“You shall love the LORD your God with all your heart, with all your soul, and with all your mind.” This is the first and great commandment. And the second is like it: “You shall love your neighbor as yourself.” On these two commandments hang all the Law and the Prophets. — Jesus of Nazareth
And now abide faith, hope, love, these three; but the greatest of these is love. — Saint Paul
Love has three hypostases: chastity, knowledge, and light. Without chastity love is not affection but selfishness and passion. Without knowledge love is not affection but selfishness and passion. Without light love is not wisdom but foolishness. — Father Theodosius Walker
I deliberately started with the mind when I spoke of thinking Christianly. But, to make thinking Christianly only an affair of the mind would be to ignore the entire ministry of Our Lord Jesus Christ. The reason I started with the mind is that in modern America, the mind has been somewhat tossed aside in favor of feelings or unsubstantiated beliefs. Having said that, over and over again, both Old Testament and New Testament insist that God is in a love relationship with the world He created. Notice that I did not say merely humankind, but with the entire Creation. At the same time, that love does not mean that God “puts up” with whatever people do. There are consequences to people’s actions, consequences that are often not stayed by God, but permitted to have their effect in order that we might learn to be more like Him in our character.
But, Scripture is clear that we need not and do not “suffer” the overwhelming consequences of our behavior. What do I mean? Well, here are a couple of quotes for you from Scripture:
For God so loved the world that He gave His only begotten Son, that whoever believes in Him should not perish but have everlasting life.
You have heard that it was said, “You shall love your neighbor and hate your enemy.” But I say to you, love your enemies, bless those who curse you, do good to those who hate you, and pray for those who spitefully use you and persecute you, that you may be sons of your Father in heaven; for He makes His sun rise on the evil and on the good, and sends rain on the just and on the unjust.
Even the unjust do not suffer the full weight of the consequences of their sin because of the love of our God. But, there are a couple of further quotes from Scripture that point to what God expects from us in the affective realm of our lives.
What does it profit, my brethren, if someone says he has faith but does not have works? Can faith save him? If a brother or sister is naked and destitute of daily food, and one of you says to them, “Depart in peace, be warmed and filled,” but you do not give them the things which are needed for the body, what does it profit? Thus also faith by itself, if it does not have works, is dead. But someone will say, “You have faith, and I have works.” Show me your faith without your works, and I will show you my faith by my works. You believe that there is one God. You do well. Even the demons believe—and tremble!
Will the LORD be pleased with thousands of rams, ten thousand rivers of oil? Shall I give my firstborn for my transgression, the fruit of my body for the sin of my soul? He has shown you, O man, what is good; and what does the LORD require of you but to do justly, to love mercy, and to walk humbly with your God?
The intellect by itself only makes you equal to a demon. But, to ignore the intellect is to be led astray all too easily (see 1 Timothy). To think Christianly is to have both a sound intellectual basis (the Church of the Seven Ecumenical Councils) and to be a person who Loves. Please notice that God does not define love merely as an emotion, but also as an action. To love is to take action. Those who claim to love without actions are noisy gongs and clanging cymbals. Those who love without actions are those whose faith is dead, for faith without works is dead.
Do you want to think Christianly? Then engage yourself in those actions which will teach you to love appropriately. One of the great failings of Protestantism is that in their fear of “works-righteousness” they threw away the tremendous learning potential of deliberately choosing to do good works in order to learn how to be humble and loving. By making works simply an action that flows out of an emotional outpouring of the love of God in our hearts, they ignored the many times when that love of God does not rule and we must choose to mortify the flesh in order to teach the flesh that it will not have any more control over us.
Mortify therefore your members which are upon the earth; fornication, uncleanness, inordinate affection, evil concupiscence, and covetousness, which is idolatry: For which things’ sake the wrath of God cometh on the children of disobedience: — Saint Paul
This three post series began with a consideration of Christian writers. What does it mean to write from a Christian worldview? It means two things, as you have seen. It means that intellectually you write from the worldview of the Church of the Seven Ecumenical Councils. But, more than that, it means that if your life is not a life in which you are striving to live in Love (as defined above), if you are not trying to mortify your flesh, then you will not be able to think Christianly. Only a person whose intellect and attempted behavior are in accord has any hope of truly writing Christianly.
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