Dear President-Elect Trump:
You’re a Presbyterian—a Christian. Many in America are Jewish. Still, others are Muslim. While extremists in each religious genre find reasons to justify extremism and to deviate from their religion’s core teachings, each religious genre recognizes love as a critical force in the world and encourages acts of love.
The Quran says: “None of you have faith until you love for your neighbor what you love for yourself” Sahih Muslim 13:22.
The Old Testament provides this commandment: “Love ye, therefore, the stranger: for ye were strangers in the land of Egypt.” Deuteronomy 10:19.
The New Testament supports yesterday’s letter with this phrase: “Perfect love casteth out fear.” 1 John 4:18.
Pure love is sincere. It loves for the sake of loving, not to get something or to motivate a person to do something. Loving for understanding is not love, but is carefully masked fear. It is action based in self-centeredness and will build fear, not overcome it.
The New Testament refers to pure love as charity. I believe the two terms are synonymous. Using the phrase pure love instead of charity, it reads:
“And though I bestow all my goods to feed the poor . . . and have not pure love; it profiteth me nothing. Pure love suffereth long, and is kind; pure love envieth not; pure love vaunteth, not itself, is not puffed up, doth not behave itself unseemly, seeketh not her own, is not easily provoked, thinketh no evil; Rejoiceth not in iniquity, but rejoiceth in the truth; Beareth all things, believeth all things, hopeth all things, endureth all things. Pure love never faileth.” 1st Corinthians 13:3-8.
In this context, pure love is not an act of kindness, but a state of being.
We are kind in our suffering.
We do not envy, because envy is not part of us. We know that a divine creator created us, and there is nothing more desirable than that.
We are not puffed up because we know that the same divine creator also created everyone around us. Whether we are the waiter or the diner, the luggage handler or the passenger in first class, the president or the person who shines the president’s shoes–we each have equal status in the heart of that creator.
We seek not our own because we know that others need so much more than us.
We are not easily provoked because we’re able to see through others’ anger and see the pain and suffering that they feel. Because of that, it is our nature to respond in kindness.
We think no evil—particularly of others—because we know that we are, in reality, no better than anyone else.
We naturally gravitate toward love, eschewing fear because we feel how love builds us while fear diminishes us.
Thus, the tools of pure love–Patience, kindness, selflessness, harmony, feeling–are opposite of the tools of fear. When the tools of pure love show up, we see fear and its tools for what they are: Rudimentary caveman implements in comparison to the tools of pure love.
As a Presbyterian, this is part of your belief structure. This is part of most of our belief structures. Why then, do we settle for fear and its tools, when we could have the tools of pure love.
Sincerely,
David O. Leavitt
