Remedial Love

 
 
 
Readers Digest Condensed Version:

 

I was so enthralled with the concept of everything being done as an act of love that I neglected to cover one crucial aspect, what is love?

Love is done for the sole benefit of another with no expectation of reciprocation.

THE END

 

The Unabridged Version:

 

We say the word 30 or 40 times a day without ever considering the weight of our words. Just to demonstrate that I have put thought into this thing we call love, here is a little poem about some of the things I claimed to have loved today…

I love Lou Malnati's pizza and the White Sox.

I love Cincinnati, but Chicago rocks!

I love the Lord of the Rings, one thru five.

I love that Mick Jagger is still alive.

I love our happiness can come in a pill

And Scarlett Johansson I can't get my fill.

I love Mount Rushmore's four big heads.

I love Velveeta slapped on Wonder bread.

I love a commie, if he's good and dead.

I love a hotdog with pickles and mustard.

I love my girl, but I sure don't trust her.

I even love what the Indians did to Custer.

 

Now, you may not agree with me on a single one of these points, however these points of affection bring us no closer to understanding the essence of love than chewing bubble gum brings us to solving a geometry proof. You see, we have a very diluted and degraded definition of what this crazy little thing called love means.

Julia Cameron philosophized,

“Love is the substance of all life. Everything is connected in love, absolutely everything.”

While Hermann Hess forewarns us,

“Love isn't there to make us happy. I believe it exists to show us how much we can endure.”

Kate Bush reassures us in her angelic voice,

“There's someone who's loved you forever but you don't know it.”

But Steven Stills proposes a straight forward solution,

“Love the one your with.”

 

First, love is something that exists only in sentient (emotional) intelligent beings. The reason I say this is that love requires there be a choice. You must have the ability to make a conscience decision to love, to hate, or to be indifferent. An inanimate object, such as a kitchen table, is incapable of emotion and therefor bereft (without) of love. You may love your cat, but he or she cannot love you back. There is no conscious decision on the animal’s behalf. Sorry, I hate to break it to you, but (Insert kitties name here) doesn’t really love you. Not in the sense of love at the human level. I know that the PETA people will be enraged, but if they can prove me wrong, I’ll admit my error and love them just the same.  As I stated in the Readers Digest Condensed Version above, Love is done for the sole benefit of another with no expectation of reciprocation. Any conditional demands on love and it ceases to be love, it becomes a business transaction. Love can be given, but never demanded. Once demanded, love becomes obligation, duty, or responsibility, but it ceases to be love. 

The Apostle Paul wrote what is perhaps the best definition of love in the 13^th chapter of his letter to the Corinthians,

Love is patient, love is kind. It does not envy, it does not boast, it is not proud. It does not dishonor others, it is not self-seeking, it is not easily angered, it keeps no record of wrongs. Love does not delight in evil but rejoices with the truth. It always protects, always trusts, always hopes, always perseveres.     

- 1 Corinthians 13:4-7

But wait a minute dude; didn’t you say there are no conditional demands on love? Then why does that sound like a list of conditions?

Well, it sounds like conditions, but these are attributes of love. They are parts of what love is, a description of what love looks like, rather than a laundry list of requirements.

Wow! That’s a lot of stuff we kind of associate with love, but there are limitations, implied conditions, and caveats that come with all that stuff, right? Can you imagine how Paul's Epistle to the Church at Corinth would read after passing through a present day legal department? I'm certain it would be both irreconcilable with Paul's descriptions and incomprehensible to anyone without an Ivy League interpreter. 

I know that seems rather cynical, sad, and even jaded, (or maybe it's just me) but that’s exactly how our contemporary definition of love has eroded. Starting around the beginning of the 20th century, Behaviorism became the craze of modern human psychology which removed any claim to the “exceptionalism" of human beings in Creation. We were just another species of animal, a cleaver but mischievous hairless ape, only slightly higher in position to the chimpanzee, and love just one of our curious primate behaviors. Love is an instinctive behavior driven primarily by natural selection and our odd but insatiable drive to pass on our chromosomes to some future generation. Some would call this a scientific breakthrough, I call it dismal. Now that love is a simple behavior, we can limit and direct this potent power through our ultimate authority, the state. The ethical aspects in love involve the moral appropriateness of loving, and the forms it should or should not take. The subject area raises such questions as:

1. Is it ethically acceptable to love an object, or to love oneself (self-esteem)?
2. Is love to oneself or to another a duty (a contract)? 
3. Should the ethically minded person aim to love all people equally?
4. Is partial love morally acceptable or permissible (that is, not right, but excusable)?
5. Should love only involve those with whom the giver can have a meaningful relationship?
6. Should love aim to transcend sexual desire or physical appearances?
7. Should notions of romantic, sexual love apply to same sex couples?

These and a hundred more come to mind once we relegate love to the list of animal behavior filtered through the lens of legalism. Somewhere as it passes through that filter we lose the meaning of love. We speak of love towards things, television shows, foods, fashions, and certainly our children and spouses. But is that love really about them, or what they do for us. The sense of pride we receive from their beauty or accomplishments. If your wife was hideously deformed by an auto accident or rendered incapable of caring for herself, would you still love her?

These are difficult questions in hypothetical circumstances; however in real world situations the collateral concerns become exponential. How will you afford the medical expenses? If you have children, what about childcare expenses? If she was a wage earner, how will you survive financially? I know these concerns are outside the ideal of love, but you may soon find when facing these challenges that love for your spouse becomes far more burdensome. This is where the litmus test of love happens, “… for the sole benefit of another with no expectation of reciprocation”.

Keep track of how many times you use the word “love” today without really meaning it. Would I really sacrifice my personal and financial well-being for The Lord of the Rings? No. The White Sox? Hardly. Scarlett Johansson? Well… I would definitely tell her I would, if that aided me in achieving my “love” intentions, but that’s not really love either.

At the end of the day cross off anything on your list that doesn’t fit the definition, “… for the sole benefit of another with no expectation of reciprocation”. You will discover how little we truly love, and at the same time discover what is really important in our lives that we have taken for granted.