Give to those who ask, and don’t refuse those who wish to borrow from you. Matthew 5:42
Nowadays if you want to say someone is real smart you liken them to Einstein. But before Einstein if you wanted to say someone is real smart you might have likened them to Adolf von Harnack. Harnack was a historian and biblical scholar par excellence, and a major public intellectual in Germany. One of his most popular books was the transcription of some of his lectures titled “What Is Christianity?” Which is never a bad question to ask. He saw in Jesus a higher ethic, a pure teaching, that would be encumbered by the husk of human tradition in the early Church. That pure teaching could be summarized in three parts: the Fatherhood of God, the Brotherhood of man, and the higher ethic that is love.
Harnack’s Jesus taught that God loves each and every one of us, that all of us are united in fraternal bonds, and that we are to do all things in the attitude of love. While other religious teachers may multiply their doctrines and other philosophers may overly complicate things, Jesus keeps it simple and pure. And a lot of people still believe in the Jesus that Harnack uncovered.
But as appealing Harnack’s summary of Jesus’ teaching may be at times, when you dig into what Jesus had to say it is rarely as pure or as simple as Harnack would make out. What is remarkable about Jesus’ moral teaching is not so much how high it is, but how low it can get. Low in the sense of the every day. Jesus gives us a lot of specific commands. Don’t look with lust. Don’t say raca. Don’t offer sacrifice if your sister or brother holds something against you. Don’t be showy in your prayers. Make sure to wash and anoint yourself when fasting. And, as I quoted above, give to those who ask, don’t refuse anyone who wishes to borrow from you.
Jesus does not first preach an attitude and tell us to do everything with that attitude. Jesus first preaches specific concrete commands. And they are hardly comprehensive. Jesus does not tell us what to do in all aspects of our life. Sometimes we may wish he did. But he does give us these strange, concrete, unavoidable commands. Like to always give to those who ask.
It’s a worthwhile adventure to commit to following some of these commands in a simple and naive way for a time. Try simply, and naively, giving to those who ask and never refusing people who want to borrow from you. See what happens. In my experience, giving to people who asked not knowing any better, I discovered new friends and found my life enriched. These commands are given to us as roadways to the Kingdom. Jesus’ ethic isn’t in an attitude of love, per se. It’s in these little acts of renunciation, these little and sometimes foolish rules, that make love possible. Maybe Jesus recognized if he just told us to love, we might become prideful. After all, I’m the one acting in love. But if he tells us to give to everyone who asks, we will have to love, though we are less tempted toward pride.
The simple rules of the gospel are given to us that we might grow in that love. But love is known in the rules. That’s how Jesus taught. He taught through parables, or story, and weird rules that make a new sort of life founded on love possible.