preoccupation with ourselves and to excuse our self-absorption while using our neighbor as care of. This is not only a dangerous mentality but an impractical one. At what point do we decide that we love ourselves enough to now begin loving others? And should God not hold us accountable to following His command to love others while He waits on us to learn first to love ourselves?

If you truly believe you don’t love yourself, I challenge you to measure yourself against those commandments and see if you’ve ever failed in any of them. Have you ever been angry at how someone has treated you? Why? Why do you expect people to treat you a particular way if you don’t already love yourself? Have you ever coveted something that belongs to another? Their hair, their lifestyle, their properties, anything of theirs? How can you covet something that belongs to another and wish it were yours or that you too could have that if you didn’t love yourself? So no, the prerequisite to loving others, isn’t learning to love ourselves. Nothing could be farther from the truth. In fact I’d say we need to learn to love ourselves much less so we can actually love others. We are called to consider others to be more important than ourselves (Philippians 2:3); Love afterall is not self-seeking (1 Corinthians 13:5). So what then is the prerequisite to loving others?

THE FORGOTTEN COMMANDMENT

“love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul and with all your mind.’ This is the first and great commandment.  (Matthew 22:37-38)

In an attempt to supposedly love our neighbors, many people have neglected the primary command to love the Lord. We have placed imperfect mortal man in the seat that should be reserved for God- the seat of determining the terms of morality. We have become idolators- giving to a mere created being that is finite in wisdom, a position that belongs to the allwise God alone- letting them dictate to us what is right from wrong.

There is no way we can love our neighbor in truly useful ways, without first loving the Lord with all our heart, all our soul and all our mind. That must be the foundation, and it is upon that foundation that we build all else. We can’t just ignore that foundation and attempt to erect a solid structure. Sooner than later, it will come crushing down and fatally harming those within its bounds. The two commandments are not isolated; in His response Jesus says that the second commandment is like the first. We love our neighbors according to the standards of God, not in spite of His standards. We love our neighbor in the manner that God instructs us to love them, not how they dictate that we love them. Why? Because there’s a way that seems right to man, but it’s end is destruction. (Proverbs 14:12, 16:25) Conversely, the Lord is great and His wisdom is infinite (Psalms 147:5)

Loving imperfect sin-prone humans according to their dictates rather than God’s standards is no love at all. Sooner or later, we’ll look back to realize that we sat idly by watching them as they sat in the middle of the highway, the truck furiously approaching them. We may have succeeded at respecting their rights, but we would have failed terribly at respecting the sanctity of their lives enough to want to protect their lives. We would have failed terribly at loving them in the manner that matters most.

In His Love & Light,

Ivy.

*The theme(s) present in this blogpost is based on my upcoming book. Portions of this post are direct excerpts from the book and thus are protected by copyright laws. You may share this post but only in its entirety. Please do not share isolated portions of this post without my given consent. – Ivy Dika