The common viewpoint of many scholars to
the latter half of “the greatest”
and “most important” command of any
that exists {loving God with a whole and undivided heart, and loving those
around us as ourselves} has been, “Oh, the caveat here is that if you…” then
fill in the blank with how one feels about herself— despise yourself, condemn
yourself, care less about yourself— under Law one can get away with it because,
well, that’s what the Law says. And Law
is Law, right? It’s immovable,
unchangeable, inflexible.
Here’s an historical note which might
shed some light in a different direction.
The belief of the ancient Hebrew, intrinsic in Judaism and setting it
apart from Hinduism and Buddhism {which actively seek out the dissolution of self}, is that the
individual is uniquely valued because
he or she was uniquely created by
God, their soul endowed with the ‘breath of life’ by His very own hand. Thus, the individual is of great importance
to God {which means you are of great
importance to God}, enough so that we can boldly say He gave His Life and His
Son to save every last one of us— 2 Peter 3:9.
What I’m getting at is this: the basic
and bedrock belief of Judaism was that no man in his right mind would mistreat
himself, starve himself to death, beat himself, steal from himself, abuse
himself verbally, mentally, or emotionally.
The point is not that we’re not capable of these things, the point is
that there is value in a single human
life created by God. And love
respects that, seeks to nourish that, encourage that and doesn’t abuse that.
In The
Weight of Glory C.S. Lewis reminds us that we have never seen an “ordinary
person.” He said, “There are no ordinary
people. You have never talked to a mere
mortal. Nations, cultures, arts,
civilizations— these are mortal, and their life is to ours as the life of a
gnat. But it is immortals whom we joke
with, work with, marry, snub and exploit— immortal horrors or everlasting
splendors. This does not mean that we
are to be perpetually solemn. We must
play. But our merriment must be of that
kind (and it is, in fact, the merriest kind) which exists between people who
have, from the outset, taken each other seriously— no flippancy, no
superiority, no presumption.”
If you were to see this individual as
they were meant to be by God, or in the case of a believer, as they will be in God, you would be tempted to
fall down in either fear or worship.
G.K. Chesterton says that the hardest thing to believe in Christianity
is the infinite value it places upon the worth of the individual person. But the magnitude of our eternal destiny depends on that worth, and demonstrates that worth for the
Universe— at the Cross of Jesus Christ.
Shepherd
Heart's Journey Community
www.hjcommunity.org
