I must confess (although it’s probably not much of a “confession”) that there are some parts of the Bible that give me pause.
OK: there are 66 books that “give me pause”, but work with me on this, alright?
Believe it or not, one of those parts is the bit where Jesus is asked what the “greatest commandment of all” is. He replies that there are two, of which one is, “love your neighbour as yourself.”
The problem I had was that, quite simply, there are days when I don’t even like myself, much less love myself. On those occasions, do I get to treat my neighbour like dirt?
So I started thinking, which is dangerous, when it comes to the Bible. Surely, I said to myself, Jesus didn’t mean it that way. And eventually, I came to a different reading of that commandment. See, Jesus tells us that God loves us unconditionally and grants us endless grace and mercy, so isn’t that what Jesus means for us and our neighbours? So I came up with another reading of that verse: love your neighbour as you, yourself, are loved by God.
There. I was much more comfortable with that, and I’m sure God was pleased that I was more comfortable with that version of the commandment. For a good ten years, that’s what I preached, and really, what was wrong with that?
Nothing, except that there is no version of the Bible that puts it that way. And that bothered me. In fact, the only thing that bothered me more, was that I was doing what I’d condemned others for doing: stretching a piece of Scripture to suit my own “comfort level”.
Then – about two months ago – it struck me: what is written is exactly what Jesus meant. Because “love” is not a more intense form of “like”: love persists even when liking is absent. (Heck, if God’s love depended on whether He liked us at a given moment, we’d all be in big trouble.)
“Narcissism” has become The Word of the past half-dozen years, and the fact is, we humans are narcissists. We look out for ourselves first: we cut ourselves slack, we make excuses for things we do wrong, and look for ways to blame someone else. If we mess up, we cite “circumstances”: but how often do we do that for others?
That’s what Jesus is getting at. While “my” interpretation may have some validity, it’s an airy-fairy concept, which depends on our grasping what the Apostle Paul calls the “width and length and depth and height” of the love Jesus has for us. That’s near impossible to conceive. But it’s relatively easy to consider our narcissism and project it onto others. That’s what I believe Jesus calls us to do. We cut them slack; we assume they’re facing circumstances we can’t see; we give them every break we give ourselves. Maybe the driver who tailgates us on a narrow road is late for work or has to get to the hospital. Maybe the person who crashes the checkout line didn’t know where the end of the line was. Maybe the boss who snaps at us in the workplace just got some bad news and was still processing it.
Bottom line: Jesus calls us to protect others’ interests the way that we protect our own.
And don’t get caught by that claptrap, “you can’t love others if you don’t love yourself”. We do love ourselves, and Jesus knows it: that’s why we have to be commanded to apply that self-love to someone else.
Drew Snider is a former pastor at Gospel Mission on 91原创's Downtown East Side, and has been a guest speaker at churches in BC. He writes about the people and events in his e-book, ‘God At Work: A Testimony of Prophecy, Provision and People Amid Poverty’. (available at online bookstores)
You can read more articles on our interfaith blog, Spiritually Speaking, HERE /blogs/spiritually-speaking
* This article was published in the print edition of the Times 91原创 on Saturday, November 13th 2021
