Love First

In this simple but insightful and rich book, Lloyd Sandelands does not offer a new reading of the importance of love and its role in Christian understandings of being-and thereby relationships with others-but a concise and important recourse back to the basics of humanism and its grounding in Christian tradition. . . . Sandelands's book, although brief, is profound. It recaptures an old spirit of Christianity that needs to be awakened in the twenty-first century: (Christian) humanism. In that awakening, joyful solidarity, the common good, and common service, united in and through love, can be manifested. After all, Jesus himself said not to love humanity in the abstract, but to "love your neighbor as yourself." True love begins with that which is in front of you. * Catholic Social Science Review *
This book asks fundamental questions of what it is to be human, how we know and what should be first in life and in organizations. At its core is a humble and personal call to receive and discern real being rather than dissect and objectify from a position of distanced scientism. One may read the book as an unusually beautiful expression of personal Christian faith, as a hymn to humanity and as an erudite qualification of the "realism of loving-then-knowing". This is where I engage the strongest, with questions of immense ethical vitality: For the purposes and people we engage in organizations, what things are first? What does it mean to put love first? -- Arne Carlsen, BI Norwegian Business School
From the moment you open this book, Lloyd Sandelands beckons us to see with fresh eyes and an open heart the power of being. Prepare to awaken to a new understanding of the potency and lived reality of Christian Humanism. This book helps us to appreciate and understand being-in-relation to God. I am deeply grateful for this new awakening and forever reminder of these possibilities for being for ourselves and for all living beings on this earth. -- Jane E. Dutton, University of Michigan
Professor Sandelands ably draws from religious and scientific arguments as well as from personal experience to develop the implications of Christian belief on our understanding of the human condition. In lucid terms he juxtaposes the corrosive influence of scientific materialism on self-knowledge with a vision of human beings as inherently noble, spiritual and capable of reflecting the attributes of their Creator. -- Jose Uribe, University of Michigan