[Dialogue] Something to consider

[KroegerD at aol.com]

See How They Love One Another

By Gary G. Kohls,  MD

"See how they love one another" was the phrase used by outside  observers
of the early Christian house church communities. There was  something
about the followers of Jesus back then that attracted the attention  of
gentiles, Jews, Roman soldiers, and others that set them apart from  the
rest of society. It was something so unusual that it prompted  strong
reactions, ranging from brutal persecutions to an eager rush to join  the
movement.

It was something special that hadn't been tried by the  people of the
ancient world prior to the ministry of Jesus. It was something  radical,
but it worked to heal many of the ills of the world and brought  inner
peace to an oppressed people. 

That something was called the  unconditional love of friend and enemy.
It was the essence of the message and  ministry of Jesus of Nazareth, and
it soon became known by his followers as  "The Way."

Jesus preached, and he modeled, a new peace plan for  humankind. All
through the history of the chosen people, God, through various  prophets,
tried to teach the chosen people the way to peace and justice.  The
successes and failures came and went. Finally God sent his son with  the
ultimate peace plan. Here was the simple formula: Love the Lord  your
God with all your heart, strength, mind and soul. Love your neighbor  as
yourself. Do unto others as you would have them do unto you.  Become
peacemakers. Do good to those who persecute you. Refuse to  retaliate
for evil done to yourself. Treat the "least of these" as you  would
treat me. Teach all that I have commanded you. Love your enemies.  And
the really hard one, the only commandment that is original with  Jesus,
his New Commandment: Love as I have loved you.

Why is that one  so tough? Jesus, the ultimate manifestation of the holy
spirit of God here on  earth, loved all of God's creatures and creation,
but he had a special  affection for the outcasts, the "sinners" and
oppressed of society, the poor,  the hungry, the thirsty, the naked, the
homeless and the imprisoned. These  were the hardest ones to love but he
focused his ministry on them. His  mission was to relieve human misery.
The miserable ones were the ones ignored  by the religious leaders at the
time. But Jesus cared for them just as a  loving father would do. He
didn't check first to see if they were deserving  of his mercy or
healing. Jesus was indiscriminate with his love, and he  taught his
followers to do the same. 

Jesus also showed us how to live  nonviolently, an important part of the
teachings of the early Christian  church. One of the early Fathers of the
church, Tertullian, said, "When Jesus  disarmed Peter in the garden, he
disarmed all Christians." Thus, the early  church regarded itself as a
pacifist community, with baptized members  consistently refusing to serve
in Rome's military until the Emperor  Constantine stopped the
persecutions and "blessed" (or cursed) the church  with property, power
and prestige (that then had to be defended) around 313  AD. Justification
for the participation of the professed followers of the  nonviolent Jesus
in the mass slaughter of Rome's wars soon followed with the  Just War
teachings of Augustine of Hippo co-opting Jesus' teachings  about
Christian nonviolence for the next 1700 years.

The love that  Jesus loved was merciful. Prior to Jesus' time, the Jews
had been taught to  love their neighbors but hate their enemies. They
were taught to return evil  for evil, an eye for an eye, and a tooth for
a tooth. But Jesus turned those  pre-Christian teachings on their heads,
even commanding his followers to love  their enemies! 

Besides being unconditional, nonviolent and merciful,  another important
quality of Christ-like love is the willingness to  sacrifice. Jesus
obviously refused to resort to homicidal violence, but he  was willing to
courageously suffer for the cause. He told Peter in the garden  of
Gethsemane at the time of his arrest, "Put up the sword. The one  who
lives by the sword dies by the sword." And then he reached down  and
healed the ear of the one who was going to take him to his death.  

Jesus asks us to do no less. We should be unwilling to kill, but  we
should be willing to suffer in our acts of resistance to evil. That  was
the way of Gandhi, Martin Luther King, Oscar Romero, Leo  Tolstoy,
Dorothy Day, Thomas Merton, Dan and Phil Berrigan and a host of  other
pacifist heroes of the faith who have positively influenced the  church
and the world, and it was the way of Jesus. 

An insightful  critic of the Christian church once said, "Christianity
hasn't succeeded  because it was tried and then failed, it has failed
because it hasn't been  tried." There is a lot of truth in that. The
clear commands from Jesus to his  followers to practice Christ-like love
are difficult to obey, especially at  the institutional level. But the
original form of Christianity experienced  amazing success in the first
two centuries after Jesus by being obedient.  Despite terrible
persecutions, the church flourished, but the measurements of  success
back then weren't membership roles or money in the bank or a  beautiful
temple or well-done worship services. The measurement of success  back
then was the presence of love, not just between the believers but  for
all the children of God.

There are very few modern churches that  are totally committed to
teaching AND practicing the Christ-like love that  was modeled by Jesus,
nor are there many churches that prepare and then send  forth into the
world their members to be conscientious objectors to war and  violence,
as Jesus and the early church did. There is however, a small  minority of
individual believers in and practitioners of The Way of  Jesus.
Unfortunately, many of them have already fled the Just War and  pro-war
churches and, finding no churches to join that practice the teachings  of
The Way, find themselves with no power to influence the church.  I
choose to believe that if enough Christians would see the  practicality
of such faith-based nonviolence and then stay within the  churches, they
could transform their churches and the churches could then  lead the
world toward peace.

And if such a Christianity would ever  emerge from its 1700 year absence,
curious people outside such communities,  especially altruistic young
people, would marvel and say, "See how they love  one another," and then
rush to join the movement.

Gary G. Kohls. MD,  for Every Church A Peace Church  (www.ecapc.org)



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