Love Will Keep Us Alive

One of the styles of group Bible study I learned when I was in college, especially when dealing with stories, is to roleplay. Everyone would read a particular story together, and the facilitator would ask the question: “If you were in the story, who among the characters would you be?” This approach is both interesting and fruitful, because members will realize the perspective of the different characters of the story. By putting one’s self in someone else’s shoes, we begin to understand what people think, feel, and do. We will try to do this in the parable of the Good Samaritan (Luke 10:30-35).

“A man was going down from Jerusalem to Jericho, and he fell among robbers, who stripped him and beat him and departed, leaving him half dead. Now by chance a priest was going down that road, and when he saw him he passed by on the other side. So likewise a Levite, when he came to the place and saw him, passed by on the other side. But a Samaritan, as he journeyed, came to where he was, and when he saw him, he had compassion. He went to him and bound up his wounds, pouring on oil and wine. Then he set him on his own animal and brought him to an inn and took care of him. And the next day he took out two denarii and gave them to the innkeeper, saying, ‘Take care of him, and whatever more you spend, I will repay you when I come back’.”

From this parable, let us deal with three sets of characters with three different reflections on love and keeping alive.

The Robbers, Levite and Priest:

Love of Ourselves Keeps Us Alive

The first set of characters includes the robbers who beat the man and left him half-dead on the road, along with the priest and the Levite who passed by the other side when they saw the needy man. These three characters in the parable model the first paradigm of love and life: “my love of myself keeps me alive.” The robbers did what they did maybe because they were also destitute. Maybe they were doing what they were doing because society does not give them opportunities to work honest livelihood. Maybe they were the uneducated and the skill-less, who can only scavenge for food by taking them from others. As human beings, they needed to eat. They may have had spouses and children waiting at home for them to bring back food. It was because they love themselves and their loved ones that they were willing to do whatever it takes to keep themselves alive.

Both the priest and the Levite did not help the man because they also wanted to protect their own lives. In particular, they were afraid of violating the law of God stipulated in Numbers 19:11-13, “Whoever touches the dead body of any person shall be unclean seven days…  Whoever touches a dead person, the body of anyone who has died, and does not cleanse himself, defiles the tabernacle of the Lord, and that person shall be cut off from Israel; because the water for impurity was not thrown on him, he shall be unclean. His uncleanness is still on him.” This command is especially scary for those who serve in the Temple, like the priest and the Levite. Essentially, if they touched the man on the road—which may already have died—they would be cut off from the temple and their responsibilities as holy men for a week. In a sense, not touching someone who is bleeding and not moving on the road is the wisest and the most logical thing to do! They love themselves and their ministries at the temple, so they wanted to keep themselves clean. The robbers pursued their love interests, while the Levite and priest protected their love interests.

Loving ourselves is not essentially evil. We need an appropriate self-love and self-concern. We need to take care of ourselves, eat, shower, and sleep. Bernard of Clairvaux (1090-1152) stated that the highest and fourth degree of love is love of self for the sake of God. What is wrong is love of self for the sake of self. When we love ourselves because we want to honor God with our lives and continued service, then love of self is godly. What is wrong is love of ourselves at the expense of the lives of others. Love of ourselves becomes wrong if for the sake of keeping ourselves alive, we take advantage of and hurt others, and if for the sake of keeping ourselves alive, we willfully disregard the needs of others.

The Samaritan:

Our Love Keeps Others Alive

The second character is the Samaritan. He models the second category of the relationship between love and survival: our love keeps others alive. It was the Samaritan’s active and intentional reaching out to the half-dead man that saved the man. Without someone capable of loving, the man would have died.

The fact is this: there is always someone relying on our love for their continued existence: the parent who sacrifices his or her career in order to take care of their children; the parent who works double shifts or two employments just to support his or her children’s education or special needs; the parent patiently enduring back pain in order to care for the kids, and whose rewards are none other than sweet smiles; the family bread winner who works hard in order to bring food to the table; the son who continues to support and care for his weakening parents; or the daughter who puts off romantic relations to support her family.

What enables people to do these things? The answer is simple: love.

Love was why Schindler saved the Jews, why Mother Theresa helped the poor, why Bruce Willis chose to remain and detonate the nuclear warhead on the asteroid, and why Jack saved his beloved Rose from sinking. Whether we like it or not, and realize it or not, the lives of others are dependent on our ability to love and extend love to them. In I Wanna Know What Love Is, we discussed the fact that the world is full of unloved people; here, we must realize that the world is full of dying people. It is our capability to love that will enable them to live. It is when we are compassionate and merciful to others that we can help others to remain alive. The Dalai Lama once said, “Our prime purpose in this life is to help others. And if you can’t help them, at least don’t hurt them.”

The Half-Dead Man:

Others’ Love Keeps Us Alive

The final character in the parable is the half-dead man. He was a hopeless man, lying on the road, and was totally at the mercy of others. His survival depended entirely on the love that others might show him. He was a man with several counted breaths left, and only someone’s attention and help can prolong the function of his respiratory system. He was a man in deep need of pity and compassion. It was only someone capable of loving the unlovable who can save him from his coming demise. I can imagine that when he recovered from his near-death experience, his thoughts were simple: it was through the love of another that he was alive.

We are all recipients of love. One of the primary reasons we are alive right now is because we have been recipients of many people’s love, attention, and care. We are recipient of God’s love: “You clothed me with skin and flesh, and knit me together with bones and sinews. You have granted me life and steadfast love, and your care has preserved my spirit” (Job 10:11-12). God’s love keeps us alive, even when we deserve death. But more than just physical life, God grants us eternal life: “For God so loved the world, that he gave his only Son, that whoever believes in him should not perish but have eternal life. ¹⁷ For God did not send his Son into the world to condemn the world, but in order that the world might be saved through him” (John 3:16-17).

We are recipients of our parents’ love. We are alive today because our parents had sleepless nights when we were newborns. We are alive today because of their endurance and sacrifices. We are alive today because of their patience and understanding. We are alive today because they did not give up on us. We are alive today because they loved us so much. The parable of the prodigal son illustrates very well that even though children do hurtful things and break their parents’ hearts, they are still loved: “While he was still a long way off, his father saw him and felt compassion, and ran and embraced him and kissed him” (Luke 15:10).

           

We are recipients of others’ love. It is because of the love of others for us that we are alive. We are all recipients of somebody’s love, and we are alive today because of them. But we must also remember to love back. Our lives are dependent on others, but others’ lives are also dependent on us. In this world, we are not only meant to be loved; we are also meant to love. We are not mere recipients of love, we are also givers of love. There comes a point in our lives when we are just flickering lights, ready to be snuffed out at any moment, and it is at the mercy of others that we our fires are still burning today. But there are times when we see someone—a coal separated from the batch of burning coals—and what remains in him is but a tiny ray of light, just sufficient to catch anyone’s attention. This coal needs someone to stretch their hands to bring them back to the group to be rekindled to life.

Love will keep us alive, together, because we need each other. It is in loving and being loved back that we can both continue to live.


This is the third entry for the Love series. The first is The One that You Love, followed by I Wanna Know What Love Is.  

I Wanna Know What Love Is

Last year, I saw a Facebook post saying that “Valentine’s Day is cancelled.” The post is humorous, but there is also a tinge of bitterness or loneliness implied in it. Whether we care to admit it or now, the so-called season of love can be a cause of pain to some, reminding them of their unfulfilled desire for intimate relationships. It is not an exaggeration to claim that in the month of February, many are silently singing the words that Mick Jones penned in a song released in 1984, I Want to Know What Love Is:

I wanna know what love is

I want you to show me

I wanna feel what love is

I know you can show me

Everyone wants to feel loved. In fact, many are willing to give up literally everything for love. The Passengers, a sci-fi romantic movie illustrates this (Spoiler alert!). The setting is a shuttle coursing through space heading to a new habitable planet. The 5,000 people aboard should be in suspended hibernation for 120 years, but because of a system failure, one of the passengers woke up 90 years before they reach their destination. For several months, he was living a lonely life alone on the ship. Then he discovered that he has the knowledge and tools to wake up someone else from among the 5,000 people sleeping to accompany him. In particular, there was a lady among the sleeping passengers that he is quite affectionate with. The problem is this: if he wakes her up, she will most likely die with him before they reach the new planet, thus depriving her of the new life she hoped for when she left Earth. But he is already dying of loneliness. Should he wake her to accompany him even if it means ultimately killing that person?

The world is filled with people whose hearts are longing to be loved. Buried deep down is the desire to know what it means to be loved, to be cared for, to be noticed, to be appreciated, to be embraced, and to be accepted. Our world is full of heartbroken women who always gets dumped by her lovers, disfigured men who can only fantasize about having a girlfriend, children with abusive fathers or uncaring mothers, high school students who are invisible to their teachers and classmates, young children who never had birthday cakes, old parents put in a home for the aged because their children have careers to prioritize, and even churchmates who do not even get a “Hi” from someone from the congregation.

The Unloved

One of the most tragic stories in the Bible that depict one who was so unloved is the parable of the Good Samaritan in Luke 10:25-37. The first part of the parable is disheartening: “A man was going down from Jerusalem to Jericho, and he fell among robbers, who stripped him and beat him and departed, leaving him half dead. ³¹ Now by chance a priest was going down that road, and when he saw him he passed by on the other side.³² So likewise a Levite, when he came to the place and saw him, passed by on the other side” (Luke 10:30-32). The travelling man was quite unfortunate. He was violently attacked by robbers, who did not care about him at all. He was dismissed by religious pilgrims even though he was obviously in pain and in need of care. The man represents the world’s unloved, and many in the world today resonate with him.

First, he is a victim of his circumstances. He seemed to have travelled alone. There is no indication in the passage that he was in a group. This itself is very revealing, because this most probably means that the man was poor. Although he knew that journeying alone is dangerous, he did not have a choice because he did not have money to hire people to accompany him. No one wished to escort him for free. Love is not free. Companionship is bought at the right price. Companionship is a luxury of those who are able to give back in return. Because the man was poor, no one wanted to be with him. How many are in the world like him?

Secondly, he is a victim of violence. Robbers came and stripped him even of his clothes, beat him and left him half-dead. He had company for a short while, but these companions only surrounded him for what can be taken from him. There are many in the world like him. They are children abused by their parents or relatives, serving as punching bags or outlets of rage and disappointments in life. They are children at school bullied by other students. They are servants of the rich, enslaved to work. They are prostitutes who receive embrace only because of the pleasure they bring to their customers. They are offenders and sinners who only get attention by being topics of gossip and scorn.

Thirdly, he is a victim of discrimination. The man was clearly suffering on the road where people can see him. But those who pass by chose to avoid him, even going the other way in order to be far from him. There are reasons for their actions. The man was bloody. He was smelly. He was half-dead, and therefore, a cause of religious impurity upon touching. He was needy. He had nothing to give but trouble. He was nothing but a burden. So those who passed by decided to pay him no attention. There are many like him in the world today. They are the poor who are not invited at the table reserved only for the important guests. They are the smelly beggars who are not welcomed to step in our homes. They are the OFWs who are mistreated by their bosses because they are considered lowly in status. They are the not-so-good-looking and the janitor who are eating alone in the cafeteria because no one wants to sit with them. They are the street children and people who are treated as eyesores.

Fourthly he is a victim of people’s apathy. It is normal and natural for a human being to be appalled by violence and to feel sympathy to those who suffer. But the half-dead man in the story received no sympathy. He was a recipient of radical indifference from extremely individualistic people. The irony of the story is that the things the man did not need were not given to him (violence and discrimination) but the things that he needed the most were withheld from him (sympathy). I can imagine that while the half-dead man was lying on the road, seeing all the people passing by and paying him no attention, he was singing in his head: “I wanna know what love is / I want you to show me / I wanna feel what love is / I know you can show me.” There are many people in the world like the man. They are those who suffer that we see on the television, but are not receiving any prayer of blessing.

Who will love the unloved? This is the crucial question. Who will rescue the perishing, care for the dying, snatch people from sin and the grave, weep over the erring one, and lift up the fallen? Who will hold the blind man’s hand, feed the hungry, visit prisoners, kiss lepers, and invite sinners into their lives? The world has many unloved people. But this is also because there are many who do not love. The number of unloved people is related to the number of people who are incapable of loving. The number of homeless people is related to the number of families that are inhospitable. The number of hungry people is related to the number of people who are unwilling to feed others.

The Unlikely Lover

Fortunately, the story continued. A Samaritan came along. He noticed the man on the road, gave him attention, took care of his wounds, and accompanied him to the doctor. He was not like the Levite and the teacher of the law who probably prayed for the man when they saw him. There are times when spiritual prayer is precisely what is NOT needed, because what is needed is in the realm of the physical. James wrote: “If a brother or sister is poorly clothed and lacking in daily food, and one of you says to them, “Go in peace, be warmed and filled,” without giving them the things needed for the body, what good is that?” (James 2:15-16). There are many times when prayer is just not good enough.

The least expected to help was the one who helped. Samaritans and Jews did not get along very well. The Jews did not like the Samaritans because the Samaritans were mixed races. They were Jews who married non-Jews. In the Harry Potter world, they were looked down as muggles by the purebloods. On the other hand, the Samaritans did not like the Jews for their judgmental attitude and extreme sense of self-righteousness. The Jews viewed the Samaritans as pigs; the Samaritans viewed the Jews as dogs. But in the parable, it was the Samaritan who showed love for his enemy: “But a Samaritan, as he journeyed, came to where he was, and when he saw him, he had compassion. ³⁴ He went to him and bound up his wounds, pouring on oil and wine. Then he set him on his own animal and brought him to an inn and took care of him.³⁵ And the next day he took out two denarii and gave them to the innkeeper, saying, ‘Take care of him, and whatever more you spend, I will repay you when I come back’” (Luke 10:33-35).

Jesus was most probably intentional in making the least expected person to be the one who showed love. The good Samaritan was patterned after Himself. Throughout His life and ministry, He was portrayed, over and over again, as one who showed love to the unlovable. Being a prophet with high moral standards, He was the most unlikely person to forgive the woman caught in adultery and defend her from her accusers (John 8:1-11). Being a holy man, He was also the most unlikely person to allow a woman who lived a sinful life touch him (Luke 7:36-38). Being the king, He was the most unlikely person to accept children in His presence (Mark 10:13-16). Being a teacher of the law, he was the most unlikely person to violate the law and touch a man with leprosy (Luke 5:12-16; cf. Lev 13:45-46; Num 5:2-3).

Like these unlovables, we too have received God’s love. The parable of the Good Samaritan is greatly similar to Paul’s thoughts in Romans 5:6, 8, “For while we were still weak, at the right time Christ died for the ungodly… God shows his love for us in that while we were still sinners, Christ died for us.” Notice how Paul describes us: weak (“powerless,” NIV), ungodly, and sinners. Like the man who left Jerusalem to go to Jericho, we left His holy city. We have become tired of God, and we wanted to try other cities. We left the city of God where the temple of sacrifice and forgiveness is. Instead of staying in the city of God, we decided to move to the city of destruction. Just with this decision and action, we have become ungodly sinners (Rom 5:6, 8).

But the moment we left the city of God, we were like sheep without a shepherd. The journey away from the city of God is truly a downward journey. We immediately met robbers along the road to our own Jerichos. We were beaten, stripped of our joy and dignity, and left behind to die alone among stones and thorns. In a lot of sense, we were the ones who invited the calamity upon ourselves. We should not have left Jerusalem, the city of God. But there we were: hopeless half-dead men and women on the road. We are half-dead and unable even to cry for help. On that road, we lie bruised and bloody—ugly and smelly. With these, we were certainly unlovable. There was nothing in us and about us that can demand attention from others.

Little did we expect that the One who would notice us, help us, care for us, and make sacrifices for us—is the God, the recipient of our animosity and the One we are all trying to run away from. Paul says, “While we were enemies we were reconciled to God by the death of his Son” (Rom 5:10). God came down from Jerusalem to the rocky and warm road to Jericho. He left His holy city to look for those who needs to experience love: “For God so loved the world, that he gave his only Son, that whoever believes in him should not perish but have eternal life” (John 3:16). He stopped precisely where we were, and picked us up with His own hands. Paul wrote: “For while we were still weak, at the right time Christ died for the ungodly… God shows his love for us in that while we were still sinners, Christ died for us” (Rom 5:6, 8).

Of course, the parable does not only teach us about God’s love for us. Jesus told the parable because He wanted us to learn how to love in the same way that God loves us. At the end of the parable, Jesus asked: “Which of these three, do you think, proved to be a neighbor to the man who fell among the robbers?” When the teacher of the law responded: “The one who showed him mercy,” Jesus said to him, “You go, and do likewise” (Luke 10:36-37).


This is the second entry for the Love series. The first one is entitled "The One that You Love."

The One That You Love

One of the saddest movies I have watched is Toy Story 3, where Woody and his friends felt abandoned because they were slowly discarded by their owner, Andy. The movie starts with reels of Andy always playing with his toys, but Andy goes to college—basically growing too old for his toys. So, even though Andy was unwilling to give them up, the toys are given away to their new owners in the end. The point of this is simple. Time can create a wedge between us and the things that we once loved. We can grow cold in our relationships with anyone or anything. We can be like any other kid who loves her new toys, but only for a while. She may be very excited about a toy for a few days, but she will ultimately leave them behind to look for something more interesting or exciting. Paul warns us against this sort of situation through his letter to his disciple Timothy:

But understand this, that in the last days there will come times of difficulty. For people will be lovers of self, lovers of money, proud, arrogant, abusive, disobedient to their parents, ungrateful, unholy, heartless, unappeasable, slanderous, without self-control, brutal, not loving good, treacherous, reckless, swollen with conceit, lovers of pleasure rather than lovers of God, having the appearance of godliness, but denying its power (2 Tim 3:1-5).

Paul’s description of the last days is very grim. People will continue to love, but the object of their love will be things found in creation. People will prefer creatures over the Creator. Three idolatrous loves are the focus of the passage: love of self, love of money, and love of pleasure. 

First, according to Paul, people will be lovers of themselves. Whitney Houston’s hit song The Greatest Love of All actually promotes this. The song starts with a great note: “I believe the children’s our future,” so we might be led to think that it is a song about awesome love. Unfortunately, to our dismay, the chorus ends with these lines: “The greatest love of all is easy to achieve / Learning to love yourself – is the greatest love of all.”

People love themselves. This is very true today. Without a doubt, our era is one of the most narcissistic eras in the history of the world. The new English word “selfie” was coined in this era. Last year, I unfriended my neighbor from my province because my Facebook newsfeed was littered with her face. She takes delight in taking selfies almost every hour. Technology today provides several platforms for people suffering from Kulang Sa Pansin (KSP) or Attention Deficiency Syndrome (ASD) to be noticed. People today are lovers of themselves. They seek attention, recognition, and appreciation. People’s sense of self-worth are measured by the number of likes and reactions they get from a Facebook post.

Imagine if you visit someone’s home. He is single and living alone. You look around and notice that there is particular section in the receiving room, for everyone to see, that is filled with pictures, awards, travels, and even records of their good deeds. There is even a picture of him at the very center of all these things. It is basically like a shrine to idolize, worship, and promote himself. It is placed in the receiving area precisely so that people who come to the house can see everything and make comments. So you think to yourself: “Wow! This guy has a lot of ego!” Well, this is now called a website or a Facebook wall. People might be embarrassed to create a physical shrine for themselves, but they are shameless in creating online shrines.

Secondly, Paul says that people will be lovers of pleasure. This is also related to the love of self. Several surveys have been conducted about the greatest pleasures in life, and the results include: squeezing a pimple, cleaning your earwax, chocolate, bacon, a long bath, shopping, food, and sex. Among the three loves in the passage, it is love of pleasure that is contrasted with love of God. It seems, therefore, that the greatest competition for loving God is the love of pleasure. The temptation is to prioritize what we want over what God wants.

Thirdly, people will be lovers of money. The reason why this is not a good thing is found in the two other passages in the New Testament where love of money is mentioned. First, in Luke 16:1-14, after talking about the parable of the shrewd manager, Jesus affirmed that “no servant can serve two masters, for either he will hate the one and love the other, or he will be devoted to the one and despise the other. You cannot serve God and money” (16:13). Immediately after Jesus said this, the next verse reads: “The Pharisees, who were lovers of money, heard all these things, and they ridiculed him” (Luke 16:14). People who love their money are easily prone to reject Jesus’ words about money if their interests clash with the kingdom’s. The second passage is 1 Timothy 6:6, 9-10, “Godliness with contentment is great gain… But those who desire to be rich fall into temptation, into a snare, into many senseless and harmful desires that plunge people into ruin and destruction. For the love of money is a root of all kinds of evils. It is through this craving that some have wandered away from the faith and pierced themselves with many pangs.” Very clearly, Paul’s concern is that love of money can cause people to fall into many temptations. Worse, love of money is the root of all evil. It has historically brought faithful Christians to wander from the faith and cause numerous afflictions upon themselves. In the parable of the sower, those who are sown among thorns are described as “those who hear the word, but the cares of the world and the deceitfulness of riches and the desires for other things enter in and choke the word, and it proves unfruitful” (Mark 4:18-19).

The picture 2 Timothy 3:1-5 paint is extremely grim. Thankfully, the chapter does not end in verse 5. It actually goes on to sing a better tune in the next few verses. Paul wrote:

You, however, have followed my teaching, my conduct, my aim in life, my faith, my patience, my love, my steadfastness… ¹⁴ But as for you, continue in what you have learned and have firmly believed, knowing from whom you learned it ¹⁵ and how from childhood you have been acquainted with the sacred writings, which are able to make you wise for salvation through faith in Christ Jesus (2 Tim 3:10, 14-15).

These verses are a breath of fresh air. Paul says to Timothy, his disciple, that the world will turn sour and people will be lovers of themselves, of money, and of pleasure—except him. Timothy is the only hand whose palm is up when everyone else have their palms down. In 3:14-15, the reason why Timothy is different from the rest of the world is revealed: “But as for you, continue in what you have learned and have firmly believed, knowing from whom you learned it  and how from childhood you have been acquainted with the sacred writings, which are able to make you wise for salvation through faith in Christ Jesus.” Timothy is different from the rest of the world because he is a believer of Jesus Christ. Moreover, he has a life deeply grounded in the Word.

We must be different. We are not narcissistic; we love God. We are not lovers of money; we are sacrificial. We are not lovers of pleasure; we are the masters of our selves. In a narcissistic and ego-centric world, do we love God more than ourselves? In an economically-driven world, do we love God more than money? In a sensual world, do we love God more than pleasure? Can God say the same words He spoke about Job for us: “Have you considered my servant Job, that there is none like him on the earth, a blameless and upright man, who fears God and turns away from evil?” (Job 1:8). What is it that we love? Who is it that we love? Oscar C. A. Bernadotte wrote a beautiful hymn with words that should be the heart of everyone.

I’d rather have Jesus than silver or gold;
I’d rather be His than have riches untold;
I’d rather have Jesus than houses or lands;
I’d rather be led by His nail-pierced hand

Than to be the king of a vast domain
Or be held in sin’s dread sway;
I’d rather have Jesus than anything
This world affords today.

I’d rather have Jesus than men’s applause;

I’d rather be faithful to His dear cause;

I’d rather have Jesus than worldwide fame;

I’d rather be true to His holy name.