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| Love is the consuming topic of our culture. It is the number one subject of the arts – just check the songs, movies, television shows, and poetry we generate and consume. But love has become an indefinable feeling that is validated by emotion and only rarely is it adequately described. No wonder we struggle in our relationships! A recent editorial column in the Valley News explored the disintegration of marriage in our society. The author did a good job of describing some of the dynamics that have contributed to the increase in divorce rate and rendered marriage obsolete. She saw marriage as fundamentally a social contract. But a “tit for tat” business deal is hardly what we write poems and songs about. Nor is it what our soul longs for. She proposed that these longings have created higher expectations of marriage and they are one of the factors that has led to its demise. In addition, she suggested that the historical benefits of financial security and personal safety no longer require a long-term commitment like marriage or even another person. Nevertheless, we still hunger for a vital special connection with another person. We describe the dynamic of this relationship with the term “love.” We want to love and be loved. We want the delicious feelings associated with being “in love.” But there is a great irony in our understanding of and longing for love. We use the term “love” to describe our feelings of attraction with statements like, “I love ice cream!” But this does not mean that we wish it well or that we want the best for ice cream. It means we want to consume it for our own purposes. It means we want it, we desire it. Too often marital love has degenerated into this kind of “love” that is primarily about pursuing our pleasures and meeting our needs. We’ve become consumers of love. So when it no longer meets our felt needs, when we have had enough, when our tastes change, or when we no longer “love” our spouse, we terminate the negotiated contract. Another perversion of our understanding of the concept of love is captured by the old advertising jingle, “I wish I were an Oscar Meyer Weiner” because then “everyone would be in love with me.” No one thinks that being a hot dog will cause people to love us but we do think that being prettier, thinner, smarter, richer, more successful will cause people to love us. This sounds a lot like codependency! Unless I adapt to and please my consumer partner I’ll be tossed aside. That is a lot of pressure and it is hard to sustain any feelings of love, warmth and security in that sort of environment. And then there is the phrase, “in love,” which is used to describe those wonderful feelings of attraction to another person. The problem is that feelings are flighty, unreliable, temporary, and misleading. We cannot control or even count all the factors that contribute to our feelings. Furthermore, feelings are self-referenced – they are about “me.” Yet the love that we want expressed and felt toward us is other-centered. This means that when we truly love someone it needs to be about them, not about us. One of the classic descriptions of love is found in the New Testament in 1 Corinthians 13 and is devoid of the typical emotional and feeling-oriented depictions so prevalent in today’s literature. It is preeminently practical. Let me suggest a better definition of love – the will to do good for the object of our love. It is compatible with feelings but it is other-oriented and it is a matter of the will. It is the opposite of self-centeredness. Part of our longing for love is a deep desire to be valued in spite of our flaws, weaknesses, and blunders. Anything less is a contract based upon performance. While marriage may be properly understood as a contract, love cannot simply be a negotiation. Its nature demands that it be freely and volitionally given. I am in love. I have been in love for well over 30 years. I am in my wife’s love, who has faithfully loved me through good times and bad. She is well acquainted with all the worst things about me and continues to faithfully want and do the best for me. And she would tell you that she also basks in my love in the same way. We are still learning to love each other better. It is hard work and it goes against our self-centered nature but it is the only path to true love. And nothing feels better! The sweet knowledge and inner security of knowing that my wife loves me, no matter what, is exactly what poems and songs are written about! It is her greatest gift to me. It is a gracious gift because I have not earned it and I do not deserve it. When we need love most is when we deserve it least. God’s love toward us is just so: “But God shows His love for us in that while we were yet sinners, Christ died for us” (Romans 5:8). God’s love for us is not a contract that is dependent upon our behavior. It is a gift that is offered to us. We need only receive it! |
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by Dr. J. Patrick Curtis, Senior Pastor |
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