Love. That’s why I did it...

Ari Mahler

“Love. That’s why I did it,
Love as an action is more powerful than words,
and love in the face of evil gives others hope.
 It demonstrates humanity. It reaffirms why we’re all here. ...
I could care less what Robert Bowers thinks,
but you, the person reading this,
 love is the only message I wish instil in you.
If my actions mean anything, love means everything.”

Ari Mahler

These are the words of a post by an Emergency Room nurse at the hospital which treated Robert Bowers, the gunman who brutally injured and murdered unsuspecting worshippers at a Pittsburgh synagogue. Not only is Mahler Jewish, his parents attend the Tree of Life synagogue where this tragedy unfolded and he didn't know whether they were safe when the injured Bowers was brought to the hospital (they were safe.) The doctor who was part of the treatment team is also Jewish and has connections to the synagogue. I saw him interviewed and he offered that despite this terrible assault Bowers was some mother's son and there was no question that he would treat him the way he would treat any other patient.


 

I find this commitment to compassion and practical love deeply moving and while those of us who are Christians speak often about the love of Christ I wonder how I might respond to someone so full of hate in similar circumstances.

Of course Jesus was a Jew, and a central tenet of Judaism is chesed, which is translated as lovingkindness in the King James Version of the bible. Chesed is kindness or love between people, the devotion of people towards God as well as of love or mercy of God towards humanity.

The apostle Paul, who was a rabbi,  wrote of love in his letter to the congregation in Corinth. Christianity is an expression of the Tree of Life which has been demonstrated so nobly by these medical professionals. Thank God that love overcomes hatred, even in the ER.

Thoughts?

If I speak in the tongues of mortals and of angels, but do not have love,
I am a noisy gong or a clanging cymbal. 
And if I have prophetic powers, and understand all mysteries and all knowledge,
and if I have all faith, so as to remove mountains, but do not have love, I am nothing. 
 If I give away all my possessions, and if I hand over my body so that I may boast,
but do not have love, I gain nothing.
Love is patient; love is kind; love is not envious or boastful or arrogant or rude.
It does not insist on its own way; it is not irritable or resentful; 
it does not rejoice in wrongdoing, but rejoices in the truth. 
 It bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things.
 Love never ends.

I Corinthians 13:1-8a