Behold How They Love

Dave Brisbin | 12.9.18 It’s hard enough to communicate spiritual experiences and truth when we’re honestly trying. But what about when we’re not? When consciously or unconsciously, we’re hiding behind spiritual platitudes and practices to justify our actions or inactions, to gain some advantage or outcome…? It can be tricky because it’s easy to convince ourselves that the language we speak and religion we practice and believe is “right” and spiritual in itself, but once again, Jesus is telling us something different. When at the last supper he told his friends he was giving them a new commandment—to love each other as he had loved them; that everyone would know they were his followers by their love. How literally are we to take Jesus’ actual definition of followership? How literally did his first followers take his new commandment and definition? When we look at the historical record, extremely literally. Several ancient sources define early Christians by their love with Tertullian in the second century writing that even those who were enemies of Christianity had to say: behold how they love one another. And a modern sociologist writes that Christianity was not simply and urban movement, but a new culture capable of making life in ancient cities more tolerable. Seems that’s a way of living that speaks spiritual truth unequivocally, and a definition for followership of which Jesus would be proud.