I'm Not A Perfect Person
Hoobestank
In the many teachings of the Christian life, none is greater than those dealing with Charity. All "natural" loves, those organic stirrings in the breast may be made full or whole in Charity with the acceptance of the gift as love.
While human emotion or sentimentality in itself may result in an affection which ultimately eats itself up, a love of need, a craving now satisfied, love as gift is looking towards another, one to receive the gift and the giver who gives it. This love is in proportion.
Can one love 'too much?' Loving in proportion is not simply about quantity, rather it places itself in relation to the Creator, the one who gives all from the first. Can then a love be too much for an earthly beloved? The question doesn't seek an answer as to emotional intensity. Rather is asks, whom do you serve, where do you place your treasure?
While all love, we are taught, comes from the Creator, there surely is nothing against fully engaging in human loves, nor for fear of disappointment or hurt as a result. In Luke 14:26 this is carried a step further. It introduces the notion of hate here. What is it to earthly love to hate? Why does Luke say it as he does?
He exclaims in this story, not that the Creator is counseling hate, but rather he is exclaiming to all who wish a taste of divine charity, to 'get behind me,' that they set themselves against the hateful, make no concession to it, nor to the beloved when the beloved calls however sweetly, prompts of Satan, the devil.
A man, retorts the Christ, cannot serve two masters. Either he serves the good or he serves the other. The humble in a sense of Grace may have the sense of service to the One, a knowledge of the Creator herself; only knowledge because the source is so vast.
God is Love, declares Paul. "Not that we loved, but that God has loved us.' 1John 4:10. John declares this not as an entry to mysticism, but as a real beginning, that love is divine energy. This energy loved into being all that exists on earth as a Divine creation.
It is a Creator's love directed to what one finds intrinsically unloveable: the murderer, the thief, the deviant, the cheat, and others, but through a movement of the Holy Spirit, charity comes into play and one gives something of that divine energy, something of ones' own heart, rendering the unloveable more divine, more lovable. All may be clothed in the Christ.
Luke it seems, recognized that there is the complex, unloveable in all of us; that in our darkest recesses are those vague, unformed impulses driving towards the evil energies fully present in the world. Luke 8:11-15
In the book of Matthew there, further insists that Charity, the Love energy was greater, thus he demands, "Get behind me Satan!" Mat. 16:23
In the book of Matthew there, further insists that Charity, the Love energy was greater, thus he demands, "Get behind me Satan!" Mat. 16:23
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