I was reading an interview with philosophical theologian Janet Martin Soskice. She related how she became a Christian at Cornell University and how after this she avoided Christian groups. She was afraid that she would be put off by them. She had formed this conclusion because of her dismay at the low standard of undergraduate evangelism.
She describes a typical evangelistic approach. A pair might come to one’s room and a girl might confide that she was getting married to Johnny but that she loved God more than Johnny.
Soskice felt something about this approach was not quite right and felt like responding. ”What about strawberries? Do you love them less than God but more than Johnny?” Was Soskice being over-sensitive here? After all in Matthew 10:37 Jesus says, “Whoever loves father or mother more than me is not worthy of me, and whoever loves son or daughter more then tl is not worthy of me.”
Soskice has a valid point. Christians who are quick to say they love the Lord more than any other should recall the three probing questions which conclude the Gospel of John. Three times Jesus asks Peter, in a manner that cuts to his heart and unsettles him, “Do you love me more than these?”, “Do you truly love me?”, “Do you love me?” When Peter says that he does he is not making a light and airy statement, exuding emotional warmth. He speaks out of a wounded heart, still very sore with the fresh recollection of the three times he had denied Jesus.
It’s so easy to say, “I love Jesus more than my fiance or my spouse.” It was so easy for Peter to say this in effect when he protested that he would never fall away even if everyone else did. But love for Jesus is costly and Peter discovered, to his chagrin, that at that time he was not prepared to pay the cost. Significantly, after the Lord searches Peter’s heart and is assured of the reality of Peter’s love for him, Jesus immediately goes on to indicate that Peter’s love for him will indeed involve the payment of a great price. Describing how Peter will die Jesus predicts: “…when you are old you will stretch out your hands, and someone else will dress you and lead you where you do not want to go” (John 21:18).
And it is this same costly love that informs Jesus’ statement in Matthew 10:37. For in the immediately preceding verses Jesus declares that he has not come to bring peace on earth but to turn a man against his father, a daughter against her mother, a daughter-in-law against her mother-in-law. He foretells, “A man’s enemies will be the members of his own household.” It is in this context that Jesus insists on loving him more than father or mother or son or daughter. The follower of Jesus must remain true to Jesus even if it means that by doing so he is opposed and rejected by his own family, something that has been experienced by many millions of Christians.
The university evangelist’s statement about loving God more than her fiance is indeed out of step with the thrust of what Jesus is saying. But say she was already engaged to Johnny before she herself came to know the Lord. Say that Johnny is an unbeliever. Say that she continues to be desperately in love with Johnny and longs to marry him. Now Matthew 10:37 applies. Does she love Jesus so much that she will tell Johnny she can no longer marry him because their lives are now heading in radically different directions?
Posted April 10, 2008
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