Sunday/Friends and Slaves

 

        

           Sunday/Friends and Slaves

"As the Father loves me, so I also love you.
Remain in my love.
If you keep my commandments, you will remain in my love,
just as I have kept my Father’s commandments
and remain in his love.

I have told you this so that my joy may be in you
and your joy might be complete.
This is my commandment: love one another as I love you.
No one has greater love than this,
to lay down one’s life for one’s friends.
You are my friends if you do what I command you.
I no longer call you slaves,
because a slave does not know what his master is doing.
I have called you friends,
because I have told you everything I have heard from my Father.
It was not you who chose me, but I who chose you
and appointed you to go and bear fruit that will remain,
so that whatever you ask the Father in my name he may give you.
This I command you: love one another.”

It's hard to excerpt this gospel. Christ is making a point he wants everyone to understand, so He repeats and repeats it: Love one another. This single revolutionary notion is the bane of social and political groups who insist on advancing themselves over the corpses of their presumed enemies. Whatever our competitive natures are, they must be tamed to live within this rule. The Christian "opiate" of the Marxists is more than just complacency, it is pacifying. It disarms the Christian and makes him a poor soldier and lousy fodder for the revolution. It more than binds his friends, it humanizes his enemies.

And what do you think of the "I no longer call you slaves" line and the revenge of The Tree of Knowledge?