Stephen
Terry, Director
"Let
Brotherly Love Continue"
Commentary
for the March 26, 2022, Sabbath School Lesson
"And now these three remain: faith, hope and
love. But the greatest of these is love." 
1
Corinthians 13:13, NIV
Many a young man has followed the biblical passage in
Genesis and left his parents to unite with a young woman and become "one
flesh."[i] While people of all ages
marry, for the young it is especially borne to their hearts on wings of hope
and faith in one another. Relatively unblighted by the world's woes, their
minds are filled with romance and an idealized image of their partner. But once
the thrill of planning their wedding is past, they have said their vows and the
guests have gone home, they must gradually face the reality of their
imperfections, not only those of their life partner but their own as well. Few
come to marriage with a clear understanding of what it entails. The young man
that would climb mountains and swim oceans for his true love must be constantly
reminded to take out the garbage. The young woman, so beautiful at the wedding,
does not look that way all the time and especially not first thing in the
morning. Both partners are discovered to be entirely human with all the flaws
that arise in normal human beings.
But it does not end there. When they rub up against one
another's flaws and the heat of that friction arises, they discover that even
the process of communicating with one another is flawed. Words taken one way in
one spouse's family were taken differently in the other's family, and what was
meant without judgment may be seen as very judgmental. Because of differences
in this and other perceptions, a spouse may be tempted to believe that there is
a dark agenda at play. Therefore communication, although fraught with possible missteps
is key to building the marital bond. It is that communication that allows us to
learn the words and phrases that work correctly in a relationship and those
that do not.
In building the marital castle into which we will bring
our children, should we be so blessed, it is important to lay a proper
foundation. That foundation is to believe the best about one another. When
someone does not do a household chore or does it differently than we would
have, do not immediately cast their lot with the vilest of sinners and see it
as a personal rejection. It may simply be their normal. A young wife may ask
her mother-in-law about it and discover, "Oh, that is the way he has always
been about that since he was little." Rather than despair, with thoughtful
self-examination, we may find ourselves discovering that some things about us
that chafe him have been lifelong patterns, too. Maturity in life and in our
relationships comes with recognizing that none of us is without flaws that have
come to us both through nature and nurture. Thousands of years of aberrations
accumulating in our DNA have been responsible for physical and mental
challenges that may not even show up until years into a marriage. With this may
be coupled experiences both good and bad that have shaped and maybe even warped
us before we even had the opportunity to become fully grown. None is free of
these two influences on some level.
Our daily reality shaped by these experiences makes it
clear upon honest reflection that no one is free of flaws.[ii] This is why the first and
most important step in any relationship, whether it is with God, our spouse, or
anyone else is to take responsibility for those flaws, not only those of the
past but each one as it arises and threatens the bond. All too often, in the
heat of confrontation, we can forget this. This can be when it is a good idea
to take a pause for self-reflection rather than adding more fuel to the fire
that may have originally only been a spark.
The Bible compares our relationship with Jesus to
marriage. Many of the same principles that apply to marriage apply to our
relationship to others and to God. Recent stark divides in this country over
political perspectives illustrate this well. We too often develop complete
profiles in our minds of people we have never met, including nefarious agendas
supporting secret activities that, although secret, somehow "everyone" knows
about. Once we profile a person in this way, we find it easier to see them as
someone who deserves all manner of evil, even including death, instead of
someone that Jesus gave his life to save.
Jesus encouraged us to love even those we feel do not deserve
it, those we consider enemies.[iii] Even Christians have a hard
time seeing those outside their denominational constraints as being worthy of
unconditional love. But when the Bible tells us to visit those in prison, it
does not say only those of our denomination or only those who have been wrongfully
imprisoned. When we think about it, if only those worthy should be loved, would
any of us receive God's love? Once again marriage informs us here, for to be
brutally honest, if only the worthy could be loved, would any of us find marriage
partners?
Love means treating others with the treatment we would
prefer for ourselves. That is more than mere toleration. Few of us would want
others only relating to us based on our flaws. That is a judgment of our
worthiness, and we erect barriers against that kind of interaction. Besides,
when we are making those judgments, we are looking at others through a
microscope with a scratched lens. We think our microscope is adequate to the task,
but we cannot see all we need to see to make such judgments. As a result, we
make errors and uproot the good with the bad.[iv] When we do, we can ruin our
relationship with God.
Why is that? It is because we have usurped God's
authority. He has said he will judge at the appropriate time, but we choose to
judge here and now, even though we do not know the half of what God knows about
each of us. Our judgment also tends to deny or ignore the possibility of
redemption as a response to God's love and compassion. This could mean that
many who will be found wanting on that day when God judges the world will be
lost, not because God wanted it, but because our judgmentalism so seared them
that they could not feel the love that we claimed to have.
Much of the Old Testament was written with a harshness
that reflects more of the attitude of Cain than of Abel. Despite Adam and Eve's
fall, we have an arrogance about us that belies our actual state. God is love.[v] That means any act of his
must be loving, including the creation of mankind. But we chose to go our own
way on a different path. Despite the river of blood that flowed down through
history from Cain's act, God has never given up on us. When the number of those
who believed in him dwindled to less than the number of fingers on our hands,
he nonetheless sought to preserve them. As evil grew upon the earth, he sent
his prophets to preach about compassion, justice, and love. We murdered them.
Finally, he sent his Son. We murdered him, too. Then we had the gall to blame
God for all the evil, even claiming he does not exist, or he would have stopped
the slaughter.
The ultimate denial and betrayal of one another is to deny
that God exists. If God is indeed love, then such a denial is a denial of love.
We may feel that is not important. After all our lives are comfortable. We have
food to eat. We have better healthcare than a century ago. We travel at what
would have been incredible speeds throughout most of history. The knowledge of the
world is at our fingertips via the internet. We can communicate with almost
anyone on the face of the earth cheaply or even for free. But despite all the
shining advances, over 16,000 people a year bleed out, murdered on our city
streets. Sadly, even what many people would consider paradise, the tropical
islands of the Caribbean, fill in six of the top ten murder spots globally
based on deaths per hundred thousand population.[vi]
In less than a century, we have fought wars that have
leveled entire cities of hundreds of thousands of citizens to rubble. Some, who
have more faith in mankind than is sensible, thought we had entered a more
enlightened age where such a thing would no longer occur, but as I write this,
Ukraine is experiencing exactly that. Millions flee with little more than the
clothes on their backs. Such is the reliance on mankind's enlightened
evolution. Naively, we relied on the idea of mutual nuclear deterrence to keep
the peace. But as with all of mankind's efforts to force humanity to be morally
responsible, someone always seems to find a way to game the system, and what
was intended to be nuclear deterrence became nuclear blackmail by those who
would threaten nuclear destruction of anyone who challenged their will,
gambling that their opponents feared nuclear holocaust more than they did.
Such efforts to bring peace to the earth seem to always
turn into ropes of sand. The peace that was sought becomes destruction. Such is
the result of denying God and thereby denying love for one another. After all,
if God does not exist, then Jesus' sermons telling us to love one another, even
our enemies, are irrelevant. But if God is dead as some like to believe,
perhaps we are still murdering him as we did the prophets and Jesus. Maybe instead
of killing him off, we could try something new, seeking him out.[vii]