What's Love Got To Do With It?

I have mentioned Michael Harper’s book, The Love Affair, in previous posts. I was so impressed by what he had to say in the eleventh chapter, “Love or Money,” that I am going to excerpt it here at some length. The responsibility of believers regarding wealth and poverty is of continual interest, and I have opined here on more than one occasion with reference to the immigrant situation. Many believers seem to confuse their Christian duty with the role of government. Harper makes a thoughtful distinction between the two spheres in the following selection:

“We need to look so at love as it relates to politics. Democracy and the politics which goes with it are not doing very well at the present time. One of the main reasons for this is that government can only be sure of getting into power by promising popular policies. People will not necessarily vote for right policies, but they will invariably vote for popular policies. But the more radically society gets into trouble, the more radical the remedies need to b e, and that means either that the wrong party gets into power, or the party which can somehow cleverly sugar the pill so that the unpopular policies are disguised. It has become axiomatic in most democracies that politicians are dishonest; they cannot be trusted by the electorate. Thus democracy increasingly gets a bad name for itself.

“All ideologies share the same fate. They invariably fail to deliver the goods. They start off with initial enthusiasm. They are prepared to put up with much suffering and inconvenience to achieve their ideals. But they all end up in various forms of disillusionment. Communism itself has failed to construct the Utopian society. Socialism has degenerated into small-mindedness. It has fallen from its lofty ideals (many stemming from Christian convictions). It has become a soul-less exercise, a device for spreading greed more equitably….

“For many of the great Christian reformers, the normal democratic processes were the proper sphere in which their ideals could be implemented. In this they were right. But those were the days before the universal franchise which characterizes our modern democracies. In a sense we need to rise above party politics. Hans Kung writes about the need to be ‘neither right nor left’ nor to mediate between the two, but rather to ‘rise above them; above all the alternatives, all of which Christ plucks up from the roots. This is his radicalism: the radicalism of love which in its blunt realism is fundamentally different from the radicalism of an ideology…. ‘

“Basically Christianity is not an ideology. Jesus did not come to present a new set of ideas to us. He came to show us the meaning of love. The secret of his revolution was not the love of power but the power of love. Neither violence nor politics can bring in the Kingdom of God. One is not saying that Christians should not get involved in politics nor join the armed forces. On the contrary Christians should become deeply committed to and involved in society. The salt is not doing its job when it is in the salt-cellar, but when it’s in the food….

“Sir Fredrick Catherwood has said, ‘To try to improve society is not worldliness but love. To wash your hands of society is not love but worldliness.’ One of our most important tasks is to re-introduce the dynamic of the love of God into our society, from which it has been largely separated for hundreds of years. But it must be Agape love. Only that kind of love can work in our society, and its source is in God himself.”