Jesus and the productivity of love
In last week's post, we were discussing the positive aspect of toxic productivity. The positive characteristic was found in the central idea that you have to work hard to get what you want. Potential is not something that is discovered in introspection, but rather in the testing of one's capabilities and talents. You don't know all that you could become until you try, against all odds, to see how far you can go.
In the conclusion, I made reference to a person wiser than me and Aristotle: Jesus Christ. I quoted one of his phrases that, in my opinion, contains a more radical and resounding message than that of any of the productivity gurus. The verse was as follows: “Very truly I tell you, unless a kernel of wheat falls to the ground and dies, it remains only a single seed. But if it dies, it produces many seeds." (John 12:24). This quote was accompanied by my next comment: “We only reach our true potential when we are willing to die for a holy cause." Well, that is the subject of today’s post. I will advance the conclusion we are heading towards so that the reader will willingly endure some somewhat dry but necessary explanations. The conclusion is that there is nothing more productive than love, and not just any love, but unconditional love. Let us now delineate how we arrive at this conclusion.
Let us first discuss where this idea that we only reach our true potential when we are willing to die for a sacred cause comes from. Once the source of this idea is established, it will be easy to understand why it is only in this context that one can reach one's full potential. When Jesus mentions the death of the kernel of wheat (John 12:24), he is alluding to his death on the cross. The fruit of the dead kernel of wheat refers to how Jesus' death on the cross has the fruit of saving humanity from its sins. In the very next verse, he addresses his disciples to convey to them that spiritual life consists of a continuous death that bears fruit in eternity: “Anyone who loves their life will lose it, while anyone who hates their life in this world will keep it for eternal life." (John 12:25). Hence, he previously said that unless the kernel of wheat falls into the ground and dies, it cannot produce fruit. In other words, Jesus uses the metaphor of the kernel of wheat to communicate that the transcendence or importance of our actions lies on the other side of that death. In short, Jesus emphasizes that our potential—the fruit—as human beings can only be developed when our life is not our supreme treasure. This entails an abhorrence of our own earthly existence based on comfort and complacency. This is the death of the worldly self in order to bear fruit to a spiritual self. But why, why can such potential only come about by rejecting the value we place on our own life?
Let us elaborate a little more on this extremely complex issue. Human beings make decisions through a hierarchy of values. In this pyramidal hierarchy, that which is at the top of the pyramid is that which guides our actions. That which is at the top is traditionally referred to in philosophy as Summum Bonum (the supreme good). Plato called this the Good; for Aristotle it was Happiness; other contemporary thinkers, such as Charles Taylor, refer to this idea as the Hypergood. According to this, we are always moving on a narrative plane in which our actions take us from point A to point B. That movement from one point to another is what we understand as moral progress, while any regression along that line would be considered a symptom of moral decay. According to this scheme, the Summum Bonum of Jesus was not Happiness nor the idea of the Good, but love.
What guided and dictated Jesus' behavior in the New Testament was not an ideal of self-promotion or self-preservation, but an ideal which in its Greek root was agape. The Greeks had in their moral vocabulary four types of love: eros (romantic-sexual love), philia (brotherly love), storge (paternal or maternal love), and agape (charity or unconditional love). A human being can experience, to a greater or lesser degree, each of these types of love, that is, they can coexist with each other. The telos or end of Jesus' life was to love humanity with agape love. Love of this kind is a selfless love that loves according to truth, not to lower interests, and that does not expect anything in return. For salsa music lovers, this could be what Hector Lavoe said in some of his songs: “I love you for free." It is a love that rejects the transactional and calculating component that erodes interpersonal bonds with our fellow human beings. This kind of love makes us like God and brings us closer to God. It is a love that enables an individual to give their life for something that is worth more than life itself. Hence, the “hating" or hatred that Jesus referred to alludes to the abhorrence of any value other than this unconditional love for our fellow man. With this approach, clinging to one's own life is a sign of spiritual poverty; it is not to have understood that the greatness of life is found in the possibility opened by love. The meaning of life revolves around that encounter with God and with one's neighbor in which one can love and be loved.
Now, what does all this have to do with productivity and potential? The answer lies in the fact that the human beings who are most relentless in pursuing their goals and growing as people are those who forget about themselves. The saint who loves is more productive than the CEO who trains in the morning, showers with cold water, does intermittent fasting, and meditates before work. I have seen many mothers be more productive and relentless with their time because they love their children than many addicts who love their work. The hypergood or telos of the saint or mother makes them be one with their activity. That supreme good causes them not to dwell too long on obstacles. For there is nothing more productive than the power of love and nothing more unproductive than the obsession with time. Love makes mothers do more for the world than any productivity guru. Love of God makes the saint hate evil in the world a great deal as to want to change it, but he loves his neighbor so much that he concludes it is worth trying. Love made Jesus hate sin so much that he spoke more of hell than of heaven, but he loved the world much more so that as he was being crucified, he said, “Father, forgive them, for they know not what they doing." (Luke 23:24). Love is what enables us to do the unimaginable. Love is that shield against any setback since love “always protects, always trusts, always hopes, always perseveres." (1 Corinthians 13:7).
