+Lent2010: Love+

The Episcopal Lenten devotional I am reading daily raised a question I have never thought about before... So they (all of the NT writers, and God...) say that Jesus came to live among us and love us. Jesus loved us so much that he died for our sins, right? But what if Jesus didn't like us? I mean, he came to earth and experienced anger, fear, cruelty, greed, corruption, brutality...

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But Jesus still loved us. I suppose this gets into that debate over Jesus' divinity. Is Jesus 50% human and 50% divine? 100% Human and 100% divine or just one or the other? So many options! I still haven't found my own answer to this question (although I lean towards the second option...) but even in thinking about it, it begs the question: Even if Jesus was partially human, don't you suppose he got sick and tired of people being... people? A human's array of emotions is just ridiculous and the fact that we only see a few of those in Jesus (sadness, anger, joy) makes it seem like Jesus had to be more divine than human.

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It could be because Jesus is/was God and so therefore God has to love all people. But even God showed frustration with the Israelites back in the OT... I don't know. I'm stuck.

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The point to the devotional this morning was the fact that Jesus' message was to love God and then prove it by loving your neighbor as yourself... and I know I don't love my neighbor all the time. But his statement means I have to love myself before I can love my neighbor... and I don't know if I love myself. I don't know how one measures such a thing.

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hm.