Works of Love III: "You SHALL Love"

[From Part I Chapter II.A, "You Shall Love"]

And a second [commandment] is like it: You shall love your neighbor as yourself.~Matthew 22:39 (ESV)

In the second chapter of Works of Love Kierkegaard begins a reflection on one verse that will take him three chapters to finish. The verse is quoted above, and in this chapter he focuses on the phrase “you shall love”—which, as Kierkegaard explains, is perhaps one of the most revolutionary things ever said:

A political cartoon of Kierkegaard

 “[I]n relation to this Christian imperative, as in relation to everything Christian, you will humbly confess with the wonder of faith that such a thing did not arise in any human being’s heart. Now after it had been commanded throughout Christianity’s eighteen centuries and previously in Judaism, now when everyone is instructed in this and, in a spiritual sense, like someone brought up in his prosperous parents’ house, is almost made to forget that those brought up in it favor all kinds of novelties, just as when healthful food is distained in favor of confections by someone who has never been hungry; now when Christianity is presupposed… this Law of Love is repeated by everyone as a matter of course…”

Pause. For clarity—because I know as well as anyone how Kierkegaard and run on with an idea—here’s what he’s just said: after hearing this commandment for (now) twenty centuries in Christianity and twenty more in the history of Israel, everyone has become acclimated to it. Even those who are not Christians have heard this kind of thing so much that they see nothing remarkable in it. This commandment has become part of our cultural background so that no one really thinks about how radical it is. Okay, unpause.

“…[A]nd yet how seldom, perhaps, is it observed, how seldom, perhaps, does a Christian earnestly and gratefully ponder a conception of what his condition might be if Christianity had not come into the world! What courage it takes to say for the first time, ‘You shall love,’ or, more correctly, what divine authorship it takes to turn the natural man’s conceptions and ideas upside down with this phrase! There at the boundary where human language halts and courage fails, there revelation breaks forth with divine origination and proclaims what is not difficult to understand in the sense of profundity or human parallels but which did not arise in any human being’s heart. It is actually not difficult to understand once it has been expressed; indeed, it wants to be understood in order to be practiced, but it did not arise in any human being’s heart.”

The concept inherent in this commandment is so radical and profound that no human could possibly have come up with it herself. It’s not that the concept is complicated or difficult—it’s very simple and easy—but it completely contradicts our natural instincts and desires as human beings. It would never occur to any of us on our own to say, “you shall love.”

“Take a pagan who is not spoiled by having learned thoughtlessly to patter Christianity by rote or has not been spoiled by the delusion of being a Christian—and this commandment, ‘You shall love,’ will not only surprise him but will disturb him, will be an offense to him. For this very reason that which is the mark of Christianity—“Everything has become new”—again fits the commandment of love. The commandment is not something new in an accidental sense, nor a novelty in the sense of something curious, nor something new in a temporal sense. Love had existed also in paganism, but this obligation to love is a change of eternity—and everything has become new. What a difference there is between the play of feelings, drives, inclinations, and passions, in short, that play of the powers of immediacy, that celebrated glory of poetry in smiles or in tears, in desire or in want—what a difference between this and the earnestness of eternity, the earnestness of the commandment in spirit and truth in honesty and self-denial!”[1]

Here is what is so radical about the statement, “You shall love”: it makes love itself a commandment. Love, which we tend to regard as simply an emotion, which we cannot control , which is mysterious and mystical, becomes the subject of a commandment. We are told that we must love, which means we have the ability to choose whether to love or not, and we have been commanded to love. Love as a choice and a commandment is completely different from the love of “feelings, drives, inclinations, and passions.” It is eternal, it is divine, it is a decision that we make and not a force that washes over us. With this kind of love we are left with no excuse: I cannot say “I fell out of love,” or “they’re just not my type,” or “we just don’t get along,” or anything else along those lines. We are commanded to love. Period.

Dear Father,

Your love makes all things new. It gives us hope because we know that we are loved in this way: constantly and eternally. It gives us hope because we know you make it possible for us to love in spite of our own changeability. But it also calls us to task, because we have it in our power (by the power granted us by your Holy Spirit) to love eternally, and we must make the choice to do so. Father, grant me the strength to choose to love as you love. Grant me a heart that love always, when it is easy and when it is hard. Give me the strength to being loving when I am angry, when I am tired, when I am offended or insulted. May I be love, as you are, in all things.

In the name of Jesus Christ, who is your love to the world,

Amen

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[1] Søren Kierkegaard, Works of Love. Translated by Howard V. and Edna H Hong. Princeton University Press, 1995, p. 24-5. Emphasis in original