QUESTION: Is Christian love a matter of ethics or love goes against ethics? – Job C.K.

ANSWER: Jacob Parappally MSFS

It is universally accepted that it is innate in human beings to think and do what is good and avoid evil or to do what is right and avoid what is wrong. It is possible that one may agree or disagree with others concerning one’s judgement about what is good and what is evil or what is right and what is wrong. Such disputations pertaining to right or wrong are not only possible among individuals but also among a group of people like the people of one culture or even religion with the people of other cultures and religions. It is also possible such discussions and disputations concerning the rightness and wrongness in certain matters even within a culture or religion. What was accepted as a right practice for centuries may be considered wrong in the course of time. The practice of slavery is one example for such a practice which was considered lawfully right to buy and sell human beings as slaves or to keep them. With evolution of human consciousness there is a better understanding and insight into the mystery of humans and a better understanding of what makes humans really human.
Ethical living is expected of every human being as humans do not live as isolated islands but as persons in a net-work of relationships. Fundamentally, ethics is based on standards and principles that prescribe what a human being ought to do as a human being in terms of rights and duties that would positively benefit the person who follows the ethical principles and it would benefit the entire society. Good actions and right behaviour of a person affect positively the well-being of others and the harmony and wellness of nature. Some may think that to be ethical means to do what one feels as right and refrain from doing what one feels as wrong. Some others may think that to be ethical is to do only lawful actions. Still others that the ethical behaviour of a person is based on his or her religious beliefs. Or for others a person is ethical when he or she follows whatever is accepted by society as ethical behaviour. All these understandings of ethics have their problems. If ethical behaviour of a person is based on any of these, like subjective feelings, religious beliefs or conformity to the societal demands it would end up in conflict within oneself or an enslavement that may cause the dehumanization of a person.

Love and Ethics
Some say that ethics is committed to neutrality and love is committed to partiality. Ethics does not care for relationships and treats everyone equally but love involves preferences and the intensity of relationships. If you follow this understanding of ethics and love one can say that Christian love is not ethical because it is based on the Old Testament understanding of God who had shown preferential option for Israel and the New Testament understanding of God revealed through Jesus Christ who leaves the ninety-nine righteous and goes after the one sinner. According to Markkula Centre for Applied Ethics of Santa Clara University, “ethics refers to well-founded standards of right and wrong that prescribe what humans ought to do, usually in terms of rights, obligations, benefits to society, fairness, or specific virtues. Ethics, for example, refers to those standards that impose the reasonable obligations to refrain from rape, stealing, murder, assault, slander, and fraud. Ethical standards also include those that enjoin virtues of honesty, compassion, and loyalty. And, ethical standards include standards relating to rights, such as the right to life, the right to freedom from injury, and the right to privacy. Such standards are adequate standards of ethics because they are supported by consistent and well-founded reasons.” Those well-founded reasons are emanating partly from the Biblical notion of morality and from the evolution of human self-understanding of what it means to be human.
For many, ethics or morality is based on love. But it is also true that there are situations in life where there can be conflict between love and ethics. One may encounter situations in which doing things for another out of love can be considered unethical or immoral. According to Kantian categorical imperative one ought to do things that become a universal law. Or only what I think honestly that it will be accepted as a universal law is right or ethical action. When love and ethics are properly understood there cannot be any conflict between a loving action and an ethical action. When love is understood as human attitude to another human being respecting his or her dignity and inalienable right to live and unfold as human being looking only for his or her well-being for its own sake it cannot be against ethics. Ethics is the way of behaviour to another human person respecting his or her dignity and right to be a human person. Any attitude or action against another’s dignity goes against love and ethics. Probably, the only difference between love and ethical practices is that real love does not change in any situation while ethical practices can change according to cultures and times and claim to be the right way of doing things.

Love Transcends Ethics
Christian love transcends ethics because love cannot be love if it follows prescriptions about what is to be done and what is forbidden to be done. Love does what flows from the essence of humans that is inter-relatedness. If the general principle is that one should not do to another what one does not want others to do to her or him , love goes beyond it and does to the other everything that would make him or her authentically human. The law of love is love without law. Ethical prescriptions are for those who feel obliged to do the minimum necessary, Love demands the maximum possible for the welfare of others. Therefore, this love we are speaking about is Christian love that goes beyond ethics and morality. When it was ethically right to hold the principle of an eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth, Jesus’ law of love not only goes beyond the laws of retribution but makes even the customary laws subservient love.
The love we are talking about is self-emptying love or agape. True agape is not possible without kenosis or self-emptying. When there is self-emptying love in any relationship it transcends all rules and regulations which enslaved humans in such a way that any type of resistance to them was seen as unethical. Those who stood against the practice of authentic love, claiming it to be against religious practices of the time crucified Jesus. The foundation for living authentic Christian love is following the way of love lived by Jesus Christ. “A new commandment I give to you, that you love one another; even as I have loved you, that you also love one another. By this all people will know that you are my disciples, if you have love for one another” (John 13:34-35). Further, the early Christian community realized that, “Greater love has no one than this, that one lay down his life for his friends” (John 15:13).
The Sermon on the Mount summarizes how a disciple of Jesus Christ must live in this world. Its ethics is founded on self-emptying love. One may say that it is not practical in this world where there is so much hatred, wars, destruction of human lives and property, bigotry, rape and murder, slander, back-stabbing, deceit and all other types of evil. Those who speak for justice and stand with the oppressed are silenced or murdered. Governments, political parties, various social and economic organizations and even some religious leaders justify corruption and injustice with their own way of interpreting the principles of morality or ethics. To live in such a society holding to the principles of morality based on kenotic love or agape is difficult but not impossible. It may cost one his or her life to live according to the demands of Christian love.

Ethical Christian Love
Authentic love that flows from the innate nature of humans cannot be limited to any religion or ideology. Adherents of other religions also have a claim to that love and call it related to their religion. What we mean when we say Christian love is what a Christian understands by love as received from the teachings and example of Jesus Christ. But many questions can be raised challenging the followers of Jesus Christ who claim to live Christian love. Did not Christians fight wars and murder thousands in the process? Were not there fratricidal wars and destruction in history? Did not Christian countries subjugate other peoples and countries and colonize them? Even in this century do not some of the so-called Christian countries sell weapons to destroy others? Many such questions of violence perpetrated and other evils done by so called Christians can be raised by others who challenge the claims of Christian love. The failures of those who follow the teaching of Jesus Christ do not invalidate the value of Christian love as it flows from the very nature of humans as lived by Jesus. Paul’s hymn of love in I Corinthians chapter 13 clearly shows what it means to practice ethical Christian love.
The love of God and the love of neighbour is the foundation of Christian ethics. It cannot go against any of the authentic ethical or moral teaching. In fact, it gives the reason for loving and doing good to others without any discrimination. It goes beyond the prescriptions of moral law because the measure of love is to love without measure!