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.
