FAST FOOD 2026, Twenty-Second Helping

                                                             

FAST FOOD 2026, Twenty-Second Helping

 

When the Christian loves as Jesus loves, his love is the active presence of God, who is love, in the world. If he or she refuses it, they take away God’s presence from the only place in the universe where they can put it. He or she then comes between their neighbor and the saving love of Jesus Christ, God who is love “made flesh.”

 

Remember that Jesus teaches that the enemy is also one’s neighbor and therefore to fulfill the second half of the Great Commandment, “Love your neighbor,” the enemy is to be loved by the Christian as Jesus loved His enemies. If the Christian refuses to do this, say, in war, he or she takes away God’s presence from the only place in the world where they can put it and comes between their neighbor and the saving love of Jesus Christ. That is an awful and terrifying choice for a Christian to make. It is the decision to kill a person, the enemy, who is living at the moment with a murderous heart and with a spirit filled with enmity, unforgiveness and mercilessness, rather than to place him or her in the presence of the saving love of Jesus, of the saving love of God.

 

This is not how the New York Times presents killing by a Christian on the battlefield, or the state, or the military or the Church normally present killing in combat. But this is what Jesus in the Gospels teaches.

 

-Emmanuel Charles McCarthy