Faith and Charity

In Mark 12, Jesus was approached by a scribe and asked this question: “Which is the first commandment of all?” I always found this funny. Scribes were religious leaders in the old world. It feels like this question is trying to catch Jesus in a trick. Luckily for us, Jesus was not easily tricked and gave us a most beautiful answer: “The first of all the commandments is, Hear, O Israel; The Lord our God is one Lord: And thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, and with all thy soul, and with all thy mind, and with all thy strength: this is the first commandment. And the second is like, namely this, Thou shalt love thy neighbour as thyself. There is none other commandment greater than these.” (Mark 12:28-31)

When I think back on this interaction, I find myself asking this question: “do I love my neighbor like myself OR do I treat my neighbor better than I treat myself?” It’s an honest question that really haunted for me a long time. I have previously talked about being an eternal optimist for everyone but an eternal pessimist about myself. I am not lying when I say that I didn’t have a lot of confidence in my outcome and what I could become. In fact, there were many times that I had all but given up on myself.

That was until I realized something: I can’t be an eternal optimist for everyone else if I’m a pessimist about myself. Why? I started learning that my love for my neighbor is limited by how much I love myself. I had to learn how to love myself. I didn’t know where to start but I remembered reading that if I’m not sure if I’m loved that I can ask God if He loves me. That became my starting point. I began to ask God, in the name of Jesus Christ, if He loved me. I began to feel God’s love in my life. I began to have hope.

The next step became seeing others the way that God saw them. So, I asked God to help me see others the way that He sees them. I again learned about God’s love. I began seeing everyone around me are sons and daughters of God. I wanted to serve them in a way that would please God. As I began focusing on serving and acting in the way God wanted me to, I saw my faith increase and my charity increase. It wasn’t about being an optimist for everyone, it was about being an optimist for myself and everyone around me.

This experience, and many others, taught me how closely tied faith and charity are. They are definitely correlated with each other. As one grows, the other grows with it. I should also note that as my faith in Christ and charity grew, my desire to participate in my addiction diminished. I was more concerned about developing faith in Christ and learning to develop charity.