So I have been thinking about loving-kindness, the emotion that Judaism calls chesed and Buddhism calls metta.
Loving-kindness isn’t just love+kindness. Rather, it’s an unconditional, universal love: love for people not because they are good, or because they are lovable, but because they are people. Even broader: love for all life, for no reason than because it is alive.
(Embedded in this emotion is also the practice of kindness, but particularly, it is the practice of non-reciprocated kindness: the kindness of an (ideal) parent to a child, the kindness to a stranger you’re never going to see again.)
In Judaism, chesed is the emotion that God feels towards us (the Jews but, also, all humans and all creation.) And it is also supposed to be the emotion that we feel towards God.
This – that chesed is the emotion that we ideally feel towards God – has some interesting to say to me about God’s perfection or lack thereof. If God is perfect, then we will love God for being perfect. And loving someone for being perfect is a conditional love (indeed, it is a surefire way to heartbreak).
But that’s not the emotion we’re supposed to feel towards God. We’re supposed to feel an intense, world-spanning, unconditional love. Our love is supposed to be without regard to God’s lovability, or God’s perfection, or any of God’s particular traits.
If God is perfect, we cannot feel loving-kindness towards Him. The best we could manage would be admiration, or worship. So.
Most commonly referred to as charity in Western Christianity.