This post is the third in my series on the 4-Ls. (Those of you who didn’t see the previous posts or want to review them can click here for the March 9 post and here for the one on March 30.)
The second of the 4-Ls is love, and the title of
this article comes from the following words by Leo Tolstoy:
The purpose of life is loving, the penetration of everything with love. It is the slow and gradual change from evil to good, it is the creation of the real life, the life filled with love (A Calendar of Wisdom, p. 249).
As
I began teaching Christian Studies in Japan, I soon realized that most of
my students were not only quite disinterested in Christianity but that they
were also not much interested in traditional Japanese religions either.
Many
students, however, were interested in thinking about the meaning of life
(the first of the 4-Ls) and of love.
Few
of my students had ever heard of or knew little about Kagawa Toyohiko, a Japanese Christian. But
the life and work of Kagawa (1888~1960), who obviously lived a life of love for
others, was appealing to many of them.*1
And
while many students were negative toward the racism they knew existed in the
U.S., which they generally regarded as a Christian country, they were impressed
by the life and work of Martin Luther King, Jr., and by his book Strength to
Love (1963; Japanese translation, 1965).*2
So,
I focused increasingly on how Christianity had been, and is being, expressed in
loving actions and less on the doctrinal expressions of the Christian religion.
Understanding
the distinctively Christian meaning of love is of great importance. In
English, “love” is used in many different ways. For example, a man may say he
loves his wife at one time and then in a different conversation say he loves
ice cream.
C.S.
Lewis, the English writer and popular theologian, sought to clarify that
diversity in his widely-read book Four Loves (1960). One of those four
was called agape in the Greek New Testament, and that word articulates
the particularly Christian form of love.
The
word “love” is not used as much in Japanese as in English. Rather than the word
for love (愛、ai),
Japanese people are more prone to say like (好きsuki)
or really like (大好き、daisuki). But to emphasize the distinctive meaning of
agape as used in the New Testament, I used holy love（聖愛、seiai).
Here is how that is written in Japanese calligraphy on the hanging wall scroll I introduced in the March 9 blog post:
In
the Gospels, Jesus stated clearly that following the commandment “Love
the Lord your God…,” the second greatest commandment is “Love your
neighbor as yourself” (Mark 12:30-31, NIV).
This is a
commandment, though, that is definitely difficult to obey. How often do we
really love our “neighbor” as much as we love ourselves? And remember that
Jesus taught that a neighbor is any hurting/needy person who we have the
opportunity to help (see Luke 10:25~37).
Some of the “Church Fathers” spoke plainly, and challengingly,
about such neighbor-love. Consider these words of Basil of Caesarea (330~370):
The bread in your cupboard belongs to the hungry man; the coat hanging in your closet belongs to the man who needs it; the shoes rotting in your closet belong to the man who has no shoes; the money which you put into the bank belongs to the poor. You do wrong to everyone you could help but fail to help.
I am
not sharing these disturbing words to make us feel guilty, as perhaps we all
are. But if the purpose of life is loving, as Tolstoy wrote, seeking to love
God and to love our neighbors is, truly, the key to experiencing life to the
fullest.
_____
*1 Here is a link to the blog article I posted about
Kagawa in July 2013.
*2 The first of several blog posts
about King was in January 2010. I also wrote about his
explanation regarding Christian love in a September 2018 post, in which I also made reference to
chapters #22 and #25 in my book Thirty True Things Everyone Needs to Know
Now (published in 2020).
*3 Earlier this week, I posted a brief article about the hymn “The Love of God” on my alternative blogsite, and I encourage you to read it by clicking here.
It was gratifying to receive the following comment (shortly after 6 a.m.) from local Thinking Friend Joseph Nfidor, who hails from Cameroon:
ReplyDelete"An amazing post, Prof! I 'love' it, to put emphasis on the title of your posting. Thanks."
The next comment received was also a brief, affirming one from Thinking Friend Glenn Hinson in Kentucky:
ReplyDelete""What reader of the Gospels can disagree, Leroy?"
Thanks, Dr. Hinson, for your rhetorical question. But, I'm afraid, there are many conservative Christians who don't give adequate attention to what is in the Gospels except from Palm Sunday on.
DeleteAnd just now I received the following comments from Thinking Friend Virginia Belk in New Mexico:
ReplyDelete"Thank you, Leroy, for this blog! I have been struggling with a situation in my family and find the quotes from C.S. Lewis and Tolstoy very helpful as background for your own interpretation for your Japanese students, as Holy Love, to be extremely helpful !!!"
Got it this time I clicked "here." So glad MLK's work was translated into Japanese.
ReplyDeleteIn addition to "Strength to Love" appearing in Japanese, I remember that not long after I started teaching at Seinan Gakuin University in 1968, King's "I Have a Dream" speech was memorized and recited by students in an English Speaking Society contest on campus.
DeleteThis morning, I have also had email correspondence with Thinking Friend Meggan (Margaret) Moorhead, whom I first met in the mid-1960s when she was an MK ("missionary kid") in Japan. She now lives in North Carolina. Here are her thought-provoking comments, which I much appreciate:
ReplyDelete"I truly love this post!!
"Hearing about what Seinan students were interested in as you began teaching is so real and close to my heart! I am also captivated by the word for Holy Love! I have never heard it!
"And then there is this divine song, 'The Love of God.' It was one of my Dad’s favorites. He would sing a verse in the middle of a sermon. I so so enjoyed the history of the lyrics! I am stunned that an 11th-century rabbi would know Aramaic. And there it is in the Qur'an! Amazing the undying strength of image and metaphor!!!
"I am also deeply struck by the quote from Basil of Caesarea. By these standards, we are all hoarders. This quote challenges me to immediately give away what I am not using. And give away the money I will never need! It reminds me of two mudras, hand gestures for enhanced contemplation, of Kwan Yin, the Buddhist figure of compassion. One was a lowered open palm of generosity and the next a raised hand, palm facing the world, of fearlessness. We hoard out of fear, don’t we? We are putting our trust in the physical world and not in Holy Love, which pervades and generates all.
"Thank you for the quote from Basil of Caesarea. It felt like a small earthquake.
"Thank you for all of this!! "
In an exchange of emails with Margaret, she wrote,
Delete"It is with great pleasure that I am sharing this last song that I wrote the lyrics for and my friend Kathleen composed. This took place after the invasion of Israel and the forced evacuation of North Gaza."
Here is the link, and I hope you will click on it and listen to Margaret's words as sung by Kathleen: https://drive.google.com/file/d/1aahZxkCA3NZZZ1ULpQMdRGJMV_2ogD-9/view?usp=sharing (highlight, right click, and click on the "go to" prompt)
Here (below) are the lyrics, if you just want to read the words of the song--and please note that this is copyrighted material.
Walking South
Tiny girl walking, walking south
Walking with her mother, hand in hand, hand in hand
Weight of the backpack on her shoulder
Birds fall from the sky explode the sand
She's walking with her mother, hand in hand
Tiny girl walking, walking south
Not knowing where, not knowing why
Mama's singing songs of love
No free hand to wipe her eyes
Still walking with her daughter,
Hand in hand
Why is the hot sun shouting?
Where does the vast sky end?
What is the wind repeating?
Where will we rest? Where will we rest?
What is the wind repeating? Where will we rest?
Rest in the heart of starlight
Rest between broken walls
Rest in the eyes of the Beloved
We will rest where the teardrops fall
We will rest where the teardrops fall
Thank you so much, Margaret, for sharing your and Kathleen's song with June and me, and as June said in her email to you, we hope we will be able to have it sung soon at a worship service at our church.
DeleteHere are comments received late this morning from another local Thinking Friend:
ReplyDelete"Another good post. I don’t know what to do with the last paragraph."
I’ve always loved your choice of all 4 L’s, and the “Love” L the most! Don’t know if I can think of anyone who’s ever made the big deal out of love that Jesus did. Maybe Leo Buscaglia?
ReplyDeleteFred, thanks for mentioning Leo Buscaglia. I have only faint memories of him and his books, and I enjoyed refreshing my memory by reading the Wikipedia article about him. I would especially like to read (some) of his book "Living, Loving, and Learning" (1982), but the local library system doesn't have any of his books. June said that she remembers reading him back in the 1980s or '90s and had considerable appreciation for his ideas. But, I don't think he probably had much to say about agape ("holy love"), writing mostly regarding the other three loves about which C.S. Lewis wrote.
DeleteGood point. And it’s the agape kind that most distinguishes Jesus’ love, making it our real favorite and worthy of calling “the purpose of life.”
DeleteBro. Leroy, Wonderfully informative about your time in Japan. I fear we make too little of how "loving our neighbor" should impact our daily lives. One cannot separate Matthew 22:39 from Matthew 25:31-46.
ReplyDeleteThanks for your comments, Tom--and I appreciate you linking Jesus' commandment about loving our neighbor(s) to Matthew 25:31~46. I have long considered that one of Jesus' most important discourses, and as you may remember, I wrote about that passage in my July 22, 2022, blog post: https://theviewfromthisseat.blogspot.com/2022/07/the-sheep-and-goats-in-memory-of-keith.html .
Delete