To Love Kindness

When I was in college, I was part of a campus Christian fellowship that would gather each week for worship, discussion and singing. One of my favorite songs from that time is a song that went, “Thy loving kindness, is better than life. Thy loving kindness is better than life. My lips shall praise Thee; thus will I bless Thee, I will lift up my hands unto thy name.” It is taken from Psalm 63:3-4. The wording for the song is taken from the King James Version. The RSV translates it as “Because thy steadfast love is better than life, my lips will praise thee.”

“Loving kindness” and “steadfast love” are two ways to translate the Hebrew word, chesed, the same word found in Micah 6:8: “God has told you, O mortal, what is good;
and what does the Lord require of you but to do justice, and to love kindness,
and to walk humbly with your God?” This week we are looking at this formula for faithful living that has the capacity for transforming the world for the better. Today, we look at chesed.

N.H. Snaith, in his article on chesed in A Theological Word Book of the Bible, [edited by Alan Richardson (New York: MacMillan, 1951), pp. 136-7], says the following concerning the meaning of this word:

Loving-Kindness. This is a biblical word, invented by Miles Coverdale, and carried over into the English versions generally. It is one of the words he used in the Psalms (23 times, plus Hosea 2:19) to translate the Hebrew chesed when it refers to God's love for his people Israel…. The word is used only in cases where there is some recognized tie between the parties concerned. It is not used indiscriminately of kindness in general, haphazard, kindly deeds….The theological importance of the word chesed is that it stands more than any other word for the attitude which both parties to a covenant ought to maintain towards each other…. God's loving-kindness is that sure love which will not let Israel go. Not all Israel's persistent waywardness could ever destroy it. Though Israel be faithless, yet God remains faithful still. This steady, persistent refusal of God to wash his hands of wayward Israel is the essential meaning of the Hebrew word which is translated loving-kindness…. The widening of the meaning of the Hebrew chesed, used as the covenant word and especially of the covenant between God and Israel, is due to the history of God's dealings with his covenant-people. The continual waywardness of Israel has made it inevitable that, if God is never going to let Israel go, then his relation to his people must in the main be one of loving-kindness, mercy, and goodness, all of it entirely undeserved…. The loving-kindness of God towards Israel is therefore wholly undeserved on Israel's part. If Israel received the proper treatment for her stubborn refusal to walk in God's way, there would be no prospect for her of anything but destruction, since God's demand for right action never wavers one whit. Strict, however, as the demands for righteousness are, the prophets were sure that God's yearnings for the people of his choice are stronger still. Here is the great dilemma of the prophets, and indeed the dilemma of us all to this day. Which comes first, mercy or justice? Rashi (eleventh-century AD Jewish commentator) said that God gave 'precedence to the rule of mercy' and joined it 'with the rule of justice.' But this much is clear: when we try to estimate the depth and the persistence of God's loving-kindness and mercy, we must first remember his passion for righteousness. His passion for righteousness is so strong that he could not be more insistent in his demand for it, but God's persistent love for his people is more insistent still…. It is important to realize that though the Hebrew chesed can be translated by loving-kindness and mercy without doing violence to the context, yet we must always beware lest we think that God is content with less than righteousness. There is no reference to any sentimental kindness, and no suggestion of mercy apart from repentance, in any case where the Hebrew original is chesed. His demand for righteousness is insistent, and it is always at the maximum intensity. The loving-kindness of God means that his mercy is greater even than that. The word stands for the wonder of his unfailing love for the people of his choice, and the solving of the problem of the relation between his righteousness and his loving-kindness passes beyond human comprehension.

It is interesting to place this explanation of chesed in the context of Micah’s call to do justice, love kindness and walk humbly with God. The phrase translated as “love kindness” can more precisely translated as “to love with the intensely faithful loving mercy of God.” That is, Micah calls us to love others around us not with a normal human love that is subject to the human predilection for conditionality and lack of commitment. Rather, our love is to be patterned upon God’s unrelenting love, mercy, forgiveness, tenderness as well as accountability, righteousness, and faithfulness. God has standards of behavior in regards to how we relate to one another, and expects us to live according to them. In fact, we are to imitate God in our behavior. God serves as the model.

This is all predicated upon the assumption that we are capable to pattern our lives upon someone outside of ourselves. And in fact, that is entirely how we learn to act and behave. In essence, God is saying, “pattern your life upon the One who created you with the ability to pattern your life. Take me as your pattern, your example, your potential.”

In certain traditions of Jewish spirituality (e.g., see the discussion of chesed on Aish.com, according to the teachings of Kabbalah), chesed is understood to be an act that does not arise out of response to another act. In this regard, the creation of the world was an act of chesed, and our very lives are thus also an act of chesed. We did nothing to merit our entrance into the world – it comes entirely as an unmerited gift to us, as it were. Thus, chesed is an act of grace.

What this amounts to is developing a way of thinking and living in the world that is merciful and gracious as well as insistent upon faithful and right ways of behaving and treating others. It is a type of “tough love” that holds the world to a set of standards (i.e., justice) but acts out of mercy and grace towards that world. It is a profoundly spiritual way of being in the world. It requires transformation and submission of our own inner and outer life to the Way of God in order to pattern our lives after the One who is our Origin, our Source, the Eternal Center of all Life, who is Love.

In order to do this, we need to learn to “walk humbly with our God.” On that, check back tomorrow.

(Images: hands, from http://www.luyhm.org/images/hands1.GIF;  "chesed- doing it right" from http://aish.teamgenesis.com/ssi/aish/graphics/titles/MC_602_chesed_doing_right_120x90.jpg; loving-kindness heart from http://www.clear-mind-meditation-techniques.com/image-files/loving-kindness.jpg ; hands and sun from http://www.humanitysteam.org/files/loving-kindness.jpg)