Reflection to the WORD on the Sunday of May 15, 2025
NEW COMMANDMENT ?
13:34 I give you a new commandment, that you love one another. Just as I have loved you, you also should love one another.
13:35 By this everyone will know that you are my disciples, if you have love for one another."
Once upon a time way before the history became a well documented timeline of a meticulously woven giant net of private and public events, there was a person called Narcissus. It is not exactly clear what kind of person he was, because it is hidden and the mist of the myth surrounding him.
There are differing mythological views who were his parents exactly, but the ancient experts mostly agreed that he must have been a semi Divine person according to the ancient Greek understanding of someone being divine, which wasn't exactly holy, just a more powerful existing entity than the average humans.
He is listed either the son of the river God Cephissus or the Son of Selene the Moon Goddess. Describing persons as semi-divine could look silly from our modern scientific perspective competing with the ancient Greco-Roman mythological system, however even in the Bible, in the very Book of Genesis, chapter six we can find the remnants of this ancient story telling habits, as it is written:
"1. It happened, when men began to multiply on the surface of the ground, and daughters were born to them, 2. that God's sons saw that men's daughters were beautiful, and they took for themselves wives of all that they chose. 3. Yahweh said, 'My Spirit will not strive with man forever, because he also is flesh; yet will his days be one hundred twenty years.' 4. The Nephilim were in the earth in those days, and also after that, when God's sons came in to men's daughters. They bore children to them. Those were the mighty men who were of old, men of renown."
Strange paragraphs, indeed, talking about the sons of God descending from Heaven or from the Skies, which may mean the Space, and having kids with human daughters, creating a new species on Earth called the Nephilim or Giants, by size or maybe by they power they were able to accumulate or represent, which is, gazing at the zikkurats and the pyramids, may have a point. With all of our nuclear power today, we are not able to make a replica of a pyramid, even if it would be death -or life- survival demand.
In the ancient world, where sons and daughters of gods or goddesses, when one of the parents were human were considered semi-gods are semi divine beings with extraordinary, superhuman powers, like Heracles, Perseus an other son of Zeus, or Achilles the son of Tethis the Sea born Goddess of Water.
However, just as the subatomic particles have their wave functions, so the ancient mythological thinking functioned well. Just as the Jews were unable to accept any tenet that their singular God may have any sons, the Greek were receptive to the idea that Jesus was born as the Son of God, from a a Virgin Mary. And with this receptiveness, Christianity was born, not in Jerusalem but in the Syrian city of Antioch.
Nonetheless, the semi-divine, mythological character of Narcissus is the origin of the term narcissism, depicting a self-centered personality. In clinical pathology this quality, of it is extreme, "contributes to the definition of narcissistic personality disorder, a psychiatric condition marked by grandiosity, excessive need for attention and admiration, and an inability to empathize."
According to an ancient fairy tale tradition, Narcissus at the coast of a lake, he encountered with his own image mirrored in the water, and he fell in love with himself.
Actually that shouldn't have been the case, because ancient tradition says the two that the god of revenge called Nemesis cursed him for other issues, that if he loves somebody that somebody would never love him back. Paradoxically then he fell love with himself he loved himself back. So but of course it's not real life not even a reality show it just ancient myth.
The Narcissus level self-loving people are diagnosed by medical science as a psychopath or at best sociopath and by the gospel we can say that they are pathologically wicked.
Then we read the Bible, and Jesus says in the Bible that pragmatically all the laws rules and regulations come together into only two but you have to love God above everything and you have to love your neighbor as yourself. And ancient mythologically this statement can create a problem, even if Jesus didn't do anything else just quoted the Old testament.
Like, like the first commandment that listen Israel you have to love your God from your whole heart, show me your whole soul and from your whole strengths with everything you've got, this is very clear. It would be very hard to misunderstand it, though some people do it.
But the second one, where Jesus explicitly declared that the first one is the most important and overarching commandment and the second is the second only though similar in nature, still the second one is not clear exactly because of the human nature. So what on earth means to love your neighbor as yourself, that is a big question.
If a person has a narcissistic personality, how can his self-loving egotism be the measure of his mandated treating his neighbors well. Or someone, God forbid, has a Maniac depression, he literally hates himself and wants to hurt himself. How could his self-hatred be a measurement or the level of his mandated love toward his neighbors?
This might constitute a paradox. I said it might be, but it is easy to resolve, especially with the help of the first commandment. Let us go for it. If, as it is mandated, I must love God from my whole heart and from my whole soul with everything I've got, and if I'm doing it right as I supposed to do it, the no Love in my heart or in my soul or in my strengths should be left for anything else.
This is parallel when Jesus said in the gospel that 'If anyone comes to me, and doesn't disregard his own father, mother, wife, children, brothers, and sisters, yes, and his own life also, he can't be my disciple. (Luke 14:26) It can be understood only together with the first commandment.
If I have to love my neighbors including myself, and I have already given all my love to God and nothing left, not even for myself, it is good, because in this case we have to and we will love our neighbors including ourselves for the sake of the Love of God.
And even if we gave everything we have to GOD, our well meaning toward our neighbors and our enemies, including ourselves, will be not based on the measures of our own different level egoistic love, but it will be based on God’s love, and even better, on God’s law, which were given out of God’s love and care.
Thus, Jesus new commandment is indeed something newi-sh, or at least derivative, that it is not enough if we try to love our neighbors with our imperfect, often selfish, often pretended love and care, but we shall try to love each other as Jesus loves us, conveying and transferring the impartial and never-ending love of God, by the Holy Spirit, AMEN
