This is What Agape Love Looks Like

I am truly lucky to have a great group of high school friends who have stayed close and connected for more years than I care to admit. A month or so ago, my friend Sandy messaged the rest of us upset by some things her father was saying. Apparently, her father and sister got in an argument about whether God hates. His argument was that yes, God hates, it’s in the Bible.

The conflict with her father got even worse from there, which I don’t need to get into, but it was extremely distressing because this is not the man any of us knew when we were kids. In fact, it was their family church that was my doorway to the ministry because of how welcoming, kind, and compassionate they were. Then Sandy’s parents moved up north, joined a fundamentalist church and… well… brainwashing is real.

But, back to God hating in the Bible… I’m afraid I must concede that this is true.

Proverbs 6:26-29 specifically says God hates:

• A proud look
• A lying tongue
• A hand that sheds innocent blood
• A heart that plots wicked conspiracies
• Feet that hasten to mischief
• A false witness who spews out lies
• And a person who sows discord among sister and brothers

Please note that all of the above are primarily about hating actions, not people. However, there are other situations where the word hate isn’t specifically used, but God clearly had no issue with violence, suggesting an extreme dislike or, at the very least, blatant disregard or unconcern for certain people. For example:

• God instructed the Israelites to destroy the Canaanite nations who lived in the promised land
• God ordered Sodom and Gomorrah destroyed
• God destroyed everything on earth except Noah and his family and the animals on the ark
• God even blessed taking the babies of the enemy (Babylon) and bashing them against the rocks (Psalm 137:9)

I want to point out two things here. First, please remember that the scripture that we and other religions consider sacred were NOT dictated by God to the ancient peoples. These writings were people’s attempt to explain God as they understood God in their time and context.

And second, people in ancient times were very tribal, and each tribe had their own God. The Ancient Jewish people believed that they were the chosen ones of Yahweh and NO ONE else. Hence, they believed that God was just fine with them killing Gentiles (anyone who didn’t worship Yahweh).

So, when Jesus started talking about loving your enemy, loving your neighbor (including those stinking Samaritans), and proclaiming that God was love… this was revolutionary, and scary and wrong in some people’s eyes. The Greek word for this kind of love was agape (not friendship love (philia), not erotic love(eros)). Agape, by the way, is used 106 times in the New Testament.

Agape love is an unconditional, selfless, unbounded, wasteful (as John Shelby Spong would say), sacrificial love. Agape love deliberately chooses to seek the welfare of others.

It’s much easier to hate. Much easier to condemn others to hell. Much easier to claim the moral high ground. However, as Ann LaMott once said, “You know you’ve created God in your image when God hates all the same people you do.”

And, Booker T. Washington once said, “Never let anyone drag you so low as to make you hate them.”

Instead of bowing to the exclusive God of the Israelites and shunning the rest of humanity along with his contemporaries, Jesus does the unthinkable and sets the bar higher – by his words and his actions. In John 15, he says, “As my Abba has loved me, so have I love you. Live on in my love. And you will live on in my love if you keep my commandments… This is my commandment: love one another as I have loved you.”

Love one another. One who loves will lay down their life for their friends. One who loves serves. One who loves forgives. One who loves picks their enemy up off the ground, binds their wounds and sees that they are cared for.

Ugh. This one concept may be the ultimate reason we all need to keep going to church every Sunday. There was a story once about a pastor who preached the same sermon on love every week until his congregation eventually got tired of hearing it and told him they’d really like to hear a different message. He replied, “As soon as you start living this one I’ll go on to something else.”

We need to be reminded. Because we’re human, we will deceive, betray, and hurt others – maybe not even intentionally – but out of our own incompleteness. Sometimes we shock ourselves with the things that come out of our mouths, the actions we’re capable of. We all have light and shadow within us… but we must keep striving toward the light, striving to love more wastefully.

Love in a committed romantic relationship, love in a family, love for our children… those are all deeply special kinds of agape love. But agape is even bigger. It encompasses other colors, cultures, languages, traditions and religions. It spans generations and feuds and political divisions. It includes our earth and animals.

We talked a couple of weeks ago about how God doesn’t just – poof - fix everything for us but the Divine gives us the strength and courage to BE love in this world. And we need every ounce of strength and courage because agape is the hardest thing to embody. It demands we let go of our egos, judgments, fears, comfort, biases, and maybe even risk a little sometimes.

Sometimes we have a tendency to compartmentalize love – it works great at home and at church, but not at work. We forget that love can be applied everywhere. Episcopal Bishop Michael Curry was once asked by the Harvard Business Review how love applies to a CEO. Curry replied by saying we ask ourselves the question: “is what we’re doing is only about me, or is it about we? Does this action or decision only serve my unenlightened self-interest, or does it somehow serve the greater good?” Because agape is a firm commitment for the well-being of another. This is not only personal, intimate and private, it is also political and communal and public.

Disclaimer: This is not to say that we’re expected to doormats and allow others to walk all over us. We are also beings of sacred worth who deserve respect, justice and compassion.

Bishop Curry, in his book “Love is the Way,” wrote this, “The way of love is how we stay decent during indecent times. It’s for all of us who are sitting, looking around at the world, at our leaders, saying, ‘Something has gone very wrong.’ It’s for those who are fighting hard for a better world, and feeling very, very tired.”

As messed up as the world is today, I find myself marveling at the agape love that is emerging all around us. Here are just a few places I see it today, and they all give me hope:

• Those who rally around a family member or friend when they are ill or dying, giving up time and energy to be present and do what one can to help
• Standing up to a bully
• Teaching a child how to read, or an adult English as a second language
• Minnesotans standing outside in bitterly cold weather to seek justice for their black and brown neighbors
• Standing with your trans, or gay or lesbian, or non-binary child or friend or co-worker or neighbor
• US Winter Olympians daring to use their platform for respect, unity, compassion and equality
• The Super Bowl halftime show that showcased the marginalized, disenfranchised and targeted in our country to remind us that we are all valuable human beings to be respected.
• The Super Bowl Billboard: The only thing more powerful than hate is love
• Young Greta Thunberg standing up to the powers-that-be with her scientific statistics about climate change

Yes, there is much happening to give us hope.

Our job is to keep trying to BE agape in this world – loving unconditionally, boundlessly, sacrificially, and wastefully. Our job is to keep asking ourselves if what we’re doing is about me or we? Our job is to draw from the energy of love that permeates the universe to make the world a better place for all.

Love & Light!

Kaye