I'm throwing out another question in response to Trev's post below and some of the things said on the comments thread. I in no way intend to shut down conversation on the other threads and I strongly encourage contributors and readers to go there and keep the conversation going. That said:
Jesus once said that the two greatest commandments are to love God with everything and to love our neighbors as ourselves. When those two commands come into conflict, and we must choose between loving a God who we accept by faith and a neighbor who we can shake hands with, which one is paramount? Is it better to love God or to love neighbor?
Jesus once said that the two greatest commandments are to love God with everything and to love our neighbors as ourselves. When those two commands come into conflict, and we must choose between loving a God who we accept by faith and a neighbor who we can shake hands with, which one is paramount? Is it better to love God or to love neighbor?
9 comments:
I am having a hard time coming up with a senario where these two would come into conflict. Anyone come up with a senario where they would?
I agree with Chris- I don't think truly loving your neighbour would ever come in conflict with truly loving God. Superficial love could easily get in the way though.
But if there ever WERE a dispute I would say it is more "important" to love God. My question is how? HOW do I LOVE God? Is it simply obeying? (Those who love me obey my commands). Is it singing? Is it FEELING ethereally connected to God? Is it different for everyone? Just curious.
I have to agree too... I don't see how you would ever have to choose between the two... can you clarify, Colin?
Well it seems to me that Trev's quotation from Melville is just such a situation. Ishamael believes that to properly love Queequeg he must honor Queequeg's god. In that situation I think that he chooses love of neighbor over love of (the Christian) God.
One of the things I'm trying to drive at is just what Tara says in her second response. What does it mean to love? Not just what does it mean to love God but what does it mean to love other people too?
Can I bunk with Queequeg and say that I love him but still refuse to honor his god? What if Queequeg doesn't accept that as legitimate love?
I think to truly love someone is not to catter to their every desire or want. It is doing what is best for them. I would not be truly loving my son if I let him put his arm in the fireplace just because he is two years old and wants to do it. This does bring up a dangerous can of worms though... what does someone have the right to impose on someone simply because it is in their best interest. God doesn't do that to us, even though he could.
What Chris just said is essentially the reason that I don't think loving God and neighbor are exactly the same thing. It is a matter of defining love. If love is tied to what is good for a person then it becomes important to determine what is and is not good. That's an ethical dilemma that is tied, in my mind, directly to theological questions about the nature of God. If God exists and is a certain way (say the way that Christianity has traditionally described God to be) then it follows that love of neighbor must be subordinate to love of God. Only in knowing and loving God is it even possible to love neighbor.
(I'm new here and I hope will be forgiven for jumping into the thick of things.)
Only in knowing and loving God is it even possible to love neighbor.
Perhaps, but I imagine it could be persuasively argued that any claim to love an invisible God is disingenuous if one doesn't love one's visible neighbour or brother. Indeed I think that one of the epistle writers tried to argue that in 1 John.
On the other hand, the problem, I agree, comes down to defining love. It's not hard to imagine situations where one honestly felt that obligations arising from loving relationships with different entities were in conflict, and this would be in no way superficial (or at least could be so). It is deceptively simple to reduce the unhelpfully vague concept of love to a series of specific tangible obligations, ensure that these would always line up properly, and thus "interpret" the problem out of existence. But I think that sort of reduction probably conceals more than it resolves.
I'm not sure the Queequeg dilemma is really a compelling example of a case where such a conflict would exist, though. In that case the character reasoned that worshipping an idol was an acceptable means to perhaps convincing Queequeg to worship in a "Presbyterian" fashion, but I highly doubt that this sort of ceremonial religious reciprocity is what Jesus - or Hillel, for that matter - had in mind when they put forward the golden rule in the first place.
Perhaps I'm just going off in the wrong direction, though. What would it mean for there to be a conflict, and in such a conflict, what would it mean - as you suggest - to place our of neighbour subordinate to our love of God?
Though speaking about what Jesus or Hillel might have thought about anything apart from what we have recorded in any given text is a serious problem, I have a hard time imagining that Jesus would have seen worship of an idol as merely ceremonial.
Idolatry in all of its forms is the sin par excellence in the OT, and particularly in the Latter Prophets. Maybe I'm reading the story too much through that lens, but the prophetic/apocalyptic literature is my schtick so that's kind of inevitable.
You refer to love of one's physical neighbor as a demonstration of loving God, and the biblical passage you refer to is, I think, 1 John 3. That passage is pretty clearly an inter-community thing in my opinion. That is to say, the person John (easier than saying the author of 1 John over and over ;) ) suggests that we must love in demonstration of our love of God is our brother or sister in the faith, and not our "pagan" neighbor.
Also, love in 1 John 3 is secondary to (or at least bound up in) "righteousness" (δικαιοσύνην). In this context I would argue that "righteousness" is defined as "the correct practice of religion." This is well within the accepted semantic domain of the word and the fact that John makes reference to "righteousness" in relation to Able's and Cain's good and bad sacrifices is a strong argument in favor of this definition.
Consequently I think that your statement,
"I imagine it could be persuasively argued that any claim to love an invisible God is disingenuous if one doesn't love one's visible neighbour or brother."
is actually the opposite of what John is getting at here. I think John is saying that any attempt to love our brother or sister is disingenuous if not first founded on "righteousness" or correct religious practice and love of God.
Having said all of that I agree that I am having difficulty coming up with a situation where loving my neighbor and loving God are in conflict. I think this mostly has to do with how I understand love. If I understood love as the act of doing for others as they wish me to do for them (I don't define love this way) it would be pretty easy to come up with such a scenario. The problem, as you've pointed out Dave, is that this would be "gaming the stats" as it were.
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