Originally posted by CalJust
I have considered vistesd's response and agree that I would most probably swop with a loved one if the choice were offered - but what affects this decision is that (although I do not believe in a hell) in this hypothetical case I feel that there would still be an opportunity at some stage for this place to be abolished, by the mercy of God - so maybe I am du ...[text shortened]... d if only Israel could be saved. So there is an example of one really unselfish and loving dude.
Yeah, perhaps the hypothetical is too easy for me too. I thought of Paul’s statement that perfect love casts out all fear. I think of the mother that rushes headlong into the street to save her child—not as the result of some well-thought-out considerations on love versus self-centeredness, but without a thought. Or the lover who would instantly change places with the beloved who is dying—without any moralizing or philosophizing or theologizing at all.
And there is a danger that I did not pay sufficient attention to last night: that of turning love into one more moral ought, about which one can feel morally superior. And that feeds right back into ToO’s opening post, where I can pat myself on the back for being “more loving” (or maybe just thinking that I am more loving) and so not self-centered at all—ooops!
It seems to me there is clearly a paradox in the two great commandments to love—a bit like a Zen koan perhaps. A commandment to do what is beyond what can effectively be commanded. Obedience can be commanded; acts of compassion or generosity can be commanded; even worship (of a kind) can be commanded—but love with all one’s heart, mind and soul? I think not. The fullness of
agape as the Greek church still understands it? I think not.
And so what is required is not obedience—but a
metanoia, a radical turning over of the heart-mind, the mind’s eye.* And for that? I think a kind of confident openness to the possibility (faith), and
charis.
Then again (self-centeredness?), who would not want to walk in that place, in that way of being, where all fear is absent?**
If I came across as “holier than thou” in my prior responses, I apologize. I am humbled by my lack of both faith (as I have described it elsewhere and above) and love. It is myself that needs to be opened up, not others.
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* That is, in Greek, the
nous, not
dianoia—the latter being the faculty of reasoning/ratiocination. Aquinas translated them, respectively, as
intellectus and
rationis (if I have the Latin right). But “intellect”, as
nous is still sometimes translated into English, has come to pretty much mean the faculty of discursive reasoning. (I’m following somewhat the Greek Orthodox usage here. I think
nous is also related to direct apprehension—closer to how we perceive the world, in a sense, perhaps aesthetically, rather than how we think about what we perceive.) The root of
gnosis, in the Pauline sense, as opposed to
episteme.
** I realize that there are, in psychological terms, two types of fear: primary fear—which is the natural survival response—and secondary fear, which is like a maladapted version of primary fear: anxiety, panic attacks without a clear and present danger, that kind of thing. I might think of the example of the mother as a more or less spontaneous extending of that primary survival response to the loved one.
Moral Codes and Self-Centered Beliefs regarding Adherence
06 Sep '15 05:02
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