Of all the belief systems I have shared with you this year, Christianity is the one I’ve experienced most directly throughout my life. Suffice it to say, it’s been a complicated relationship. Raised in the Church of Scotland, I have gone through periods of dutiful attendance at every Christian denomination’s churches, along with seven years of diligently studying both the Hebrew and Christian scriptures.
The flipside of these has been bouts of disillusionment with doctrines or a feeling of alienation from the rest of the congregation. I’ve been “saved” by a preacher more than once, and when I lived in southern Africa, I attended the Pentecostal Assemblies of God and exercised the gift of speaking in tongues.
With the benefit of a lot of hindsight, I can see now that for much of my life I got tangled up in the parts of the faith that actually matter least. Because now, at 92, re-examining the religion in the light of what I’ve learned from studying other faiths, I can see that Christianity’s beauty lies in its emphasis on just a handful of simple values.
What Underpins It All: Love
John 13:34-35 captures what I’m talking about. It reads: “A new commandment I give to you, that you love one another: just as I have loved you, you also are to love one another.”
Here, we’re not being asked to master complex philosophies or perform elaborate rituals. At its heart, it simply invites us to love, doing so actively, daily, especially when it’s difficult, being there for others, again and again, with empathy and an open heart.
This message of love, expounded by Jesus of Nazareth across Judea and then taken further afield by his disciples, was revolutionary in its part of the world, challenging as it did both religious authorities and social conventions. Jesus ate with outcasts, touched the untouchable, and suggested that love mattered more than strict rule-following.
But I think what makes this revolutionary for us today, at every life stage, is how love challenges us to keep growing when it would be easier to become set in our ways. How many times have we had to choose between being “right” and being kind at a family gathering? Between holding onto a hurt or extending grace to a difficult relative or friend? Love for ourselves is what lifts us up from failure and helps us be our best selves. That, as they say, is where the rubber meets the road.
Forgiveness and Redemption
Love is what underpins another vital Christian value: forgiveness. After decades of carrying certain hurts, we reach a point where the weight becomes too heavy. Forgiveness, I’ve learned, isn’t about saying what happened was okay. It’s about accepting life as it is, and setting down the burden so we can walk more lightly through our remaining years. Like a river that gradually smooths sharp stones, forgiveness softens the edges of old wounds.
Forgiveness is an example of what perhaps most distinguishes Christianity from the other belief systems I’ve examined over this year: front and centre, non-judgemental love, with emphasis on values that help people who are at their lowest rise back up. Love being the support it demands we give these people in that journey.
Redemption is another key value in this respect. The story of Paul the Apostle perfectly embodies its place in Christianity. Here was a man who’d made persecuting Christians his mission, convinced he was protecting religious purity. Then, on the road to Damascus, everything changed. A blinding light, a voice asking, “Why are you persecuting me?”, and suddenly the persecutor became the greatest advocate for the very faith he’d tried to destroy.
How many of us carry shame about who we used to be at some point in our lives? Perhaps we can see now we were too critical of our children, or that we put our careers above loving our spouse, or that we became absent from our friends? Paul’s transformation suggests that our past doesn’t define our future.
What Paul understood was that redemption is about love transforming imperfection. The famous verse from John’s gospel captures this: “For God so loved the world that he gave his only Son, that whoever believes in him should not perish but have eternal life.” By embracing this love and dedicating their lives to loving God and others, believers become what Paul called “new creations,” already participating in eternal life.
Love’s Universal Echo
To tie my reflections in with the other faiths I have explored with you this year, I find it striking how Christianity’s message of love echoes through so many traditions. The Hindu practice of seeing the divine in everyone, the Buddhist emphasis on compassion, the loving concern Confucius had in the creation of happy families and strong communities, the Jewish commitment to repairing the world: these too are all a matter of love.
Perhaps this is just my own upbringing and exposure to Christianity talking, but its particular contribution to my spirituality is that, in conveying love through the story of Jesus, it makes love for God and other people intensely practical and personal – something we bring into being through our actions vis-à-vis others.
Questions for Reflection:
How has your understanding of love evolved through the decades? What daily practices help you embody it, even when it’s difficult? What wisdom about forgiveness would you pass on to younger generations?
