Jim from Texas--I am amazed that you won a religious studies award in a boys Catholic school when your comrehension of theological concepts (not to mention history) as simple as love are so dense and/or skewed....
First of all, to ´´love your neighbor as yourself`` means something completely different than what you imply (and is the very self-same thing as the ´´golden rule``). No one places conditions on the love one has for himself--likewise, we must not place conditions on the love we have for others...any others, not just those we are related to, like to be with, or respect, but all people including those we do not know. That is what it means to love another as oneself--to do so with the same limitless regard that one has for the person in the mirror without reservation or thought to oneself.
Secondly, you misunderstand the theological concept of love. Think NT, bebe. There is eros (sexual love), philio (brotherly affection or regard), and agape (transcendent love). What Christ is speaking of (which, btw, He was taking from Deuteronomy 6.4, etc....) is agape. And the whole of agape is this:
To want the very best for another, to place no limits on seeing that that best good come to pass; true love shares the best that one has and is or will be with another because of the good that it will do, even if it cannot be seen and measured at the time. This is what the Crucifixion was all about. This is also what Christ meant when He said to the Apostles, ´´Greater love has no man than that he would lay down his own life for his friends.``
Pray tell, Jim, what`s selfish about the kid who jumps in the river to save a drowning friend, or the man who runs into a burning building without thinking to save someone who`s trapped? What`s selfish about the mom who puts herself between a pack of wild dogs and the neighbors kids? (which recently happened in my neck of the woods, btw) That`s agape, Love. That`s what loving another as oneself is all about--most especially when it's cultivated as a normal way of life in things big and small--to choose the very best for another regardless of the cost to oneself.
The fact that you believe that all love must have a selfish component tells me that you have either never experienced such love in your life or that you are simply ignorant (not in any perjorative way, mind you) of what true love really is. But to tell the truth, it stands to reason that this is the case; one who cannot/does not discern the reality of GOD would definitely have a handicap in cultivating agape--which is not to say that it`s impossible.
This is part of the problem with the abuse of language in our culture. What most people today think of as love is not love at all which, when you think about it, makes us a truly impoverished people, indeed.
In His Grace, miki
