The heart of the Christian ideal
The heart of the Christian ideal is that one should be willing to suffer and die for others, out of love. Why is that appealing?
My Dearest Friend,
Over the past few years, I’ve done a lot of thinking about how to best explain to another person why Christianity is worth their consideration.
Why should you care about being a Christian—particularly if you have seen Christians behaving badly out in the world?
I thought and contemplated about this: what is “the Christian ideal?” What do Christians strive for? Why is that appealing?
The heart of the Christian ideal is that one should be willing to suffer and die for others, out of love.
Another way to put this might be: one should die so that others might live—not live so that others may die.
“Greater love hath no man than this, that a man lay down his life for his friends.” John 15:13.
In the Christian tradition, this can mean a literal death—as Christ dies on the cross. But it also means death to selfish desire, so that one may be free to love others in a way that brings them new life.
Also at the heart of Christianity is to try to learn who God is, and to try to achieve the perfection that God has—because if we are able to do that, we will be perfectly faithful to what is true, perfectly hopeful in all things, and perfectly loving towards ourselves and others.
“Be perfected, even as your Heavenly Father is perfect.” Matthew 5:48
All Christians and all Christian institutions fall short of these ideals. This fact does not mean that those ideals are not admirable, or worth striving for. It means there is always room for more striving for the truth, more hope, and more love.
“...the greatest of these is love.” 1 Corinthians 13
I don’t know about you, but my heart longs for the accomplishment of that ideal. When will we love each other perfectly? So perfectly that we embrace each other with complete self-giving… with total generosity and vulnerability… at all times and in all circumstances?
At my darkest moments, when I have considered walking away from my Christianity, that’s been my reason to stay. The ideal envisioned by Christianity creates a world that I want to be in, and a heaven that I want to go to.
And if I want to help create that world, I need to first do my best to live out that ideal, in my own being. If I do not possess that ideal, then I can’t give it to others. You can’t give away something you don’t have.
Even if you do not feel at this moment that Christianity is the path for you, it might be worth considering what a faith system has to offer when it places values like this at the core of its teaching.
I hope that makes sense. Thanks for letting me share this little/big idea with you!
Lots of love,
John