Preferential Love & Living in Community
What does it mean to live in community in small groups? Or as a part of a church? Or in missional communities? Or with others who are holding us accountable, i.e. groups of two or three? When we think of community, too many times we think of it in terms of preferential love, which means that we will relate to others as long as they are pleasing to us. I've been reading and rereading Soren Kierkegaard's Works of Love recently. He has some challenging insights and reflections on what it means to love our neighbor. "Thus the neighbor is the person who is nearer to you than anyone else, yet not in the sense of preferential love, since to love someone who in the sense of preferential love is nearer than anyone else is self-love—'do not the pagans also do the same?'" The neighbor, then, is nearer to you than anyone else. ... 'the neighbor' is what thinkers call 'the other.' that by which the selfishness in self-love is to be tested." (21) This ...