Love is all you need?

So my friend wrote a note about how important Love is to true and authentic religion, that in fact Love IS the only form of true and authentic relgion. No many would take that concept and scream BLASPHEMY! (Which people are prone to do when they don’t understand something having to with religion) I however, tend to agree, to an extent. After all, the Apostle Paul writes:

If I speak in human and angelic tongues but do not have love, I am a resounding gong or a clashing cymbal. And if the gift of prophecy and comprehend all mysteries and all knowledge; if I have all faith so as to move mountains but do not have love, I am nothing. If I give away everything I own, and if I hand my body over so that I may boast but do not have love, I gain nothing. -I Corinthians 13:1-3

So faith, hope and love remain, these three; but the greatest of these is love.
-I Corinthians 13:13
These readings are often used at weddings to a ridiculous extent. They are very pretty but many people tend to the miss the point of this whole love thing. They think it means that Christians always have to play nice, beating around the bush and never actually telling anyone what they are doing wrong. They argue to do so what be unloving and uncharitable. God forbid, a Christian might offend someone!

I am afraid that this is a misunderstanding of the idea of love, especially God’s Love. St. John the Evangelist, author of the Gospel and three epistles that bear his name, as well as the Book of Revelation, has been referred to as the Apostle of Love because his writings on full of words about love. By studying these we can understand the meaning of love as understood by the Apostle who was closest to Christ.

Beloved, let us love one another, because love is of God; everyone who loves is begotten by God and knows God. Whoever is without love, does not know God
-I John 4:7-8
That is some pretty strong stuff for two sentences. In the ever widening religious debate people tend to forget words like these. We have it from both the Apostle Paul and the Apostle John that Love really is all that you need! (John and Paul? Hmm…) But what kind of love are we talking about? Does that mean that as Christians we can not tell people things that they may not want to hear?

Probably the second most quoted (and more often than not, misquoted) Bible verse is:

Judge not, lest you be judged. -Matthew 7:1

People throw that out there with accusations of being “judgmental” in saying that certain actions are sins or when someone actually tries to convert another person to their faith. This charge gets leveled at Catholics a lot for our claim of being “the sole deposit of the fullness of the teachings of Christ” because by implication other faiths are flawed, incomplete or just plain wrong. Are we wrong? Are we missing the point of the Bible’s words about love?

Not unless Jesus was.

Christians believe that Jesus Christ was the Son of God, the Incarnate Word of God, the Second Person of the Blessed Trinity. (you get the picture) The Nicene Creed states that He is “begotten, not made, one in being with the Father.” Thus if God is Love, than Jesus, who is God Incarnate, is also Love Incarnate.

Love Incarnate did not shy away from “calling it like he saw it.” He told off the Pharisees.

Woe to you, hypocrites, you serpents, you brood of vipers, how can you flee from the judgment of Gehenna? -Matthew 23:33

That doesn’t sound very loving! It sounds downright judgmental! (And He said they might be going to Hell! Oh, no)

He got angry and kicked the moneychangers out of the Temple. With a whip!

He found in the temple area those who sold oxen, sheep and doves, as well as the money changers seated there. He made a whip out of cords and drove them all out of the Temple area, with the sheep and the oxen and spilled the coins of the moneychangers and overturned their tables. -John 2:14-15

Later in the same Gospel, Jesus is delivering the Bread of Life and followers are leaving Him because He is telling Him that they must ate His Body and drink His Blood to gain eternal life. But Jesus refused to dilute His message and instead repeated it.

Then many of his disciples who were listening said, “This saying is hard; who can we accept it?” Since Jesus knew that His disciples were murmuring against Him, He said to them, “Does this shock you?” -John 6:60-61

(See earlier post “The Antichrist and the Eucharist” for more on this particular passage)

How does this all fit? This doesn’t sound like a touchy-feely loving Jesus. How does this fit with all the passages about love? Jesus sounds downright belligerent!

The problem is a misunderstanding of what God’s Love and Christian charity really mean. Saint John got it (with the world’s most quoted Bible verse…)

For God so loved the world, that He gave His only begotten Son, so that everyone who believes in Him shall not perish but might have eternal life.
-John 3:16

The way we came to know love was that He lay down His life for us; so we ought to lay down our lives for our brothers.
-I John 3:16


This is my commandment: love one another as I have loved you. No one has greater love than this, to lay down his life for his friends.
-John 15:12-13

There you have it: the true meaning of Christian love! And it’s a whole lot harder than this lovey-dovey non-judgmental kumbayah clap trap. Christ laid down His life for everyone, and He asks all Christians to be ready and willing to do the same. That is the true meaning of love: to be willing to die for others, even if those others are nailing us to a cross because we offended them by telling them the truth. Jesus did that.

That is the true meaning of love, at least in a Christian sense. That is why I believe that no one truly loves anybody else unless they are willing to die so that other person may live.

I guess love really is all you need. It just has to be the right kind of love.