WILL LOVE CONQUER ALL?

 

 

 

What we believe can kill us, or it can nurture us. If I believe that my wife is having an affair with the neighbor, this belief will severely affect me. However, if I believe that I can completely trust her, this will have the opposite effect.

 The same principle applies to what we believe about our fellow human beings. I had been supervising a unit of probation officers who only received sex abuse cases. Therefore, I was required to attend a training session. One intervention sounded particularly promising. Abused women would address sex offenders in prison about how being raped had devastated them.

 Certainly, this would sensitize these offenders to the horrors of what they had done, right? However, it was later found that a significant number had been encouraged by their victims suffering to seek the pleasure of raping again.

 This finding highlights the need to understand those we are supervising and even the one we intend to marry. It also should cause us to question, “ Love conquers all.” This adage takes many forms—“They need therapy not punishment,” or , “Kindness has the power to change the world,” or, “All you need is love.”

 No wonder the recent movement to defund the police! If love conquers all, then we need more lovers not punishers. Instead, if some are incurably attracted to evil, perhaps police are necessary, and perhaps without them, evil becomes even more alluring.

 Perhaps also we cannot lump everyone into this narrow adage, “Love conquers all.” Clearly, some indulge their evil tendencies while others restrain them.

 While it might be hard for the idealist to acknowledge this, evil is so deeply entrenched in many to the point that they are irredeemable, apart from a miraculous Hand from above.

 My years at probation and parole taught me many illuminating lessons about humanity. Those offenders, who I had trusted, most often turned out to be the most dangerous and manipulative. Some were so cunning that they were even able to deceive the police and the judges. One, who I had arrested and visited at the police jail, was even able to take it over. One day I even found him sitting in the chief’s swivel chair. He had the office to himself, where he was pursuing his crimes non-stop from his lofty perch. The police would even grant him leave to see his girlfriend. Without her permission, he began taking photographs of her in the nude, which he planned to sell. She had heard the stories about her “beloved,” but she refused to believe them.

 We are easily deceived, especially as our feelings and faulty worldview prevent us from seeing.