Do You Have Enough Love in Your Life?

Over the past month or so, many of you have been asking about love.  The questions have ranged from “Why are you not talking about Christ’s love in your newsletters?” to “How can I get more love in my life?”  So today, I thought we might turn our attention to what our Lord says about love and how to get more of it.  To do that, though, we have to start at a place that might seem a little strange.

We need to begin with several of Jesus’ comments about how we are to live our lives. “Love your enemies,” he says, “Do good to those who hate you,” and then a bit later, he says, “Do not judge, and you will not be judged; do not condemn, and you will not be condemned.  Forgive, and you will be forgiven; give, and it will be given to you….  For the measure you give will be the measure you get back.”  It is this last statement that sums up his thoughts on the matter.

“Love your enemies.”  My God, how many times have we heard that?  And not just in church.  You hear people paying lip service to this over and over, in context after context, and it gets to the point that it just runs in one ear and out the other.  Blah blah blah blah!  Why bother with this – it just doesn’t make sense.

Your enemies are people who hate you!  They have it in for you.  They want to see you suffer; they want to see you diminished.  What possible good could come of being kind to those who hate you?  

When somebody tells me to do something, I’m one of those guys who wants to know ‘why.’  Why should I do that?  And underlying that question is another – a question that I often conceal from myself.  Namely, what’s in it for me?  I’m not so proud of this question, so I tend to avert my eyes and conceal it, especially from myself.

“What’s in it for me?”  That’s a question that comes up a lot for all of us, isn’t it?  “How am I going to benefit?”  As if he had supernatural hearing, Jesus answers this question for us, albeit a little harshly, if you ask my opinion.  He says, “Do not judge and you will not be judged.”  

“Do not judge, and you will not be judged.”  I judge all the time, and I’ll bet you do the same.  Oh, these judgments don’t always leave my lips, but in my head, I’m keeping score.  “This is good, this is better, and that over there is really wonderful!  And what those folks over there are doing, (head moving in a disapproving shake) that’s just terrible!”

We have a constant stream of this, don’t we?  We're judging all the time, and it’s even kind of comfortable in a strange way.  When I put you down, I have the illusion that it makes me superior.  I feel “better than you,” or “holier than thou.”  I get to put on that wonderfully traditional Christian garment of smugness.  “Look at me, I’m special!”  And Jesus wants me to forgo these traditional Christian pleasures?  How dare he!

And why would he want to do that, anyway?  Why does he want us to forgive?  Why does he want us to give?  He supplies the answer in the following sentence: “Forgive, and you will be forgiven.  Give, and it will be given to you.”  Right there – that’s where the rubber meets the road, isn’t it?

*  *  *

I had a strange but fascinating experience last month.  A group of us were talking with a priest who has a ministry in Africa, and he was asked if he was going back to Ghana this year.  He allowed that it has been increasingly difficult for him to return.  He said, “It always confronts me with an impossible choice.  If I have $1000 to give, I have a terrible choice to make.” 

“I can buy a water well, and that will transform an entire village.  Right off the bat, we take out all of the waterborne illnesses, like cholera and dysentery, which kill half of the children before age 5.  They now have water to irrigate their crops, so everyone eats better and gets healthier. And when I go back a year later, I can see the results of this.  It’s an astounding change!  And the women no longer have to walk eight hours a day to fetch and carry water.  Can you imagine, walking miles and miles just for water to drink and cook with?  Water that is filthy and often contaminated with bacteria.  This frees the women up to start small businesses so they can now contribute to the economic well-being of the village.  Everything is transformed with that water well.”

He paused, and I asked, “So what’s the other choice?  This one sounds like a no-brainer to me!”  He looked down and away, and then he said in a quiet voice, “Or I could buy five children out of a lifetime of slavery.”

I was shocked!  Considering this choice, my eyes just filled up with tears.  Buying five little ones out of slavery?  Now I understood why the choice he faces is so daunting and so terrible.

*  *  *

I thought about this wretched choice for weeks afterward.  I’m ashamed to admit that one of the questions that came to mind was, “Why do I care?”  The strange fact is, I do care, but why?  I will never meet these children.  I will never meet these villagers.  So why do I care?

That question has bothered me to this day.  I know why I care.  I care because these are hurting human beings, and somehow the hurt they experience on the other side of the world is felt by me, in my own skin, my own flesh, right now.

Logically, this makes no sense.  You can talk all you like about the brotherhood of man, but why should I give a hoot about somebody I will never meet, and whose life will never affect mine?  Regardless of the logical nonsensicalness of this, my eyes still filled with tears.  The truth is, they filled with tears before I ever had a chance to consider the logic of it.  These tears revealed to me a deeper truth – a truth that is deeper than all of our logic.

Let me try to explain.  Quantum scientists who have been exploring the fundamental nature of matter have been uncovering strange and even bizarre things about the world we live in.  (Like the fact that the electrons on which you are currently sitting are actually moving about 64 million miles per hour.)  One of their findings is directly relevant to this strange experience of simpatico I felt.  Moreover, it is directly relevant to experiences we all have on a daily basis.  

Quantum scientists – weirdos who live in ivory towers like Ernst Planck, David Bohm, and others – have found at the most minute level that two particles can get entangled with one another.  For example, if you shoot one of these entangled particles off to the right, the other one will instantaneously go off to the left.  Even more frightening to a non-mathematician like myself, they have developed equations that describe these entanglements.

What we are seeing at the cutting edge of scientific exploration is this dawning understanding that everything is connected with every other thing.  You and I can look around at each other, and we understand that we are connected.  We show up here, once a week, in this newsletter space.  Clearly, there is a connection that binds us together.  What is not so clear is that this connection binds us with every other thing in the universe.

Now, all of a sudden, Jesus’ words start to make sense.  “Do not judge, and you will not be judged.  Forgive, and you will be forgiven.  Give, and it will be given to you.  For the measure you give will be the measure you get back.”

Because our lives are entangled with the lives of every other human being, these words of Jesus are just a simple statement of truth.  They invite us to take complete responsibility for all of our actions.  If you don’t want to forgive, that’s okay.  But expect that you will not be forgiven either.  On the other hand, if you want love, then you will get back the very measure of love that you give.  Reminds us of the words of the old Beatles song, doesn’t it?  “The love you take is equal to the love you make.”

Jesus’ words invite us to take a real hard look at our own behaviors.  Instead of aiming our judgment out there, we’re invited to look inside.  We’re invited to examine and judge our own behaviors.  So, let me ask you:  Do you have enough love in your life?  I don’t.  When I reflect on this, I realize it’s because I have closed off my heart.  I close it off by judging and criticizing others.  When I reflect further, I realize that when I open my heart up, not only am I able to give more, but I’m also able to receive more.

This, my friends, is the key for us.  You see, our judgements have an unseen consequence.  When we judge, we act as if we know the real meaning of an action or behavior.  The truth is, we don’t know that much – we know what we observe, but we rarely know the full reasons behind another's actions, and we hardly ever know the ultimate consequences.  Never mind these stunning limitations, we still judge and feel quite satisfied with our judgements, don’t we?  

Despite our obvious limitations, we have been setting ourselves up as gods.  This is the ego again, and it has the unseen effect of hardening our hearts against.  By hardening our hearts in this way, we literally block the love of God from touching us.  So, if we don’t have enough love, it is almost certainly because we ourselves are blocking that love by means of our ego-derived judgements of others.  The bottom line is simple: if we want more love in our lives, we need to stop judging others.  

So, if you want more love in your life, start to notice all of the judgments you are making of others.  Once you start noticing, you are likely to be horrified.  I certainly was!  However, the good news in this situation is that by being aware, we can now start to rein in our too-frequent judgments.  We can now start to surrender this part of our lives to our Lord.  As we do so, we will find more and more love entering into our lives.  

*  *  *

That’s enough for this week.  I encourage you to spend some time observing the conversations you have in your head and paying special attention to the many ways you judge others.  Then, to the best of your ability, pull back your judgements.  After practicing this for even a little while, I have found that I have more love in my life, a greater understanding of others, and the way forward seems easier.  Give it a try for yourself…

I hope you have a grace-filled week.  Remember to meditate every day.  With the spiritual exercises you have been learning about in these newsletters, you certainly have a lot to choose from.  Find what works best for you and tap into the transformative power of these spiritual exercises for yourself.

With love,

P.S.  Several of you have expressed the desire for an online meditation class.  If there is enough interest, I will try to figure out how to hold a group class on the web.  If you have an interest, please write me at [email protected]. 

Humility as a Tool  → Letting go → Fear → Openness →  Acceptance & Growth

If you are finding this newsletter course helpful, you may want to consider Dr. Kaisch's latest book, Inside the Invisible:  The Universal Path to Spiritual Transcendence.👇

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