A Path to the Heart of God: The Journey Ahead of Us


I have been recently working my way through a book entitled A General Theory of Love by Thomas Lewis, M.D., Fari Amini, M.D., and Richard Lannon, M.D. Now, it just so happens that Jesus has a lot to say about love, and the Bible does as well. So when three psychiatrists decide to weigh in and offer a general theory of love, I think it behooves me to check out what they have to say.
The three authors are all practicing clinicians and teach at the University of California, San Francisco medical school. As the dustcover describes it, “they describe the workings of our ancient, pivotal urge for intimacy, revealing that our nervous systems are not self-contained: from earliest childhood our brains actually link with those of the people close to us in silent rhythm that makes up the life force of the body. These wordless ties determine our mood, stabilize and maintain our health, and change the structure of our brains, so that, in a very real sense, who we are and who we become depend on whom we love.” And, more to the point, how  we love.
The insights offered by the authors serve to underscore what Christianity has been cultivating among its followers for 2000 years. The practice and power of love is central to the message and life of Jesus Christ, so much so that among his followers, the author of the First Letter of John makes the bold proclamation that “God is Love” (1 John 4:8). In fact, what John claims is more radical: the path to knowing God is followed by loving one another: “Whoever does not love does not know God, because God is love.”
The basic message of A General Theory of Love is that our deep emotional life compels and propels our lives far more than our rational faculty does. In essence, we are biologically equipped to be in relationship with other persons, and the nature of our relationships shapes who we are, how we act and how we relate to others and the world around us.
Archbishop Desmond Tutu of South Africa has popularized a Bantu philosophy that expresses this succinctly: umuntu ngumuntu ngabantu, which translates as “a person is (or becomes) a person through persons.” Ubuntu philosophy states "I am what I am because of who we all are." This philosophy encapsulates what the authors of A General Theory of Love are describing in their book, and strikes at the heart of what Jesus was all about.
I said earlier that loving one another is the pathway to God. Christianity is based on the declaration that God loves the world, to the extent that he was incarnated in our midst in the person of Jesus Christ. A General Theory of Love causes me to understand that this was necessary because as flesh and blood creatures, we need the one-to-one contact of human interaction to form our emotional lives, establish our deepest commitments and mold our behaviors.
For the next several weeks, beginning mid-January, my sermons will look at just how it is that the Christian community has sought to be transformed by the teachings of Jesus and is followers, and how the practices and life patterns of that community are A Path to the Heart of God.
Come join us in worship, and join us on that path.

(Sources of Images: A General Theory of Love cover from http://www.coverbrowser.com/image/greatest-book-covers/833-9.jpg:  Desmond Tutu from http://www.thefamouspeople.com/profiles/images/desmond-tutu-1.jpg;  

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