Edited by Jim McCrory, Sunday 28 December 2025 at 19:04
“Love in action is a harsh and dreadful thing compared with love in dreams.” — Fyodor Dostoevsky
How Deep Is Our Love?
Fyodor Dostoevsky draws a sharp distinction between imagined love and lived love. Love “in dreams” is attractive and flattering; it costs nothing and never disrupts our comfort. We admire ourselves for feeling it. But it is not yet real. It is a Lake Wobegon delusion.
This is why I find Dostoevsky so compelling. His words are not cynical, but moral. He is warning that if our love never feels harsh, never interrupts our comfort, never demands sacrifice, it may not yet have become real.
“But someone will say, ‘You have faith and I have deeds.’ Show me your faith without deeds, and I will show you my faith by my deeds.” —James 2:18 (BSB)
That insight becomes particularly sharp when applied to religious certainty. When certainty is fortified, questions sound like threats. Facts bounce off sealed doors. Even Scripture can be turned into a fortress rather than a window.
Yet there is one question that still carries a quiet, unsettling power because it does not argue doctrine at all. It simply asks for love made visible:
What did you do for the widow, the poor, and the fatherless child?
It is a probing question because it does not attack belief; it examines fruit. Faith loves to speak in absolutes, but Scripture repeatedly insists that love must be embodied. Faith without works is described as a corpse—present in form, absent in life. Words that bless the hungry while leaving them unfed are exposed as empty air. Belief that never stoops, never serves, and never costs is not belief at all—it is performance.
The biblical vision of faith is relentlessly practical. Divine expectation is distilled into a simple demand: to do justice, to love mercy, and to walk humbly. Justice and mercy are not abstractions; they are actions directed toward real human need, often inconvenient need.
This is why the question lands so heavily. It bypasses hierarchy and goes straight to practice; it is personal. Not what do you preach, but who did you help.
Those who cannot answer often reach for a familiar deflection: “the poor you will always have with you.” But this was never a permission slip for neglect. It was spoken in the shadow of sacrifice, not as an excuse for indifference.
Throughout the prophetic tradition, care for the vulnerable is not a side issue—it is the measure of faithfulness. Worship without justice is described as noise God refuses to hear.
And yet, there are quiet testimonies that never make it into sermons: a woman who opens her home to a child with nowhere safe to sleep; a church that funds recovery work for addiction; volunteers who sail ships of medical care to forgotten places; a man who spends his weekends delivering meals rather than pamphlets.
Jesus offered the simplest definition of discipleship imaginable: Apart from preaching and making disciples, he highlighted feeding the hungry, welcoming the stranger, clothing the naked, visiting the sick and imprisoned. He did not ask about affiliation, authority structures, or correct language. He asked one thing only—did you love where it hurt? And then he shocked everyone by identifying himself with the least powerful in society.
This is why works matter. Not because they earn faith, but because they reveal it. Faith is the root; works are the fruit. If nothing grows, the soil must be questioned.
So, when words fail, ask the question gently and without accusation.
How Deep Is Our Love?
“Love in action is a harsh and dreadful thing compared with love in dreams.”
— Fyodor Dostoevsky
How Deep Is Our Love?
Fyodor Dostoevsky draws a sharp distinction between imagined love and lived love. Love “in dreams” is attractive and flattering; it costs nothing and never disrupts our comfort. We admire ourselves for feeling it. But it is not yet real. It is a Lake Wobegon delusion.
This is why I find Dostoevsky so compelling. His words are not cynical, but moral. He is warning that if our love never feels harsh, never interrupts our comfort, never demands sacrifice, it may not yet have become real.
“But someone will say, ‘You have faith and I have deeds.’
Show me your faith without deeds,
and I will show you my faith by my deeds.”
—James 2:18 (BSB)
That insight becomes particularly sharp when applied to religious certainty. When certainty is fortified, questions sound like threats. Facts bounce off sealed doors. Even Scripture can be turned into a fortress rather than a window.
Yet there is one question that still carries a quiet, unsettling power because it does not argue doctrine at all. It simply asks for love made visible:
What did you do for the widow, the poor, and the fatherless child?
It is a probing question because it does not attack belief; it examines fruit. Faith loves to speak in absolutes, but Scripture repeatedly insists that love must be embodied. Faith without works is described as a corpse—present in form, absent in life. Words that bless the hungry while leaving them unfed are exposed as empty air. Belief that never stoops, never serves, and never costs is not belief at all—it is performance.
The biblical vision of faith is relentlessly practical. Divine expectation is distilled into a simple demand: to do justice, to love mercy, and to walk humbly. Justice and mercy are not abstractions; they are actions directed toward real human need, often inconvenient need.
This is why the question lands so heavily. It bypasses hierarchy and goes straight to practice; it is personal. Not what do you preach, but who did you help.Those who cannot answer often reach for a familiar deflection: “the poor you will always have with you.” But this was never a permission slip for neglect. It was spoken in the shadow of sacrifice, not as an excuse for indifference.
Throughout the prophetic tradition, care for the vulnerable is not a side issue—it is the measure of faithfulness. Worship without justice is described as noise God refuses to hear.
And yet, there are quiet testimonies that never make it into sermons: a woman who opens her home to a child with nowhere safe to sleep; a church that funds recovery work for addiction; volunteers who sail ships of medical care to forgotten places; a man who spends his weekends delivering meals rather than pamphlets.
Jesus offered the simplest definition of discipleship imaginable: Apart from preaching and making disciples, he highlighted feeding the hungry, welcoming the stranger, clothing the naked, visiting the sick and imprisoned. He did not ask about affiliation, authority structures, or correct language. He asked one thing only—did you love where it hurt? And then he shocked everyone by identifying himself with the least powerful in society.
This is why works matter. Not because they earn faith, but because they reveal it. Faith is the root; works are the fruit. If nothing grows, the soil must be questioned.
So, when words fail, ask the question gently and without accusation.
Image by Copilot