There has been a theme in my life over the past several weeks…love and relationships. As a therapist most of my clients are women and a common thread is relationships, broken ones, dysfunctional ones, lost ones, the search for one…you get the picture. Then I facilitated a relationship group at Evergreen and now we, at Evergreen, are working through 1Corinthians 6 and 7…sex, marriage, singleness! I also have read two books on love “Communion” by bell hooks and “The Art of Loving” by Erich Fromm…both excellent and I highly recommend. Fromm wrote this book in the mid 50’s and hooks in the early 2000’s…the gender language is quite different but the core message is the same. I prefer hooks language, go figure, but I liked Fromm’s inclusion of God, albeit not an exclusive Christian God, but the spiritual component added the transcendence that hooks lacked. The combination of circumstances, books, groups and the current discussion series at Evergreen has lead me to be thinking a lot about love. So far these are my thoughts.
None of us can escape the fact that we all long for union. We are created to be in relationship, we look for relationship and belonging, however, our culture has so skewed what love really is that what ends up happening is we search for an object to love rather than a state of being. We, as Fromm says, seek to be lovable rather than to be loving. Fromm defines love as “caring, responsibility, respect and knowledge” they are interlinked concepts that are inseparable. A brief examination of the definitions he implores for each term is necessary to grasp the impact of his definition.
Caring: “Love is the active concern for the life and the growth of that which we love.”
Responsibility: I really like how he defines this one because I think we get stuck in feeling responsible for others but that is not what he means. He defines responsibility as “my response to the needs, expressed or unexpressed, of another human being.” How we respond to one another is the essence of responsibility.
Respect: “the ability to see a person as one is, to be aware of his unique individuality…the absence of exploitation…to grow and unfold for his own sake and in his own way and not for the purpose of serving me.”
Knowledge: This is a knowledge that “penetrates to the core” For example, it has the ability to see past the expression of anger to the fear, stress, and pain behind the anger. To see to the core of a person. Knowledge is an “experience of union” and “it’s depths cannot be fully mined.” Knowledge must begin in objectivity (fact finding) and leads to an experience of knowing and connection.
Caring without respect becomes enmeshment and dependence. Responsibility without knowledge becomes control. Respect without knowledge becomes platitudes and fluff. Knowledge without caring, responsibility, and respect becomes exploitive.
All these character qualities of love equal a mature universal love. The focus of our culture is erotic love and erotic love without mature love is “symbiotic attachment or an enlarged egoism.” Love that is caring, responsible, respectful and knowing can be extended to all humankind and from that we may develop erotic love with one other person however the union we need and crave needs to be fulfilled from a place of mature universal love not the exclusive erotic love that seems to be the usual path. That is not to say erotic love is bad, it is not, it is good and a gift however it is so easily skewed and hurtful if not grounded in mature love.
Fromm states, “mature love is a union under the condition of preserving one’s integrity.” Erotic love without mature love is prone to deception, intentional and unintentional. Erotic love is fueled by a need to become lovable and often we sacrifice our true selves on the altar of erotic love…we may achieve our goal of union with one other but we lose our integrity, we lose our self. Then when the intensity and passion of the erotic love wanes, as it does, we are left with a hollow love that we “fall out of.” True, mature love is not something we can “fall out” of. Mature love is a deep character trait that transcends feeling, it is a state of being.
What 1 Corinthians has been teaching me is that without a foundation of love through Jesus we cannot love others. My mantra to people who are seeking a love relationship is begin a love relationship with yourself and if you are a Christ follower He is at the core of who you are thus self-love includes knowing your identity in Christ. Self-love has gotten a bad wrap in Christian circles. I hear so much self-hate and self-loathing, I have participated in my share of it, and it is so damaging and gets us no where. The extreme, I know, that is trying to be avoided is narcissistic love that is selfish and other disrespecting. However I believe we must find a healthy balance. I love hooks emphasis in “Communion” of learning to love oneself because it calls out the masochistic tendencies that end up being a false humility and false modesty that leaves one feeling like a hypocrite, because deep down we truly want to feel proud and loving towards ourself. I absolutely love what CS Lewis says about true self-love and humilty in “Screwtape Letters” :
The Enemy (God) wants to bring the man to a state of mind in which he could design the best cathedral in the world, and know it to be the best, and rejoice in the fact, without being any more (or less) or otherwise glad at having done it than he would be if it had been done by another. The Enemy wants him, in the end, to be so free from any bias in his own favour that he can rejoice in his own talents as frankly and gratefully as in his neighbor’s talents - or in a sunrise, an elephant, or a waterfall. He wants each man, in the long run, to be able to recognize all creatures (even himself) as glorious and excellent things. He wants to kill their animal self-love as soon as possible; but it is His long-term policy, I fear, to restore to them a new kind of self-love - a charity and gratitude for all selves, including their own; when they have really learned to love their neighbours as themselves, they will be allowed to love themselves as their neighbours. For we must never forget what is the most repellent and inexplicable trait in our Enemy; He really loves the hairless bipeds He has created, and always gives back to them with His right hand what He taken away with the left.” C.S. Lewis The Screwtape Letters
This is the paradox of self-love for the Christ follower. We need to have the selfish, narcissistic love extracted, this is true, however He will give us a true self-love that is grounded in His character. It is the second half that I think we miss…at least I missed in my journey towards Christ for so many years. Living as a new creation is freedom, freedom to love from a place of caring for, responsibility to, respect for and knowledge of all of humankind and each individual in our circles. To value equality irregardless of our differences or similarities. I believe, we can only get these true and altruistic character traits in their fullest sense from the Creator of them.
I think Paul’s point in 1 Corinthians 7 is that the benefit of singleness is one’s status frees one up to seek the true Lover. When marriage is our goal it becomes our idol and it will not satisfy. When union with Jesus is our goal than marriage, when and if it occurs, will be in it’s right place and most likely will satisfy only that which it was created to satisfy, oneness with another human. Sadly I think the modern church has made marriage an idol and does a disservice to both marrieds and singles. How many singles I have heard in the church express a feeling of second class standing! Our status whatever that maybe is of secondary importance. In all honestly marrieds and singles who have not developed a mature love grounded in Jesus lose equally…loneliness is grounded in separation from God not from people. When our goal becomes another human we will always be left wanting. However when we make our goal loving and serving God that it frees us up to love from a place of security and honesty. In Corinth, and today for that matter, if you are already married and have not sought to correctly order your life this journey will be more difficult hence why it is better to remain single. Singles should not seek to be married because it makes someone other than God the goal which is idolatry.
The beauty of doing things the way God calls us to is a person wholeheartedly seeking to love and serve God, behaving in a loving way towards self and others will be attractive to and attracted by the same kind of person. What I mean by attraction is not the objectified or goal oriented attraction but the natural drawing towards that is not manipulative or deceptive. The trouble is many people think they are doing just that but on closer inspection they are not, how do I know…I have been one of those people. I am just now coming to a fuller understanding of what it means to be a loving person, so much of my energy has been on being a lovable person and trust me it is easy to deceive oneself into believing one truly is loving when in all actuality all one is doing is trying to be lovable.
Ryan got to skate at the skate park…he resolved his skateboard issue! I got to take the family to Coffenbury Lake in Fort Stevens State Park where I spent many years of my childhood at. Ryan got to watch his Papa clean a sturgeon
Tom has dragged his feet to indulge me in my strategy. It is hard to do things different than what we were raised with. He is a good guy that trusts me…what more can I ask!