I was reading an article in the newspaper about a parent who used extreme punishment for her child "because she loved her". The child was nine years old and had broken something by her carelessness. The parent sold all the kid's toys to pay for the breakage. Reading that brought to mind a Jews for Jesus family whom I knew in Idaho many years ago. In their seemingly garbled theology, they left behind their respective Jewish and Episcopalian backgrounds and became dunked in the river, born again, really strict evangelicals. When we visited them in their no art, no books, fridge the dug out space under the kitchen floor homestead on a beautiful lake, they had their three children sitting on a bench inside in the summer because it was a Sunday. Not to be too snobbish (see previous blog), but what God really would want the kids to sit all day between church services when it was God's earth outside? I would guess that the Puritans would have dug that.
They did this because they loved their kids. They wanted them to go to heaven. Later they would emigrate to Israel, give their kids Hebrew names, worship in hidden services so they might influence some Jews to become Christian. The kids were mighty confused by this. But it was not because the parents egos needed this mission but they did it because they loved their kids. I'm glad that my parents had a more ordinary way of showing their love, like going sledding together and drinking hot chocolate after.
Then there are the cases where a lover loves his woman so much that he will beat her up if she talks to another man. He tells her he loves her as he smashes in her pretty face. So sad.
Or, as a nation we love democracy so very much that we can use a slogan "Better Dead than Red" to justify war. Or its more subtle variations that must have worked the twisted Christian minds of Richard Nixon and Ronald Reagan as they decimated Vietnam and Nicaragua respectively.
So what is this love stuff? How can we separate it from our personal egoistical agendas? Is it an attitude, a decision, a state of the spirit, an illusion? I would guess from my life's observation that it is all of these things and none of these things. Maybe it is an objective Being. I looked at that in a previous blog. "Kristen Comes Home-To Die". I had that meeting with a being of Love. Maybe it is an attitude, an way of being romantic. I found that in the soul of Nicaragua. Every Nicaraguan seemed to have either a love of music or a love of poetry or a love of the Revolution...a romantic outlook which often included all of those modalities.
I am going to postulate that one component of love includes some kind of selflessness. Not a lost selflessness as in "If I give my heart to you, I'll have none and you'll have two." but rather the selflessness with which we love our child even if he/she is disagreeable or ugly. It also seems to be something that doesn't measure of count. If I were to say, I love you, but I cooked for you three times and you only cooked for me twice, how does that make sense on love scale? Immature we might say. But there is nothing 'mature' about the perfect love in the eyes of a nursing baby. It is innocent and total. Is that the ticket?
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