D. Moody Smith, Jr. - "Love Is Not a Special Way of Feeling" (May 26, 1968)

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-	You might say,	0:03
	"Our Father who art in heaven,	0:05
	hallowed be thy name.	0:08
	Thy kingdom come, thy will be done	0:10
	on earth as it is in heaven.	0:13
	Give us this day our daily bread	0:16
	and forgive us our trespasses	0:19
	as we forgive those who trespass against us.	0:22
	And lead us not into temptation,	0:25
	but deliver us from evil.	0:28
	For thine is the kingdom	0:30
	and the power and the glory forever.	0:32
	Amen.	0:36
-	There's a little book of delightful drawings for children	0:58
	by Joan Walsh Anglund entitled,	1:02
	Love is a special way of feeling.	1:05
	And who can really doubt that it is?	1:10
	Can one question the fact that human love,	1:14
	whether sexual, paternal, or fili,	1:17
	or filial involves feelings?	1:22
	Even the Old Testament seems to recognize	1:27
	that love involves the dimension of feeling.	1:31
	Deuteronomy 6:4,	1:36
	"Hear, O Israel.	1:38
	The Lord our God, the Lord is one.	1:40
	And you shall love the Lord your God with all your heart	1:44
	with all your soul, and with all your might."	1:48
	This passage is quoted by Jesus in the New Testament,	1:53
	and it certainly seems to imply that love is a feeling.	1:57
	The statement that love is not a feeling,	2:05
	therefore would seem to be, strictly speaking, untrue.	2:07
	And this would seem to be obvious.	2:13
	And so, perhaps, it would be better this morning	2:16
	to say that love is not just a feeling.	2:18
	And I suppose that most people, perhaps everyone,	2:23
	would agree to that.	2:26
	Any yet, I don't want to make that qualification.	2:29
	I want to say very blatantly	2:33
	and with all the risk of contradiction that it involves	2:35
	that love is not a feeling.	2:38
	I want to say it just that boldly and just that sharply	2:42
	because the opposite has such wide currency today,	2:47
	especially among religious or church people.	2:51
	That is, the idea that love is a feeling.	2:55
	That loving is feeling a certain way.	2:58
	That love is a special way of feeling.	3:02
	Is it?	3:07
	Is Christian love a special way of feeling?	3:09
	Well, I'm sure that it must be,	3:13
	but all too often, Christian people tend to think	3:15
	that this aspect of love is the reality itself.	3:17
	If you really love people	3:23
	and you have a certain benign feeling toward them,	3:25
	and that's it.	3:28
	This is what Christ commanded	3:29
	and this is what is important for the Christian life.	3:31
	And thus the Church and churchmen	3:36
	talk a lot about love in the abstract	3:39
	or love as an inward feeling or disposition.	3:43
	All right.	3:47
	As long as the talk remains at that level,	3:49
	nobody gets very excited.	3:52
	Nobody gets angry, and we can all agree	3:53
	that love stands at the heart of the Christian message.	3:56
	We can endure a great deal of scolding and exhortation	4:00
	about the need for love	4:03
	and lack of love in the contemporary world.	4:04
	And then we can all make our own mental reservations	4:08
	as to who is responsible for this lack of love,	4:12
	and it usually turns out not to be ourselves.	4:15
	We can satisfy ourselves	4:21
	that love is principally a way of feeling.	4:24
	We can also finally forgive ourselves.	4:27
	Perhaps forgive ourselves too easily and too soon	4:30
	for not finding very effective ways	4:35
	of expressing that love.	4:37
	That's regrettable that we don't,	4:40
	but after all, we can think not crucial	4:42
	if love is essentially a feeling.	4:45
	Now, this is a very convenient way of looking at things	4:50
	since it avoids some difficulties and hard choices.	4:52
	It also fits rather well	4:57
	with what seems to be a majority view	4:59
	among American Christians.	5:01
	Namely, that the Church ought to be concerned	5:03
	with religious matters rather than social issues.	5:06
	In fact, a recent Gallup poll showed	5:11
	that well over 50% of American Christians,	5:13
	Protestant and Catholics, hold that view.	5:17
	And if love has to do with religious matters	5:22
	rather than social issues,	5:24
	then it is, in fact,	5:26
	best understood and interpreted as a feeling.	5:27
	We may love our enemies.	5:33
	Hold no hatred toward them in our heart of hearts.	5:35
	And yet, if it seems to serve our best interests,	5:39
	shoot them down in the streets without compunction.	5:42
	And this is a rather convenient point of view	5:46
	in troubled times such as ours.	5:50
	It allows us to have our cake and eat it too.	5:52
	We may affirm love at the abstract or inward level	5:55
	and at the same time conduct the affairs of this world	6:00
	without having to be too much concerned or encumbered by it.	6:04
	Or we may affirm that, in fact, we do love people.	6:08
	As white people, we love black people, for example.	6:14
	While at the same time,	6:18
	we tolerate injustice and degradation among them.	6:20
	Love, we say, transcends the circumstances of this world.	6:26
	In fact, we may go so far as to believe	6:32
	that love ought to be expressed in all human relationships	6:34
	and yet withhold approval of concrete attempts	6:38
	to solve human problems,	6:41
	or to right all wrongs	6:43
	on the grounds that the means employed	6:45
	arouse feelings of hostility, rather than feelings of love.	6:47
	Thus, the Church in our time is, not surprisingly,	6:55
	and perhaps conveniently,	6:58
	hung up on the question of what love is and means.	7:00
	Perhaps this is because, for so long,	7:06
	and in many places, still today,	7:08
	high priests and spokesman have espoused and taught	7:11
	a concept of love whose fundamental quality	7:14
	is its inwardness.	7:17
	But for some time now,	7:21
	people have been changing their minds.	7:22
	We have come to a point	7:26
	where there is serious dissension within the church,	7:28
	between people who believe	7:32
	that love is essentially a feeling,	7:33
	and those who think that the concept is vacuous, empty,	7:37
	unless it goes beyond that.	7:41
	And the controversy is certainly not an academic one.	7:44
	Christians, on the one hand,	7:48
	act or speak in ways they think relevant and necessary.	7:50
	Other Christians throw up their hands in horror.	7:56
	Now let me come clean and admit	8:01
	that I do not count myself among those	8:03
	whose characteristic posture is one of dismay or horror	8:05
	at Christian activism or alleged radicalism.	8:10
	And yet, I must not say this	8:15
	out of a desire to be (speaks in foreign language),	8:17
	or where action is.	8:20
	Neither would it be right to say	8:23
	that the Church has to get with it,	8:25
	the Church has to be relevant if it wants to survive.	8:27
	This may or may not be true.	8:31
	The Church has survived in times and places	8:35
	in which it was not obviously relevant to anything much	8:38
	that was going on in the world.	8:41
	Moreover, self-preservation is not, or should not be,	8:44
	the ultimate goal of the Christian Church.	8:48
	The conviction that Christian love needs to bear fruition	8:53
	and needs to bear fruit in concrete acts.	8:56
	That this bearing fruit is essential to its nature	9:02
	comes from the New Testament.	9:05
	If there is something wrong	9:08
	with the widespread subjectivizing	9:10
	and sentimentalizing of love,	9:12
	it is not that it is old-fashioned or irrelevant.	9:14
	Although it may be both of those things.	9:18
	It is rather that such a view	9:20
	is an emasculation of the Gospel	9:22
	and turns it into mere words and feeling	9:25
	rather than spirit and power.	9:28
	Now, our text for the morning	9:33
	speaks very simply and very directly of love.	9:36
	"If anyone has the world's goods	9:42
	and sees his brother in need,	9:45
	yet closes his heart against him,	9:48
	how does God's love abide in him?	9:51
	Little children, let us not love in word or speech,	9:55
	but in deed and truth."	10:01
	For the author of the First Epistle,	10:05
	love is not so much a feeling or even a principle,	10:08
	as it is an act.	10:12
	And this is no less true of divine love than of human.	10:14
	"By this we know love," he writes,	10:19
	"that he, Jesus, laid down his life for us	10:22
	and we ought to lay down our lives for the brethren."	10:26
	In the Gospel of John,	10:32
	we find the same view in the famous passage, John 3:16.	10:34
	"For God so loved the world that he gave his only son."	10:39
	That he acted.	10:43
	It is true to John's thought to say	10:45
	that the love of God, then, is the basis for human love.	10:47
	We love because he first loved us.	10:52
	Yet, it is equally true	10:56
	that John insists upon the inseparable connection	10:57
	of divine love and human.	11:01
	Indeed, there can be no talk of the receiving or the giving	11:04
	of divine love or of love towards God,	11:08
	apart from the expression of human love.	11:12
	"He who does not love his brother whom he has seen",	11:15
	he writes, "cannot love God whom he has not seen."	11:19
	John speaks with a simplicity and a directness	11:24
	that is eloquent.	11:28
	And John does not speak alone.	11:31
	In his own way, the author of the Epistle of James	11:34
	makes the same point when he asks,	11:36
	"If a brother or sister is ill-clad	11:39
	and in lack of daily food, and one of you says to them,	11:42
	'Go in peace, be warmed and filled,'	11:44
	without giving them the things needed for the body,	11:48
	what does it profit?	11:50
	So faith by itself, if it has no works, is dead."	11:52
	The Apostle Paul	11:57
	who speaks a very different theological language from James,	11:58
	can nevertheless stress the importance of obedience	12:03
	to the Jewish law as the expression of God's will.	12:06
	And yet, for him, for Paul, the law is nothing	12:10
	other than obedience to God's commandment,	12:13
	to love the neighbor.	12:16
	"Owe nothing to anyone", writes Paul,	12:17
	"except to love one another.	12:20
	For he who loves his neighbor has fulfilled the law.	12:22
	The commandments, you shall not commit adultery,	12:26
	you shall not kill, you shall not steal,	12:28
	you shall not covet,	12:31
	and any other commandment are summed up in this sentence,	12:32
	'You shall love your neighbor as yourself.'"	12:36
	For Paul, as for James,	12:41
	love is not just a way of feeling,	12:43
	nor is it only an attitude or a principle.	12:47
	Love exists in concrete acts, in generosity,	12:51
	and in obedience to the law.	12:56
	And I think it is particularly significant	12:59
	that Paul understands the law.	13:03
	That is, the specific directions	13:06
	for the ordering of human life	13:08
	as the means of expressing love.	13:11
	The commandments have meaning	13:14
	as they fulfill the command to love the neighbor.	13:16
	Now, all of this implies	13:21
	that any understanding of love as purely feeling	13:24
	or inward disposition	13:28
	is out of line with the roots of the Christian tradition.	13:30
	Not only the Old Testament, but also the New.	13:34
	If the New Testament is to be taken seriously,	13:39
	the Christian cannot settle for love	13:42
	that is merely the absence of ill will.	13:45
	In fact, he cannot settle for love	13:48
	that is merely the presence of good will.	13:51
	He must press constantly	13:55
	toward the meaningful expression of that good will	13:56
	in significant acts.	14:01
	Now, it is a good question,	14:04
	whether the Christian can ever acquiesce	14:05
	in a social or a political order	14:07
	in which such expressions are stymied or inhibited.	14:10
	Surely Christians often have.	14:15
	They have so acquiesced.	14:17
	Sometimes they've had to,	14:18
	as often they have not.	14:21
	And we have often put up with the status quo, in fact,	14:23
	and loved our oppressed, alienated	14:27
	or less fortunate neighbors inwardly or in principle.	14:30
	And it should be no surprise to us	14:34
	if they have have sometimes had difficulty	14:37
	in recognizing this as love.	14:40
	In lecturing to a university audience,	14:45
	Paul Tillich once recall once recalled	14:49
	that some Jewish friends had said to him	14:52
	that Christians talk about love,	14:55
	but Jews are concerned with justice.	14:59
	Tillich accepted this as a valid criticism	15:04
	of Christian actions and attitudes.	15:06
	And yet, he insisted	15:09
	that it is not a valid principle criticism	15:10
	of Christian love.	15:13
	For this love cannot brook injustice or inhuman conditions.	15:15
	"Love," said Tillich, "is fraudulent	15:20
	if it is indifferent to questions of justice	15:23
	and human decency.	15:26
	And thus, Paul Tillich really agreed with that earlier Paul,	15:28
	who insisted that love fulfills the law.	15:33
	Let us put this, now, in every day and concrete terms.	15:41
	I make an annual salary	15:49
	of three to four times that of the janitor	15:51
	who keeps my building clean.	15:54
	Now, if I were making $25,000 a year,	15:58
	this would not be cause for serious concern.	16:02
	I think, however,	16:06
	that I'm not violating the university's policy	16:06
	against disclosing faculty salaries	16:10
	if I disclose that I'm not making nearly that much.	16:13
	My income is adequate,	16:18
	but I'm not salting much of it away in mutual funds	16:20
	or in Swiss banks.	16:23
	Now, the point is that modest living in the American way	16:26
	seems to require four or perhaps five times as much income	16:29
	as some of the people,	16:33
	with whom I come in contact every day, are making.	16:34
	Now, how shall I love these people?	16:39
	Shall I speak to them every day?	16:42
	Shall I smile at them in the halls	16:45
	and otherwise indicate	16:47
	that I have warm feelings toward them?	16:49
	Well, it wouldn't be a bad idea if I did.	16:52
	I think most of us are human enough	16:55
	to be favorably impressed and pleased	16:57
	by the fact that somebody cares about us enough	17:00
	to speak or to ask.	17:02
	And yet, if I do that and nothing more,	17:06
	in the long run, I begin to look pretty phony.	17:09
	Is this kind of concern, in quotation marks, Christian love?	17:13
	If I'm unwilling to do something substantially	17:20
	to improve the lot of this person,	17:22
	he will, in time, question the sincerity and the meaning	17:25
	of my love.	17:28
	And well, he should.	17:30
	Christian love is not satisfied	17:32
	when we are more polite and less brutal than we might be.	17:34
	Christian love demands active concern for the other	17:38
	that does not stop before really significant matters	17:41
	and issues are raised.	17:45
	If, at most, I'm willing to smile, ask polite questions,	17:47
	and refrain from using the whip,	17:51
	I can scarcely claim to be really loving my brother	17:53
	or my neighbor.	17:57
	Now, what has been said, of course,	18:00
	does not amount to a program for social action	18:02
	or social reform,	18:05
	nor does it decide the difficult question	18:08
	of the means to the end.	18:10
	Christian love does not demand the politics of confrontation	18:13
	as a continuing state of affairs.	18:18
	But at least one thing should be clear.	18:21
	If the New Testament means anything,	18:25
	it means that love must express itself in meaningful ways	18:27
	for worthwhile ends.	18:32
	There is always, of course,	18:35
	the temptation to give up on hard human problems	18:37
	like race or poverty.	18:40
	By repeating some version of Jesus saying,	18:43
	"The poor you always have with you."	18:46
	We forget that he is also reported to have said,	18:49
	"And whenever you will, you can do good for them."	18:52
	In these times, some people may think	18:58
	that it's going to be politically profitable	19:00
	to minimize the extent of human suffering.	19:03
	The extent of human problems.	19:06
	Or to minimize the possibility	19:08
	of doing something about them.	19:10
	And it is, of course, true	19:12
	that many good plans or good intentions are never fulfilled.	19:14
	Perhaps unfulfillable.	19:18
	But in this regard,	19:21
	I like to remember the television editorial of Pat Paulsen	19:22
	on the problem of the aging.	19:27
	The elder statesman and vice president	19:30
	of the Smothers Brothers Comedy Hour	19:33
	was deploring the fact that, 30 years ago,	19:35
	the advocates of social security had claimed	19:38
	that they were going to do something	19:41
	about the problem of old people.	19:43
	"Did they?" he asked.	19:45
	"Why no, look around you.	19:47
	There are even more old people now than there were then."	19:49
	The fact that human problems persist	19:54
	does not mean that something cannot be done,	19:57
	indeed has not been done about them.	20:01
	I suppose, at the opposite extreme of this,	20:06
	there is the temptation simply to give up	20:09
	on the present order of things, whether social or political.	20:12
	To drop out.	20:18
	To forget that the present order	20:20
	embodies manifold possibilities	20:22
	for expressing Christian love or human concern.	20:24
	Possibilities that have often been achieved by great effort	20:27
	and even by great sacrifice.	20:31
	And understandable, conservatism is impressed with the fact	20:35
	that things can get much worse than they already are	20:39
	and does not wish to lose what is good	20:42
	while striving after what is better.	20:45
	Such considerations as these are real	20:49
	and they're unavoidable.	20:52
	But these are matters about which	20:55
	Christians ought to concern themselves continually.	20:56
	Disagreements, discussions, and debates among Christians	21:00
	about how love is to be expressed in this world,	21:04
	by what means, by what channels.	21:07
	Such discussions and debates are not only inevitable,	21:09
	but I would say also good.	21:13
	They prove that the Church is alive	21:16
	and that the Church is about its proper business.	21:18
	What is deplorable	21:21
	and what I would call a virtual betrayal of the Gospel	21:23
	is a refusal to become involved in such worldly questions.	21:28
	Christian faith and Christian love	21:35
	do not belong principally, if at all,	21:37
	in some religious domain,	21:42
	into which the world, in the form of our neighbor,	21:46
	and especially in the form of our neighbor in need,	21:50
	cannot enter.	21:54
	The necessary word for us today	21:56
	is that love is not a special way of feeling.	22:01
	Love is a special way of being and of doing in this world.	22:07
	Let us pray.	22:15
	Lord, equip our hearts for good works	22:23
	that we may do thy will in this world.	22:30
	Loving our neighbors who are thy children	22:34
	for Christ's sake.	22:39
	Amen.	22:41
	(microphone clicking)	22:43
	(dignified organ music)	22:49
	(church choir singing)	23:18
	(dignified organ music)	25:03

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Title:

D. Moody Smith, Jr. - "Love Is Not a Special Way of Feeling" (May 26, 1968)

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https://idn.duke.edu/ark:/87924/r4z033981

Date:

May 26, 1968

Speaker:

Smith, D. Moody, Jr.

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Duke University. Chapel

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UA.17.01.0003 RR-0435
ref6073_9nl
uachapelsermaud
duke:628544
dcrau002426
ark:/87924/r4z033981
a9e23881-f56d-4fd6-bcd5-b6bf00db2a19

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D. Moody Smith, Jr. - "Love Is Not a Special Way of Feeling" (May 26, 1968)

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