Lenten Love (Jeff Cook)

I appreciate your thoughts, Jeff, but totally disagree. Just because your parents haven't cleaned up the grandkids' puke does not mean that they WOULD not, given the opportunity. Love may be SEEN through sacrifice, but sacrifice is secondary to the decision to love.

If you left your kids for a weekend at your parents' house, and your kids got sick, would your parents let them lie in bed in a mess, or would they get up at 1 AM and 3 AM, etc., and help them? I'm thinking they love them enough ALREADY to clean them up.

Loving people is doing what is best for them, whether that hurts us OR is pleasant to us. It's not about us; it's about them.

Joseph #2 in your second example, where sacrifice is an emotional ploy, is it truly sacrifice?

Yes! I love that I got push back on this. It means this blog actually has an audience that thinks for a change. Glorious.

First-forgive me for the length of the response. I’m a philosopher, and argument is our joy.

To Lisa’s comments (very good ones btw), isn’t there more value in actual action over and above intention? Isn’t there a difference between acting with love and simply feeling loving? Jesus tells such a story (Matt. 21:28-32), and though the parallel is not direct with your criticism, I think Jesus is making the point that there is a distinction between intention/willingness to do something and actually doing something. And he values heavily the latter over the former.

Secondly, and I think more importantly, love is more than a screen saver and the willingness to sacrifice. Using James reasoning, "What good is it, my friends, if a person has [love] but no deeds? ... [Love] by itself, if it is not accompanied by action is dead." (Js. 2:14,17). If that reasoning holds for faith, it ought to hold for love as well. WHICH is why the cross is outstanding in its clarity, intensity and power. God does not sit back simply feeling lovable thoughts for you and I. He kneels low to stoop up a cross.

Now, you may convince me that love can be "about what is doing best for someone." So perhaps I should clarify my argument and suggest that the highest and most valuable form of love is one that is self-sacrificial. Would you agree with such a clarification? (Thank you for your stimulating thoughts.)

To Joseph’s points. I took the initial point as humorous (if not then the answer is of course – feelings are irrelevant to questions of truth and falsehood on this front). To the second point, the argument I advance is that pain is a precondition for love, not a root cause. Thirdly (and I think most interesting) perhaps we should ask that very question—how can I love total strangers? I think you meant this as a defeater. I think it should be taken as a criticism of our narrow and fairly self-focused view of love. Certainly Jesus was able to love strangers centuries after his death, and so the question for us might be, what would it look like to go and do likewise? Fourth, Sacrifice certainly can be an emotional ploy. My argument is: If Love than sacrifice. NOT if sacrifice than love. (It is not—in philosopher speak—a bi-conditional).

Finally, “Did Jesus love us before he was sacrificed?” I think that is your best argument. Perhaps I could say that the act of creation itself is sacrificial—surrendering his exclusive love relationship with the father is sacrificial. Working for 6 straight days to make the world is sacrificial. Or perhaps I could argue, if God is timeless than the crucifixion is a reality for him at the same moment of our creation (and before our creation there would be none of us to love). Many thanks, Joseph.

As a last note to all – I am a big fan of grandparents, so please don’t read the essay as anti-grandparent.

Much love - Jeff

While I am one of the few, I disagree with the idea that Jesus wanted to die on the cross.

I am more a fan of the belief that Jesus died due to humanities unwillingness, especially the unwillingness of the oppressors(Pharisees, Romans, etc.), to accept the way of God, the way of love, peace, hope, and faith.

While yes I agree that love is a sacrifice, I would not say that Christ's death was a sacrifice. That concept grew out of Judaism's and the Western Worlds fixation on sacrifices and atonement at the time.

The forgiveness of God was always there, that is the unconditional love. When your child does something wrong, even hits you, you do not need retribution for his or her actions, so why would God?

Now, I have no problem with sacrificial atonement, but there seems to be block here for me, I believe Jesus is more the in-breaking of God into the world to change the world, but not as a sacrifice.