No, I shouldn’t say that. Nothing is too difficult for Love. I believe that the burden of Love is light. The ‘burden’ is merely Love’s way of living. And I am sure that it is also the easiest way to live, because the Love that seeks no reward can fill every minute of existence with its light.
The lesson to be found in all spiritual teachings is that there is no happiness in having and getting, only in giving.
I repeat: There is no happiness in having and getting, only in giving.
Almost everyone nowadays is on the wrong track in their pursuit of happiness. They think a great deal about having and receiving, about outward show and success and being served by others. That is what most people call fulfillment.
True fulfillment, though, lies in giving and serving. ‘Whoever would be first among you,’ said Christ, ‘must be the slave of all.’ He that would be happy should place Love above all else in life. Nothing else matters.
* * *
The next ingredient is good temper. Love ‘is not provoked’.
We are inclined to view bad temper as a family failing, a personality trait, a matter of temperament, when we should really see it as a character defect. That is why, in his analysis of Love, Paul makes a point of mentioning good temper. And there are many other Biblical passages that cite bad temper as the most destructive element in human nature.
What surprises me is that bad temper is often there in the lives of people who consider themselves to be virtuous, and can be a great blot on an otherwise noble, gentle nature. We know a lot of people who are almost perfect, but then, suddenly, they decide that they are right about something and lose their temper.
The supposed compatibility of virtue and bad temper is one of the saddest problems afflicting humanity and society.
There are, in fact, two kinds of sin: sins of the body and sins of the disposition. In a parable in the New Testament, the Prodigal Son abandons his family and goes off into the world, while the elder brother stays with the father. After many misfortunes, the Prodigal Son decides to return, and the father gives a great party in his honour. When the brother finds out, he angrily asks his father: ‘Did I not stay here by your side all this time, working, while he was squandering his inheritance?’
The Prodigal Son can be seen as committing the first kind of sin, while his brother commits the second. Curiously, society has no doubt as to which of those two kinds of sin is worse, and condemnation falls, unchallenged, on the Prodigal Son. But are we right?
We do not have a balance in which to weigh one another’s sins, and ‘better’ or ‘worse’ are only words in our vocabulary. But I would say to you: more sophisticated faults can be far more serious than simpler and more obvious ones.
In the eyes of Him who is Love, a sin against Love is a hundred times worse. No vice, be it desire, avarice, lust or drunkenness, is worse than an evil temper.
When it comes to embittering lives,
destroying communities,
breaking up relationships,
devastating homes,
withering up men and women,
taking the bloom off youth,
for sheer gratuitous, misery-producing power,
ill temper has no rival.
Look at the elder brother: very proper, hard-working, patient, responsible, and all credit to him for his virtues. Then look at this boy, this child, sulking outside his own father’s door.
‘He was angry,’ we read, ‘and refused to go in.’ Think of the effect his brother’s attitude must have had on the Prodigal Son! And how many prodigal sons are kept out of the Kingdom of God by the loveless people who profess to be inside!
Imagine the face of the elder brother as he says those words, from underneath a cloud of jealousy, rage, pride, cruelty, self-righteousness, stubbornness, resentment and a lack of charity. Those are the ingredients of that dark, loveless soul. Those are the ingredients of bad temper and intolerance.
And any of us who have experienced such pressures in life know that these sins are far more destructive than the sins of the body.
Did not Christ say that the publicans and the harlots would enter the Kingdom of Heaven ahead of the scholars of the day?
There is no place in the Kingdom for the ill-tempered and intolerant. One such man would make Paradise unbearable for everyone else.
Unless he be born again, and leave aside everything he considers untouchable and certain, he cannot, simply cannot, enter the Kingdom of Heaven, because in order to enter the Kingdom of Heaven, he must carry Paradise in his soul.
And yet, as you see, even while I was speaking, I began to grow angry. A bubble of irritation rose up, revealing some rottenness underneath. That is the great test