Joana Stella Kompa Meditations about Love & Respect : The Obscurity of the Christian Concept

Religion has no copyright on love and respect, but Christianity has defined both types of relationships as its critical and crucial components: the respect of God and the love of others build the cornerstones of Christian belief and shall be revisited critically: How can we reasonably define love and respect and what are the logical and philosophical consequences? The concepts and intuitions of love and respect are set in the light of Communicative Ethics.

January 3

2012
Critical Reflections

Joana Stella Kompa

Meditations about Love & respect: The Obscurity of the Christian Concept
1. Love and Respect in Christianity
During my time at college I once discussed the topic of love with one of my greatest teachers and believers in Christianity and at one point she paused in our conversation and spoke calmly and firmly: Love is unconditional giving. Her answer blew me away. It felt like an epiphany and the most appropriate way of ever having put it. If we think of the love of a mother to a child or God to mankind this answer seemed to be most finite and complete, or at least I thought so for a very long time. At the very heart of Christianity stands Jesus Sermon on the Mount in the New Testament which can be regarded as the most essential and also most elaborate of his teachings. Within the sermon the passage on loving ones neighbor and even enemy is the most revolutionary: But I say to you, love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you, so that you may be sons of your Father who is in heaven; for He causes His sun to rise on the evil and the good, and sends rain on the righteous and the unrighteous. (Matthew: 43/44) Before jumping to interpretations too quickly lets reformulate the main points philosophically: a.) We shall love others beyond our natural family bonds and b.) We shall even love those who are after us and we shall thus pray for them The immediate questions that come to mind are: a.) if love can actually be ordered. Can we really tell someone that they should love since such request appears more like a Kantian imperative? Can love be demanded? Can we really love people we dont know or are we talking about empathy? We could furthermore ask critically on point b.) Isnt self-defense necessary? If evil persons are after good ones - dont they have a right to protect themselves? Or vice versa: Wouldnt good people be worthy of our protection against evil ones? We may even go one step further and ask: isnt even hatred justified in some cases? For example, lets assume that two women had been raped: the first one forgives her perpetrator and the second keeps on hating him for the rest of her natural life. The first woman gets killed while being raped a second time while the second woman was protected by her hatred from committing the same mistake twice so she kept her distance. It is most common in abuse cases that the victims seem to love and forgive their perpetrators with no effort. This leaves to the ground of the famous Kohlberg moral dilemmas: simple moral imperatives such as stated in the Bible run into self-contradictions when we put them into situational context where one moral imperative competes with another. It is easy to demonstrate with the Ten Commandments: If a group of murderers should ask us of the whereabouts of our friend who is hidden in our house, are we still obliged to tell them the truth or is it justified to tell a lie? But moral dilemmas are not our main topic. We shall note that the Bible offers no reflective concept of values and all declared truth-value is set as story narratives. 2

Besides, rape as one of the most common violent acts committed throughout the ages against women is partially even endorsed in the Bible such as the encouragement to have sex slaves (Exodus 21:7-11)1 or the blunt legitimization of rape (Deuteronomy 20:10/21:10-14/22:23-24)2. In order to protect our sanity we have therefore to disqualify all validity of the Bible as a document by default, except for what we have rationally extracted, discussed and agreed upon as bearing any substantial philosophical truth. We have seen that Jesus concept of love is fairly obscure since it is both imperative and seems selfdefeating: Tolerance as an absolute (and not regulative) principle tolerates its self-destruction. On the topic of respect, which is mostly actualized in the idea of the respect to God, we note that nonrespect is in all cases answered with punishment. Those who not respect God and his laws will have the disadvantage on Judgment Day. The Christian concept of respect is endorsing authoritarianism: we obey a final and higher authority for all of our moral life. It is in the nature of authoritarianism that authority (in this case God) cannot be questioned any further. Since authority carries the seed of repression we could even argue from a Buddhist perspective that the demanding of love and respect unnecessarily endangers itself to provoke bad Dharma and Karma: external demands carry the option to be rejected and thus cause emotional hurt. What is created in the process is potentially a lot of violence.

I cannot conceive of a God who rewards and punishes his creatures,

or has a will of the kind that we experience in ourselves Albert Einstein, The World as I See It

The forced imposing of ones view onto the other starts by forwarding imperatives, implicitly or explicitly. Autonomy and freedom means that we only agree to arguments openly if we accept them voluntarily and if they have been derived from our independent inner conclusions and agreements. The Christian concept of love and respect imply external authority: Love can be demanded and ordered and so does respect. They are, to speak with Lawrence Kohlberg, still established on the level of conventional morality, which targets the formulation of a social-contract. Although quoted as being universal we see that, at a closer look, none of the Christian concepts achieve a truly post-conventional and normative stage. There is nothing wrong with this either since, taking the Bible in historical context, early societies took priority in the formation of social-contract laws by values (Law & Order orientation: you shall or you shouldnt). Early societies had not reached the level of complexity yet where these laws would need to be discussed widely such as in a Habermasean public sphere. However, we might ask how we can understand love and its properties in a truly post-conventional3 and universal manner. If the main function of love is indeed the creation of identity then it would introduce a telos into the purpose of social negotiation that goes beyond the democratic balancing of converging interests. This telos is the unification and integration of society.

2. What is Love?
In the New Testament Gods love has three essential properties: it is eternal (since God is eternal), it is unconditional and it is selfless. We shall examine what the consequences are if we apply these properties to love among finite human beings. 2.1 Eternal: Since we are mortals we cannot share this property but, technically speaking, only receive it. It puts Gods love higher than any human love if we share the assumption that the finite is a sub-set of the infinite; a classical Western theological concept. 2.2 Unconditional: We love the other no matter what, regardless of flaws, limitations and errors. The question is only: what if the ones we love turn bad and destroy willingly the lives of other people. Do we still love them no matter what? Would such a love still be sane? And what if, even worse, the people we love turn openly against us? 2.3 Selfless: It is perhaps the terminology I struggle with. Isnt love a fundamental feeling that fulfills the Self and completes it since love creates identification and unity with the other? Doesnt love evoke healing of the Self and isnt love the most essential source of happiness for the Self? If yes, then love is not selfless, but leads in fact to the completion of the Self. When we mean selfless we actually mean not selfish, not egoistic, not out for our private benefit but the greater social and common gain.

So, what is love after all? In all possible interpretations being equal I suggest the simplest one: Love is the emotional awareness of the ontological connectedness of all living things4; thus it is the most fundamental experience we are capable of. Connectedness comes logically before giving since realization of connectedness is the motivation for giving, so cause and effect. There is logically and emotionally no closer relation than identity. The subsequent act of loving includes of course giving in all forms, physically, mentally and emotionally. Love transcends borders by nature, but it is not unlimited either. Once we are broken the loving stops. Love only lives as we keep it alive, like for all living things. The concept of an eternal and never-ending, giving love could however be applied to nature that creates our specific universe in which structure and life is possible. In this physical and scientific sense it is nature eternally giving and creating, not God. The sad truth about human love is that there is not much of it in this world to start with. For many times we see more cruelty and indifference than love. Secondly, even when love comes around people take it for granted as a given - just like a property; and lastly, even if people enjoy love they rarely work on it to make it last. Love is often treated like an adopted child and it is as easily abandoned. One could argue (as the famous devils advocate) that the religious illusion of an eternal, ever-available love and presence serves as a placebo for the collective subconscious to legitimize the actual lack of it in the real world.

3. Defining Respect and its Relation to Love

Love is a private, intimate, emotional and moral qualia. Respect, by comparison, is a normative quality since it is bound to social roles. We respect e.g., parents, teachers, politicians, policemen, companies or organizations even when we have our disagreements with them. This is because normative functionality exists in social negotiation space which is easier revised (cognitively) than our moral attitudes which are supported by somatic markers (emotionally). In this respect love and respect work complimentary for connecting the inner - with the outer world, so they cannot functionally be substituted for each other: Without love no real personal motivation, without respect no social orientation. Both are needed to connect subjective perceptions with inter-subjective action. From this understanding it becomes obvious why demanding love is in fact an oxymoron: the category of demands belongs to externalized normative space whereby love belongs to the internal, personal space. Both, love and respect, create their very own intertwined propositional space. As a result our interpretations keep continuously changing: we may, e.g. love someone at first but after being disrespected profoundly our love and warmth towards such a person generally vanishes. Likewise we despise people socially who harm others that we love and cherish in private. The possible combinations between love and respect create a complex Cartesian coordinate system with four basic possible quadrants: 1. 2. 3. 4. People we do neither love nor respect/ or even despise, People we may love but do not respect, People we respect but we do not love and finally, People we both love and respect

The richness of human relationships originates from the infinite potential options for combinations. It is neither love nor respect per se which determines our communicative action and reaction, but the combination and awareness of both. We can even image a group of people from quadrants 1-4 meeting any another group within a communicative matrix to simulate potential moral and normative outcomes: If, e.g., groups 1/1 would meet (two groups of people that neiter respect nor love each other), then the outcome of social interaction is most likely non-consensual. For two groups 4/4 meeting each other the outcome is most likely consensual whereby combinations 2/2 and 3/3 only lead to weak, temporary and shallow consensus.

4. Communicative Ethics explained: Protect me from what I want

Reciprocality describes relationships (ontological), transactions indicate state-changes (epistemological). Lets take the example of potential harm: Given an almost infinite space of human interactional space, actions that violate each others integrity are (in corresponding likeliness) most probable to occur and this regardless of intentionality (Reciprocal law of mutual relations). Therefore myself and the other have the right to a.) Protect ourselves from harm by the other for future states and to b.) Protect the other from future violations by ourselves regardless of intentionality. (Transactional conclusive law). We are both equally obliged to grant each other self-defense and protection from harm caused by either transaction partner - inclusive of ourselves. Since the relationship is reciprocal there cannot be individual interpretations of perceived threats. Instead, such relationships are governed by agreed policies on the same level of logic.

5. Summary
Traditional Christian belief is based on an authoritative understanding of love and respect and Godly love does not translate necessarily into a more sophisticated understanding of human love which obeys its own emotional laws. By understanding the normative and social function of mutual respect and seeing it in context with love as a rare, fragile, but fundamental human capability we can embark on a clearer concept of both beyond the limitations imposed by religion.

Author contact: Joanakompa@gmail.com

References:
1. Exodus 21: 7-11 provides as follows:

If a man sells his daughter as a servant, she is not to go free as male servants do. If she does not please the master who has selected her for himself, he must let her be redeemed. He has no right to sell her to foreigners, because he has broken faith with her. If he selects her for his son, he must grant her the rights of a daughter. If he marries another woman, he must not deprive the first one of her food, clothing and marital rights. If he does not provide her with these three things, she is to go free, without any payment of money.

2.

Deut. 21:10-14 provides as follows:

When you go forth to war against your enemies, and the Lord your God has delivered them into your hands, and you have taken them captive, And you see among the captives a beautiful woman, and desire her, and take her for a wife - Then you shall bring her home to your house, and she shall shave her head and do her nails, And she shall remove the garment of her captivity from her, and remain in your house and weep for her father and mother a for month, and after that you may approach her and have intercourse with her, and she shall be your wife. And if you do not want her, you shall send her out on her own; you shall not sell her at all for money, you shall not treat her as a slave, because you violated her.

Commentary: I have chosen these excerpts from the Hebrew and Christian Bible to illustrate that the barbaric culture at the time the
Bible had been written permeates through the entire Old Testament, rendering them the texts of terror (Philip Jenkins). No deeper philosophical truths can be found anywhere on the topic of love and respect. One could argue that for Christians only the New Testament with the story of Jesus is of any relevance. The biggest issue is that the change from a vengeful to a loving God carries no logic. Philosophically it would therefore be prudent to declare all passages in the Bible featuring a violent and vengeful God for invalid. Unfortunately even Jesus own teachings refer to a punishing God, so even his pacifist statements such as Love your enemies, do good to those who hate you (Matthew 5;43-48) carry no weight since people, good and bad, can pick from the Bible whatever they see fit to their own pleasure. Christianity has never come clear on the schizophrenic switch between a God of violent vengeance and a God of love. Subsequent discussion about Christian theology is rendered about the correctness or distortion of the historical record and its interpretation; it is never about seeking the truth beyond the given text. The same restrictions apply to Islamic faith. If they were indeed philosophies they would be flexible to seek the truth, but as religions they decided to stay blind.

3.

Kohlbergs stages of moral development (excerpt)

Conventional stage (attributed to the original level of negotiation in the Bible, the should- and should-nots)
Stage 4. This is called the Law-and-Order stage. Children now take the point of view that includes the social system as a whole. The rules of the society are the bases for right and wrong, and doing one's duty and showing respect for authority are important.

Post-conventional stage (attributed to both love and respect in the widest universal understanding)
Stage 6. This stage is referred to as the stage of Universal Principles. At this point, the person makes a personal commitment to universal principles of equal rights and respect, and social contract takes a clear back-seat: If there is a conflict between a social law or custom and universal principles, the universal principles take precedence. The modification I suggest is that the emotional connectedness to universal norms is of the essence; a point that Kohlberg has been widely criticized for because why should abstract universal principles suddenly give rise to personal motivation and behavior? I would perhaps agree to concepts such as explored by Antonio Damasio, meaning the personalized embodiment of mind. 4. The philosophical Ockhams Razor de-coding: Why is this definition the simplest of all possible ones? Love is the emotional awareness (a) of the ontological connectedness (b) of all living things (c) (a) Love is experienced as an emotion and not as a concept or argument by definition, so it precedes language: infants or animals e.g., are all capable of experiencing loving interaction, the language before language. (b) The connectedness and closeness of love has its roots on pre-, sub-conscious and neurological levels and is therefore a true expression of fundamental being. In achieving connectedness, love creates unity and identification, the logically closest probable and fundamental state: a singularity. In the process of connecting and uniting all biological entities such as (c) Plants, animals and fellow human beings are united via a networked biosphere. We could also define even more general alternative translations such as, e.g.: Love is the Experience of the Identity of all Being.