love everybody

Last updated on: December 8, 2011 at 6:34 am by David Hayward

love everybody 2011-12-08T06:34:45-04:00 David Hayward

LOGO Patheos Explore the world's faith through different perspectives on religion and spirituality! Patheos has the views of the prevalent religions and spiritualities of the world.

I believe in love and its power to transform the world. But I am not naive enough to think it is a sentimental notion… all touchy-feely with warm fuzzies. It’s an austere road that takes courage to travel. When someone says “Why can’t we all just love one another?“, sometimes I wonder if they are aware of just how dangerous that is?

Actually, no one has said it better than James Fowler in his book Stages of Faith. In reference to stage 6, or “Universalizing Faith”, the stage that few people attain:

Persons best described by Stage 6 typically exhibit qualities that shake our usual criteria of normalcy. Their heedlessness to self-preservation and the vividness of their taste and feel for transcendent moral and religious actuality give their actions and words an extraordinary and often unpredictable quality. In their devotion to universalizing compassion they may offend our parochial perceptions of justice. In their penetration through the obsession with survival, security, and significance they threaten our measured standards of righteousness and goodness and prudence. Their enlarged visions of universal community disclose the partialness of our tribes and pseudo-species. And their leadership initiatives, often involving strategies of nonviolent suffering and ultimate respect for being, constitute affronts to our usual notions of relevance. It is little wonder that persons best described by Stage 6 so frequently become martyrs for the visions they incarnate. (Bold mine.)

There you have it. Love is no picnic. But it is entirely worth it if you know its worth and power.

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