Love is Good Medicine

                                                   

                                                    By G. T. Turner Finney

In 1991 Fred Singer’s book, Change Your Mind, Save Your Life, arrived in the mail. The book focused on the mind, body health-connection. What fascinated me about the book were the 28 Life Cards which captured the essence of psychological research into health and longevity and the Ode to the Centenarian.

       Life Card #12 is attached to my refrigerator door. It states simply:

Love your parents, Love your spouse, Love your children, Love your work,
Love your friends, Love your community, Love God.

In a romantic sense, we are inundated by the idea of love in songs, soap

operas, movies, and romantic novels. Love is highly valued. Everybody wants
love. Couples search for it through marriage. It’s like a quest for the Holy Grail. Yet, half of all U.S. marriages end in divorce. Does this mean the divorcing couples fell out of love? Did they look for love in the wrong places?

 To love is a tall order. Christians are instructed: to love God with all our heart, soul, and mind, (Matthew 22:37) to love our neighbors as ourselves (Mark 12:31), and to love our enemies. (Luke 6:35) Do we really know how to do this? Do we have the capacity? Where do we learn? What is love?

The American Heritage Dictionary defines love as an intense affection for another

person based on familial or personal ties. When I engaged a friend and professional colleague, Nick, in a dialogue about love, he shared with me his understanding of love
from a spiritual sense as “the giving away of ourselves to others without expecting anything in return. We have to see and feel love from within, he said. “Love is the feeling of the presence of God within who is the embodiment of love. Love comes from a spiritual relationship with God who first loved us. As a result we are able to love people as they are.” Obviously, my friend is speaking about God inspired unconditional love.

 To gain a broader perspective, it is necessary to consider other views and

dimensions of love. The renowned psychoanalyst, Erich Fromm, in
 The Art of Loving, provides insight into five objects of love: maternal love,
brotherly love, erotic love, self-love, and love of God. Fromm describes

motherly/fatherly love as unconditional love. “A mother loves her children just because they are her children, not because they are good, obedient, or fulfill her wishes.”  Brotherly love is non-exclusive love, the kind the Bible speaks of when it says “love thou neighbor as thyself.”  Erotic love is a “craving for complete fusion with one other person.” It is exclusive and deceptive because sexual attraction can be mistaken for love. To love someone is not just a strong feeling.

It is a decision, it’s a judgment. It’s a promise. Self-love is “respect for

one’s integrity and uniqueness, it is not narcissism or selfishness.”

 What is significant about Fromm’s work is the intertwining of faith

with love and the profound statement “he who is of little faith is of little love.”

and recognition of lifelong effects of motherly love on the personality.

Fromm states that one can distinguish among children and adults

who only “got milk and those who got “milk and honey.”  Milk symbolizes care and affirmation. Honey symbolizes an attitude of happiness, sweetness and love of life.

 The Bible gives us many facets and images of love:

love edifies, love endures forever, love casts out fear, love covers

a multitude of sins, love is patient and kind, love is the fulfillment

of the law, love is as strong as death. God is love.

Love is the greatest gift elegantly and poetically stated

 in I Corinthians 13:13 “And now abideth faith,

hope, love, these three but the greatest of these is love. Jesus

commanded his disciples to love one another as He loved them.

So, if we love one another God lives in us and his love is

perfected in us. (1 John 4:12)

Yes, love does have therapeutic properties and indeed is good medicine.

Children who grow up in loving, nurturing, and stable homes “usually

grow up to to be happy, healthy and long-lived adults.”

Researcher David McClelland of Harvard University has found

evidence that people who love and care about others have a stronger

immune system, and recover faster from illnesses. Other researchers

tell us that parental love is “preventive medicine and that when

administered in infancy acts as a vaccine to boost our self-esteem,

protect us against diseases, strengthen our egos against disappointments,

failure, rejection, and immunize our psyches against a world that

will assault us.”

 It is no accident that the Divine Creator placed us in families with

parental and kinship ties. Now suppose what would happen if every

child was loved and taught to love by example? Fromm invites us to

visualize the many possibilities of exposing our youth to people who

are loving, have integrity, courage, and concentration. 

  

During my days as a mental health therapist, I remember a psychiatrist

paraphrasing Sigmund Freud, “Everyone needs something to love, something

to do and something to hope for.”  The facts are love, work (a sense of purpose),

and hope sustain life. I would add faith described by Emil Brunner as the

origin of hope and embrace the idea that “work is love made visible.”

  To love is the highest spiritual experience one can obtain through faith. It depends

on our capacity to give up our narcissism, ethnic and racial prejudices, the

things that separate us from each other and God. It requires us to be open

to others, to grow, and to change.