Love - the fundamental Christian concept

The objective of this blog is to discuss whether Christian concepts have any relevance to evidence based therapy when they are taken out of their religious context.  Love is the fundamental Christian concept about the nature of God and to love God and to love one's neighbour as one's-self are the first and second great commandments.  For anyone unfamiliar with Christianity, this second commandment, to love your neighbour as yourself, may seem somewhat surprising.  They may recall some examples of Christians who seem to love other people, there was Mother Teresa in India and the Salvation Army do some good work with the homeless.  But the people they know who go to Church, don't seem any more full of love than most other people they know.  That young family that disappear every Sunday morning are quite friendly but so are lots of other people.  They are never sure what to make of the older couple they see walking to that stone church a couple of streets away.  Do they love their neighbour as themselves?  How much do they love themselves anyway?  They look a bit grim faced.  All Christians fall a long way short of perfection and what do we really know about each other anyway.  Within Christian belief, Christians are told to do good in such a way that their left hand does not know what their right hand does so any acts that show their love of neighbour may in any case be hidden.

The failure of Christians to live up to their own standards points up the fundamental dichotomy between Christianity and people who are Christians.  Gandhi, the father of modern India is reported as saying that he was very attracted by Christianity and indeed he might have become a Christian if he had ever met one.  Christians fall very far short of perfection in following the teachings of their founder.  Some are aware of their failure but human nature means that many will not be.  This individual and corporate failure is recognised by the prominence given to confession in corporate and private prayer.  Acknowledgement of failings is followed by asking for and receiving forgiveness (another Christian concept).

I am not trying to justify Christianity let alone Christians in this blog but want to suggest that because the practitioners of an idea do not make a perfect job of following it, it does not mean that the idea itself is not valuable.  It has been said that there has only been one perfect Christian since Jesus and that was Francis of Assisi who lived in the twelfth century, not a very high percentage. Do you always live up to your own highest ideals and if not does that invalidate everything you believe in?

In subsequent blogs, I will look at the nature of love in Christianity and how this concept may be relevant to evidence based therap.