The Greatest and Most Important Command.

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.

Ric Webb

Shepherd

Heart's Journey Community

www.hjcommunity.org