D. Moody Smith, Jr. - "Love Is Not a Special Way of Feeling" (May 26, 1968)
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Transcript
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- | You might say, | 0:03 |
"Our Father who art in heaven, | 0:05 | |
hallowed be thy name. | 0:08 | |
Thy kingdom come, thy will be done | 0:10 | |
on earth as it is in heaven. | 0:13 | |
Give us this day our daily bread | 0:16 | |
and forgive us our trespasses | 0:19 | |
as we forgive those who trespass against us. | 0:22 | |
And lead us not into temptation, | 0:25 | |
but deliver us from evil. | 0:28 | |
For thine is the kingdom | 0:30 | |
and the power and the glory forever. | 0:32 | |
Amen. | 0:36 | |
- | There's a little book of delightful drawings for children | 0:58 |
by Joan Walsh Anglund entitled, | 1:02 | |
Love is a special way of feeling. | 1:05 | |
And who can really doubt that it is? | 1:10 | |
Can one question the fact that human love, | 1:14 | |
whether sexual, paternal, or fili, | 1:17 | |
or filial involves feelings? | 1:22 | |
Even the Old Testament seems to recognize | 1:27 | |
that love involves the dimension of feeling. | 1:31 | |
Deuteronomy 6:4, | 1:36 | |
"Hear, O Israel. | 1:38 | |
The Lord our God, the Lord is one. | 1:40 | |
And you shall love the Lord your God with all your heart | 1:44 | |
with all your soul, and with all your might." | 1:48 | |
This passage is quoted by Jesus in the New Testament, | 1:53 | |
and it certainly seems to imply that love is a feeling. | 1:57 | |
The statement that love is not a feeling, | 2:05 | |
therefore would seem to be, strictly speaking, untrue. | 2:07 | |
And this would seem to be obvious. | 2:13 | |
And so, perhaps, it would be better this morning | 2:16 | |
to say that love is not just a feeling. | 2:18 | |
And I suppose that most people, perhaps everyone, | 2:23 | |
would agree to that. | 2:26 | |
Any yet, I don't want to make that qualification. | 2:29 | |
I want to say very blatantly | 2:33 | |
and with all the risk of contradiction that it involves | 2:35 | |
that love is not a feeling. | 2:38 | |
I want to say it just that boldly and just that sharply | 2:42 | |
because the opposite has such wide currency today, | 2:47 | |
especially among religious or church people. | 2:51 | |
That is, the idea that love is a feeling. | 2:55 | |
That loving is feeling a certain way. | 2:58 | |
That love is a special way of feeling. | 3:02 | |
Is it? | 3:07 | |
Is Christian love a special way of feeling? | 3:09 | |
Well, I'm sure that it must be, | 3:13 | |
but all too often, Christian people tend to think | 3:15 | |
that this aspect of love is the reality itself. | 3:17 | |
If you really love people | 3:23 | |
and you have a certain benign feeling toward them, | 3:25 | |
and that's it. | 3:28 | |
This is what Christ commanded | 3:29 | |
and this is what is important for the Christian life. | 3:31 | |
And thus the Church and churchmen | 3:36 | |
talk a lot about love in the abstract | 3:39 | |
or love as an inward feeling or disposition. | 3:43 | |
All right. | 3:47 | |
As long as the talk remains at that level, | 3:49 | |
nobody gets very excited. | 3:52 | |
Nobody gets angry, and we can all agree | 3:53 | |
that love stands at the heart of the Christian message. | 3:56 | |
We can endure a great deal of scolding and exhortation | 4:00 | |
about the need for love | 4:03 | |
and lack of love in the contemporary world. | 4:04 | |
And then we can all make our own mental reservations | 4:08 | |
as to who is responsible for this lack of love, | 4:12 | |
and it usually turns out not to be ourselves. | 4:15 | |
We can satisfy ourselves | 4:21 | |
that love is principally a way of feeling. | 4:24 | |
We can also finally forgive ourselves. | 4:27 | |
Perhaps forgive ourselves too easily and too soon | 4:30 | |
for not finding very effective ways | 4:35 | |
of expressing that love. | 4:37 | |
That's regrettable that we don't, | 4:40 | |
but after all, we can think not crucial | 4:42 | |
if love is essentially a feeling. | 4:45 | |
Now, this is a very convenient way of looking at things | 4:50 | |
since it avoids some difficulties and hard choices. | 4:52 | |
It also fits rather well | 4:57 | |
with what seems to be a majority view | 4:59 | |
among American Christians. | 5:01 | |
Namely, that the Church ought to be concerned | 5:03 | |
with religious matters rather than social issues. | 5:06 | |
In fact, a recent Gallup poll showed | 5:11 | |
that well over 50% of American Christians, | 5:13 | |
Protestant and Catholics, hold that view. | 5:17 | |
And if love has to do with religious matters | 5:22 | |
rather than social issues, | 5:24 | |
then it is, in fact, | 5:26 | |
best understood and interpreted as a feeling. | 5:27 | |
We may love our enemies. | 5:33 | |
Hold no hatred toward them in our heart of hearts. | 5:35 | |
And yet, if it seems to serve our best interests, | 5:39 | |
shoot them down in the streets without compunction. | 5:42 | |
And this is a rather convenient point of view | 5:46 | |
in troubled times such as ours. | 5:50 | |
It allows us to have our cake and eat it too. | 5:52 | |
We may affirm love at the abstract or inward level | 5:55 | |
and at the same time conduct the affairs of this world | 6:00 | |
without having to be too much concerned or encumbered by it. | 6:04 | |
Or we may affirm that, in fact, we do love people. | 6:08 | |
As white people, we love black people, for example. | 6:14 | |
While at the same time, | 6:18 | |
we tolerate injustice and degradation among them. | 6:20 | |
Love, we say, transcends the circumstances of this world. | 6:26 | |
In fact, we may go so far as to believe | 6:32 | |
that love ought to be expressed in all human relationships | 6:34 | |
and yet withhold approval of concrete attempts | 6:38 | |
to solve human problems, | 6:41 | |
or to right all wrongs | 6:43 | |
on the grounds that the means employed | 6:45 | |
arouse feelings of hostility, rather than feelings of love. | 6:47 | |
Thus, the Church in our time is, not surprisingly, | 6:55 | |
and perhaps conveniently, | 6:58 | |
hung up on the question of what love is and means. | 7:00 | |
Perhaps this is because, for so long, | 7:06 | |
and in many places, still today, | 7:08 | |
high priests and spokesman have espoused and taught | 7:11 | |
a concept of love whose fundamental quality | 7:14 | |
is its inwardness. | 7:17 | |
But for some time now, | 7:21 | |
people have been changing their minds. | 7:22 | |
We have come to a point | 7:26 | |
where there is serious dissension within the church, | 7:28 | |
between people who believe | 7:32 | |
that love is essentially a feeling, | 7:33 | |
and those who think that the concept is vacuous, empty, | 7:37 | |
unless it goes beyond that. | 7:41 | |
And the controversy is certainly not an academic one. | 7:44 | |
Christians, on the one hand, | 7:48 | |
act or speak in ways they think relevant and necessary. | 7:50 | |
Other Christians throw up their hands in horror. | 7:56 | |
Now let me come clean and admit | 8:01 | |
that I do not count myself among those | 8:03 | |
whose characteristic posture is one of dismay or horror | 8:05 | |
at Christian activism or alleged radicalism. | 8:10 | |
And yet, I must not say this | 8:15 | |
out of a desire to be (speaks in foreign language), | 8:17 | |
or where action is. | 8:20 | |
Neither would it be right to say | 8:23 | |
that the Church has to get with it, | 8:25 | |
the Church has to be relevant if it wants to survive. | 8:27 | |
This may or may not be true. | 8:31 | |
The Church has survived in times and places | 8:35 | |
in which it was not obviously relevant to anything much | 8:38 | |
that was going on in the world. | 8:41 | |
Moreover, self-preservation is not, or should not be, | 8:44 | |
the ultimate goal of the Christian Church. | 8:48 | |
The conviction that Christian love needs to bear fruition | 8:53 | |
and needs to bear fruit in concrete acts. | 8:56 | |
That this bearing fruit is essential to its nature | 9:02 | |
comes from the New Testament. | 9:05 | |
If there is something wrong | 9:08 | |
with the widespread subjectivizing | 9:10 | |
and sentimentalizing of love, | 9:12 | |
it is not that it is old-fashioned or irrelevant. | 9:14 | |
Although it may be both of those things. | 9:18 | |
It is rather that such a view | 9:20 | |
is an emasculation of the Gospel | 9:22 | |
and turns it into mere words and feeling | 9:25 | |
rather than spirit and power. | 9:28 | |
Now, our text for the morning | 9:33 | |
speaks very simply and very directly of love. | 9:36 | |
"If anyone has the world's goods | 9:42 | |
and sees his brother in need, | 9:45 | |
yet closes his heart against him, | 9:48 | |
how does God's love abide in him? | 9:51 | |
Little children, let us not love in word or speech, | 9:55 | |
but in deed and truth." | 10:01 | |
For the author of the First Epistle, | 10:05 | |
love is not so much a feeling or even a principle, | 10:08 | |
as it is an act. | 10:12 | |
And this is no less true of divine love than of human. | 10:14 | |
"By this we know love," he writes, | 10:19 | |
"that he, Jesus, laid down his life for us | 10:22 | |
and we ought to lay down our lives for the brethren." | 10:26 | |
In the Gospel of John, | 10:32 | |
we find the same view in the famous passage, John 3:16. | 10:34 | |
"For God so loved the world that he gave his only son." | 10:39 | |
That he acted. | 10:43 | |
It is true to John's thought to say | 10:45 | |
that the love of God, then, is the basis for human love. | 10:47 | |
We love because he first loved us. | 10:52 | |
Yet, it is equally true | 10:56 | |
that John insists upon the inseparable connection | 10:57 | |
of divine love and human. | 11:01 | |
Indeed, there can be no talk of the receiving or the giving | 11:04 | |
of divine love or of love towards God, | 11:08 | |
apart from the expression of human love. | 11:12 | |
"He who does not love his brother whom he has seen", | 11:15 | |
he writes, "cannot love God whom he has not seen." | 11:19 | |
John speaks with a simplicity and a directness | 11:24 | |
that is eloquent. | 11:28 | |
And John does not speak alone. | 11:31 | |
In his own way, the author of the Epistle of James | 11:34 | |
makes the same point when he asks, | 11:36 | |
"If a brother or sister is ill-clad | 11:39 | |
and in lack of daily food, and one of you says to them, | 11:42 | |
'Go in peace, be warmed and filled,' | 11:44 | |
without giving them the things needed for the body, | 11:48 | |
what does it profit? | 11:50 | |
So faith by itself, if it has no works, is dead." | 11:52 | |
The Apostle Paul | 11:57 | |
who speaks a very different theological language from James, | 11:58 | |
can nevertheless stress the importance of obedience | 12:03 | |
to the Jewish law as the expression of God's will. | 12:06 | |
And yet, for him, for Paul, the law is nothing | 12:10 | |
other than obedience to God's commandment, | 12:13 | |
to love the neighbor. | 12:16 | |
"Owe nothing to anyone", writes Paul, | 12:17 | |
"except to love one another. | 12:20 | |
For he who loves his neighbor has fulfilled the law. | 12:22 | |
The commandments, you shall not commit adultery, | 12:26 | |
you shall not kill, you shall not steal, | 12:28 | |
you shall not covet, | 12:31 | |
and any other commandment are summed up in this sentence, | 12:32 | |
'You shall love your neighbor as yourself.'" | 12:36 | |
For Paul, as for James, | 12:41 | |
love is not just a way of feeling, | 12:43 | |
nor is it only an attitude or a principle. | 12:47 | |
Love exists in concrete acts, in generosity, | 12:51 | |
and in obedience to the law. | 12:56 | |
And I think it is particularly significant | 12:59 | |
that Paul understands the law. | 13:03 | |
That is, the specific directions | 13:06 | |
for the ordering of human life | 13:08 | |
as the means of expressing love. | 13:11 | |
The commandments have meaning | 13:14 | |
as they fulfill the command to love the neighbor. | 13:16 | |
Now, all of this implies | 13:21 | |
that any understanding of love as purely feeling | 13:24 | |
or inward disposition | 13:28 | |
is out of line with the roots of the Christian tradition. | 13:30 | |
Not only the Old Testament, but also the New. | 13:34 | |
If the New Testament is to be taken seriously, | 13:39 | |
the Christian cannot settle for love | 13:42 | |
that is merely the absence of ill will. | 13:45 | |
In fact, he cannot settle for love | 13:48 | |
that is merely the presence of good will. | 13:51 | |
He must press constantly | 13:55 | |
toward the meaningful expression of that good will | 13:56 | |
in significant acts. | 14:01 | |
Now, it is a good question, | 14:04 | |
whether the Christian can ever acquiesce | 14:05 | |
in a social or a political order | 14:07 | |
in which such expressions are stymied or inhibited. | 14:10 | |
Surely Christians often have. | 14:15 | |
They have so acquiesced. | 14:17 | |
Sometimes they've had to, | 14:18 | |
as often they have not. | 14:21 | |
And we have often put up with the status quo, in fact, | 14:23 | |
and loved our oppressed, alienated | 14:27 | |
or less fortunate neighbors inwardly or in principle. | 14:30 | |
And it should be no surprise to us | 14:34 | |
if they have have sometimes had difficulty | 14:37 | |
in recognizing this as love. | 14:40 | |
In lecturing to a university audience, | 14:45 | |
Paul Tillich once recall once recalled | 14:49 | |
that some Jewish friends had said to him | 14:52 | |
that Christians talk about love, | 14:55 | |
but Jews are concerned with justice. | 14:59 | |
Tillich accepted this as a valid criticism | 15:04 | |
of Christian actions and attitudes. | 15:06 | |
And yet, he insisted | 15:09 | |
that it is not a valid principle criticism | 15:10 | |
of Christian love. | 15:13 | |
For this love cannot brook injustice or inhuman conditions. | 15:15 | |
"Love," said Tillich, "is fraudulent | 15:20 | |
if it is indifferent to questions of justice | 15:23 | |
and human decency. | 15:26 | |
And thus, Paul Tillich really agreed with that earlier Paul, | 15:28 | |
who insisted that love fulfills the law. | 15:33 | |
Let us put this, now, in every day and concrete terms. | 15:41 | |
I make an annual salary | 15:49 | |
of three to four times that of the janitor | 15:51 | |
who keeps my building clean. | 15:54 | |
Now, if I were making $25,000 a year, | 15:58 | |
this would not be cause for serious concern. | 16:02 | |
I think, however, | 16:06 | |
that I'm not violating the university's policy | 16:06 | |
against disclosing faculty salaries | 16:10 | |
if I disclose that I'm not making nearly that much. | 16:13 | |
My income is adequate, | 16:18 | |
but I'm not salting much of it away in mutual funds | 16:20 | |
or in Swiss banks. | 16:23 | |
Now, the point is that modest living in the American way | 16:26 | |
seems to require four or perhaps five times as much income | 16:29 | |
as some of the people, | 16:33 | |
with whom I come in contact every day, are making. | 16:34 | |
Now, how shall I love these people? | 16:39 | |
Shall I speak to them every day? | 16:42 | |
Shall I smile at them in the halls | 16:45 | |
and otherwise indicate | 16:47 | |
that I have warm feelings toward them? | 16:49 | |
Well, it wouldn't be a bad idea if I did. | 16:52 | |
I think most of us are human enough | 16:55 | |
to be favorably impressed and pleased | 16:57 | |
by the fact that somebody cares about us enough | 17:00 | |
to speak or to ask. | 17:02 | |
And yet, if I do that and nothing more, | 17:06 | |
in the long run, I begin to look pretty phony. | 17:09 | |
Is this kind of concern, in quotation marks, Christian love? | 17:13 | |
If I'm unwilling to do something substantially | 17:20 | |
to improve the lot of this person, | 17:22 | |
he will, in time, question the sincerity and the meaning | 17:25 | |
of my love. | 17:28 | |
And well, he should. | 17:30 | |
Christian love is not satisfied | 17:32 | |
when we are more polite and less brutal than we might be. | 17:34 | |
Christian love demands active concern for the other | 17:38 | |
that does not stop before really significant matters | 17:41 | |
and issues are raised. | 17:45 | |
If, at most, I'm willing to smile, ask polite questions, | 17:47 | |
and refrain from using the whip, | 17:51 | |
I can scarcely claim to be really loving my brother | 17:53 | |
or my neighbor. | 17:57 | |
Now, what has been said, of course, | 18:00 | |
does not amount to a program for social action | 18:02 | |
or social reform, | 18:05 | |
nor does it decide the difficult question | 18:08 | |
of the means to the end. | 18:10 | |
Christian love does not demand the politics of confrontation | 18:13 | |
as a continuing state of affairs. | 18:18 | |
But at least one thing should be clear. | 18:21 | |
If the New Testament means anything, | 18:25 | |
it means that love must express itself in meaningful ways | 18:27 | |
for worthwhile ends. | 18:32 | |
There is always, of course, | 18:35 | |
the temptation to give up on hard human problems | 18:37 | |
like race or poverty. | 18:40 | |
By repeating some version of Jesus saying, | 18:43 | |
"The poor you always have with you." | 18:46 | |
We forget that he is also reported to have said, | 18:49 | |
"And whenever you will, you can do good for them." | 18:52 | |
In these times, some people may think | 18:58 | |
that it's going to be politically profitable | 19:00 | |
to minimize the extent of human suffering. | 19:03 | |
The extent of human problems. | 19:06 | |
Or to minimize the possibility | 19:08 | |
of doing something about them. | 19:10 | |
And it is, of course, true | 19:12 | |
that many good plans or good intentions are never fulfilled. | 19:14 | |
Perhaps unfulfillable. | 19:18 | |
But in this regard, | 19:21 | |
I like to remember the television editorial of Pat Paulsen | 19:22 | |
on the problem of the aging. | 19:27 | |
The elder statesman and vice president | 19:30 | |
of the Smothers Brothers Comedy Hour | 19:33 | |
was deploring the fact that, 30 years ago, | 19:35 | |
the advocates of social security had claimed | 19:38 | |
that they were going to do something | 19:41 | |
about the problem of old people. | 19:43 | |
"Did they?" he asked. | 19:45 | |
"Why no, look around you. | 19:47 | |
There are even more old people now than there were then." | 19:49 | |
The fact that human problems persist | 19:54 | |
does not mean that something cannot be done, | 19:57 | |
indeed has not been done about them. | 20:01 | |
I suppose, at the opposite extreme of this, | 20:06 | |
there is the temptation simply to give up | 20:09 | |
on the present order of things, whether social or political. | 20:12 | |
To drop out. | 20:18 | |
To forget that the present order | 20:20 | |
embodies manifold possibilities | 20:22 | |
for expressing Christian love or human concern. | 20:24 | |
Possibilities that have often been achieved by great effort | 20:27 | |
and even by great sacrifice. | 20:31 | |
And understandable, conservatism is impressed with the fact | 20:35 | |
that things can get much worse than they already are | 20:39 | |
and does not wish to lose what is good | 20:42 | |
while striving after what is better. | 20:45 | |
Such considerations as these are real | 20:49 | |
and they're unavoidable. | 20:52 | |
But these are matters about which | 20:55 | |
Christians ought to concern themselves continually. | 20:56 | |
Disagreements, discussions, and debates among Christians | 21:00 | |
about how love is to be expressed in this world, | 21:04 | |
by what means, by what channels. | 21:07 | |
Such discussions and debates are not only inevitable, | 21:09 | |
but I would say also good. | 21:13 | |
They prove that the Church is alive | 21:16 | |
and that the Church is about its proper business. | 21:18 | |
What is deplorable | 21:21 | |
and what I would call a virtual betrayal of the Gospel | 21:23 | |
is a refusal to become involved in such worldly questions. | 21:28 | |
Christian faith and Christian love | 21:35 | |
do not belong principally, if at all, | 21:37 | |
in some religious domain, | 21:42 | |
into which the world, in the form of our neighbor, | 21:46 | |
and especially in the form of our neighbor in need, | 21:50 | |
cannot enter. | 21:54 | |
The necessary word for us today | 21:56 | |
is that love is not a special way of feeling. | 22:01 | |
Love is a special way of being and of doing in this world. | 22:07 | |
Let us pray. | 22:15 | |
Lord, equip our hearts for good works | 22:23 | |
that we may do thy will in this world. | 22:30 | |
Loving our neighbors who are thy children | 22:34 | |
for Christ's sake. | 22:39 | |
Amen. | 22:41 | |
(microphone clicking) | 22:43 | |
(dignified organ music) | 22:49 | |
(church choir singing) | 23:18 | |
(dignified organ music) | 25:03 |
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