I need a break from reading so I’m going to write for a while. I have a ridiculously busy week, but I can’t be without my usual quota of thought. I had an idea of what I wanted to write about this week, but it has kind of broadened and changed. As I perused random corners of the internet I stumbled upon a Martin Luther King Jr. quote that I thought accurately supported last week’s blog while segueing nicely into the general vicinity of my new topic, thusly reproduced for your convenience:
We must develop and maintain the capacity to forgive. He who is devoid of the power to forgive is devoid of the power to love. There is some good in the worst of us and some evil in the best of us. When we discover this, we are less prone to hate our enemies.
I’m going to trash the context in conventional Christian vogue in favor of examining the assumptions he uses as a foundation. And yes, I think that if the education system taught context clues better, the number of Christian denominations would be a fraction of what it currently is. Welcome to the jungle; we have arguments for the sake of argument-having. As Dr. King so presumptuously stated, we all want the power to love for whatever reason. Oh, side note: I think Martin Luther King Jr. was beyond brilliant and one of the true heroes of our time. That quote has so many awesome statements, I could be set with writing material for a month. I’m being sadistically satirical in my portrayals for a reason, or maybe satirically sadistic. Anyway, he is right, is he not? Within each one of us exists this desire for “love” by whatever definition you choose to call it. Again, for your convenience, I’ll sum up my definition so you know what I am thinking as I go about writing the rest of this. The most important parts of my definition are those most likely not to be accepted by any english teacher, the definition by negation, or transcendence of two common definitions. The love I am talking about isn’t the physical or emotional aspects, though it does beget the former two. I won’t quote 1 Corinthians because I’m sure pretty much everyone has heard it, but I’ll draw attention to several important qualities. Love is trusting, honest, compassionate, selfless, and sacrificial. This sequence of traits travels from an oddity among humanity to sheer contradiction of the human condition. So, once again, we arrive at this question. Why?
Why do we trust other people with our hearts? It is one of the most ignorant and naïve ideas I can think of. Even from a Christian perspective, we know we are all fallen from grace, from God, from love. Opening up just invites pain and betrayal into perpetuation. How can the benefits outweigh the risks? Do we just comply because trust is a necessary component of love and we are commanded to love? Are we really just seeking gain for ourselves? Are we just clinging to hope? I believe the answer, while beautifully constructed truthfully in the Word, does have a proximate secular précis, illustrated by a voice familiar to most of us. Spake the wise man, “Why love if losing hurts so much? We love to know that we are not alone.” Any guesses? Chock up another point for the C.S. Lewis win-column. It is to him I dedicate that artfully crafted, narrative archaism. Ignoring the group of people who do conform readily to this position, I just want to pull back and look at the other side in which I formerly included myself. This statement suggests that humans are relational at the core, so what about those humans who don’t see themselves as relational? More often than not, I would say that they are probably fooling themselves and are jaded by some sense of arrogant superiority. However, on the off chance that that isn’t the case, I would argue that God pulled the ol’ switcheroo on them. Those people, who likely can accurately be described as introverted, have a much deeper relationship with themselves, the product of more time spent in self-examination. The best way (fortunately for my argument) to examine something is to look at it. The best way to look at something, is to not be the something you’re looking at. For example, say you want to look at your own eye. It’s impossible to do just sitting in your chair, right? *Hires lawyers to defend against all the eye-dislocation lawsuits* You could look in a mirror, but it’s still really difficult to look at any part of your eye that isn’t dead center because you have to move your eye to do so. Which brings me to my probable best solution, *calls lawyer again for all the blindness and undiagnosed epilepsy suits* taking a picture of your eye. And in effect, what are you doing when you take a picture? You are creating a separate entity to examine. Similarly (although substantially less literally barring some crazy advancement in cloning), we examine ourselves by looking from an outside perspective, or even several. I argue that this action is in itself an embracement of the human relational quality even before considering the relationship with God that is inherent in the process. Okay, if you really want me to back up the statement, “No one wants to be alone,” fully, you’ll have to ask me, but trust that I am up to the challenge for now. C.S. Lewis has, in my opinion, defined the "real" human condition perfectly. Why do we love? We are defined by love. We are broken and desperate for love, every single one of us. We cannot not love. Show me one person who has never acted lovingly once in his or her life. Love is written on our hearts and our very being by God and it is by and through that love that we are drawn to him. Think about all the times during the day that you are drawn to compliment or smile at someone that you may not even know instead of stealing their possessions. What is going through your mind? If it’s not, “Oh, if I hurt this person and steal from them, there will be legal ramifications for me,” I can all but guarantee that the impulse has its roots in the way God has painted your identity to lead you closer to him. I think that's pretty cool. So then let's go back and look at the first half of the quote from Lewis. Why does losing hurt? A connection severed is a piece of love being torn away and replaced, most likely, by some form of hostility. Imagine removing a portion of your pillow stuffing and replacing it with thumb tacks. That, but subtler and within our own hearts, the co-source of our identities. Our hearts thrive on love and the characteristics it invites. Doesn't it then make sense that pain ensues from the forcible removal of those traits and injection of the derivatives of hate?
Okay, this is getting obscenely long and I, despite the underground consensus that I am not human, do actually require sleep. I don’t really have a “point” this time per se. This was more or less just food for thought, but I’m guessing and I hope that if nothing else, this got the term “love” spinning around in your brain, which is good. I think having a solid definition of something so engrained in our existence is crucial, and not only a definition, but a sense of how it is involved in our identities and how best to be the writing instrument with which it is written on others’ hearts. That’s all I’ve got. Peace.
No comments:
Post a Comment