I come to write this blog post after reading an article in the New Statesman about the decline of 'The West'. The article suggests that before China or the Middle East, we will see this decline most pertinently in the Balkans, as Russia's proxy Serbia stokes the fires of ethno-nationalism and the EU does nothing.
'Doing nothing' means not sending an army. On the scale of international relations, having a big stick is still the first move. I wonder how things seem on a cosmic scale? My guess is that our petty border disputes are laughable: we have a habitable planet - what are the chances of that? - and we expend our energies killing it and each other. From a cosmic scale, eradicating humans seems like an excellent idea. Yet it is the testimony of the book of Genesis that God has promised not to do this. Could that be because God is love? God's response to our self-destructive estrangement from God, from each other and from the planet is ... for Jesus to die for us. And according to Paul this death is the ultimate demonstration of God's love (Romans 5:9).
On the human scale, love makes slightly more sense, although not always. In another of his letters, to the believers in Corinth, Paul extols love not only as the ultimate quality of God, but also the ultimate quality of humanity. His hymn to love is in the middle of a lengthy debate about worship (so we can only assume that the church's arguments about worship are not as novel as we might think), but it is worth noting the things that Paul explicitly says are worthless without love:
Spiritual experience
Prophetic insight
Knowledge and wisdom
Miraculous faith
Sacrificial living
Martyrdom
At different times and in different places, these things have all been lauded as the most important thing. In my charismatic-evangelical heritage, I have seen prophets, preachers, theologians and miracle-workers given a free pass despite hateful behaviour, because their greatness supposedly covered their lack of love. Paul says nope.
'This is how people will know that you are my disciples: if you love one another.' (John 13:35)
I must admit that one of the motivations for my current study has been the bad behaviour of people who have attended church all their life. I recognise that trauma can misshape a person and that some forms of neurodiversity can make one less aware of one's impact on the world, but seriously, I am lost for words at the way that some Christians behave.
We have sidelined 1 Corinthians 13 to the realm of romantic love and turned the fruit of the spirit in Galatians 5 into a children's song. It's very handy if you want to avoid becoming more like Jesus.
Love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, generosity, faithfulness, gentleness and self-control.
That is something to live towards. When our spiritual ancestors speak about the imitation of Christ, this is surely at the heart of it.
I have written and then deleted a long paragraph about how certain politicians popular with many Christians don't seem to be living up to this image of a mature human. You don't need to read it. What is needed is for us to live towards a notion of Christlikeness based on the witness to Jesus throughout the New Testament. That's my third characteristic, and it's a really simple one.
I'm aware that some of my readers might encounter a more 'muscular' interpretation of Jesus than the one offered by the gospels. That interpretation relies heavily on the image of Jesus returning to earth like Captain Marvel and laying waste to all his enemies. In this view, Jesus was a badass all along, and the whole loving people and dying for them was ... some kind of bait and switch? Honestly, I don't get it.
Anyway, when I read about the Balkans and I thought of true heroism I thought not of a soldier but of an unknown Chinese protestor in Tianmen Square. The superhero Jesus types probably think he was a loser, but I doubt they would ever have the courage to do what he did. Love is so much more than being nice. After all, it's what God is.
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