In Defense Of Love & Relationships
Rev. Allen V. Harris, Regional Pastor & President
Maybe it is because we are in February, a month that contains the holiday famously dedicated to all things amorous, or simply because it is weighing on my heart, mind, and soul, but I've been thinking a lot lately about how powerful love is and how enduring the bonds of loving relationships are.
Sadly, love is so misunderstood. Quite often it is seen as a soft, weaker, or less desirable human quality. In fact, anything related to love and relationships, such as empathy, kindness, compassion, yielding to another, quiet contemplation, or compromising, are seen not simply as lesser characteristics, but harmful or even dangerous to the order of the whole. In fact, some have felt they have to add an adjective to strengthen the concept, and they talk about "tough love.” This bothers me, both as a person in deep relationship with a whole lot of people, but as a follower of Christ and a student of the Bible.
1 Corinthians 14:4-7 famously reads, "Love is patient; love is kind; love is not envious or boastful or arrogant or rude. It does not insist on its own way; it is not irritable; it keeps no record of wrongs; it does not rejoice in wrongdoing but rejoices in the truth. It bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things.” Its frequent use at weddings, funerals, and other significant life events has almost rendered it powerless by being so familiar. But any student of the Bible knows that the twin epistles of 1 and 2 Corinthians were anything but syrupy love letters or a placating pieces of sentimental drivel. They were firm and faithful assertions of what makes all communities, but especially those who proclaim Christ, robust, healthy, and enduring.
The apostle Paul was writing to a deeply contentious church that was using everything in the world to try to divide itself one member from another. They had allowed the divisions of the oppressive dominating powers of the Roman Empire to overtake their young church, especially around ancient grievances about who was worthy and who was less worthy as well as prejudices around those who could be included in the community and who could and should not be included. This famous "love chapter” is centered right in the midst of Paul's theological treatise of how we are to respond when the dissension of the world threatens our community. He reminds us of the love that is from God, poured out through Jesus Christ, "bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things.” This is hardly a weak or pathetic response, for in fact, Paul had come to understand true love is the strongest force on the face of the earth.
We are again living in a hard and cold era of human life, where those in power are deciding for us that the problems that beset us must be solved by force, violence, stereotyping, amplified by emotional distance, self-interest, and isolation. Those serving in the highest offices of the land, whether corporate or political, are sowing discontent while gaining vast wealth, power, and glory at the expense of those they see as the least, the lost, the loneliest, and the unloved.
And on top of this (perhaps strategically in tandem with this) slowly creeping across our world and into our land and into our living rooms, board rooms, and sanctuaries, is a complete and stunningly swift acquiescence and submission to a way of doing things that is entirely focused on efficiency, speed, and instant gratification. Artificial intelligence, designed to remove the slow and unpredictable power of love and relationship completely from the algorithms, comes at enormous cost to human creativity, deep relationship building, not to mention the incapacitating toll it is taking on the creation for which we were mandated to steward.
But I have witnessed and have been living in the midst of a different kind of power that is being made real in our congregations. This is the power of uncalculated relationship, careful and thoughtful imagination, and selfless love. I observe this 1 Corinthians 13 kind of love in how our congregations, large, medium, and small, are living in countercultural ways to what is being portrayed on social media and in the halls of power. So many of our congregations have small groups of members and friends who are caring for one another and for their neighbors without regard to doctrinal purity, racial or ethnic uniformity, efficiency or productivity, but only love.
Whether it is in the way we come together when one amongst us slips the mortal coils of earth, or bind themselves in the covenant of marital bonds, or heads off to explore new worlds, we show joy and compassion and celebrate who they are and what they have meant to us. When trauma and heartache befall those around us, we worry not the cost but gather together for support, care, and find almost magical ways to fill the void, whether it is in food or blankets or toiletries or coats or just love baked into a chocolate chip cookie. When the weather turns frightful – sometimes dangerously so – we open our buildings as cold weather shelters. When those in charge of protecting us in fact turn against us, we rally our spirits and march in the streets and lead letter-writing campaigns for reform and justice and "love made public.”
As we celebrate the holiday of Valentine's Day, yes, let us celebrate it in red hearts cut from construction paper and cute cards bought en masse at the dollar store. But at the same time let us recognize that the love which God in Christ calls us to embody is so much more than a holiday can capture, corporate executives can monopolize, or a tyrant can desperately try to crush. Let us stay true to the powerful love which is patient, kind, humble, decent, simple, and rejoices in the truth.
May it be so.
Allen