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.

Genocide, Martyrdom and Forgetfulness

 

Reading can be painful, especially when it’s about the forgotten and persecuted church. Here’s something I was just reading at Worldmag.com:

• Kenya is also experiencing a dramatic rise in terrorist violence, particularly in Eastleigh, a clogged suburb east of Nairobi’s central business district also known as “Little Mogadishu.” Kenya’s Christians make up 85 percent of the country’s population, but entering Eastleigh is like arriving at an Islamic, even Arab, enclave. Women dress in full-length black head coverings, and calls to prayer blare from megaphones mounted over shopping malls.

• With the changes have come rising violence directed at Kenyans, and particularly Christians in Eastleigh. Last November a grenade attack killed seven residents, and authorities say they traced it to al Shabaab. In December militants killed 14 people in three separate attacks in Eastleigh, the worst killing at least 10 people when a bomb exploded on a minibus full of passengers. And on Dec. 16 another grenade explosion injured one resident.

• Of 200 churches in the area, all but one, called Deliverance Church, have been destroyed or forced to shut down. In a case that made headlines and eventually went to court, a group of Somali backers managed to secure the deed to property for one of the largest churches, a 13-acre site on a prominent corner where Eastleigh’s Gospel Furthering Bible Church had met since 1968. Missionaries held services on the property going back to the 1930s. The Somalis eventually forced out the congregation and bulldozed the church, leaving a mostly vacant parcel surrounded by 20-foot-high corrugated metal barriers.

It’s hard to read about this constant drone of Muslim-on-Christian violence. Christianity Today estimates that 170,000 are being exterminated yearly for no other reason than the fact that they are Christians. What makes this even harder to take is the systematic silence of the West regarding this ongoing persecution.

However, the silence of other Christians is also troubling. Why is this so in light of Jesus’ concern for His church:

• "Then he will say to those on his left, 'Depart from me, you who are cursed, into the eternal fire prepared for the devil and his angels. For I was hungry and you gave me nothing to eat, I was thirsty and you gave me nothing to drink, I was a stranger and you did not invite me in, I needed clothes and you did not clothe me, I was sick and in prison and you did not look after me.' They also will answer, 'Lord, when did we see you hungry or thirsty or a stranger or needing clothes or sick or in prison, and did not help you?' He will reply, 'I tell you the truth, whatever you did not do for one of the least of these, you did not do for me.'” (Matthew 25:42-45)

Despite Jesus’ clear mandate to look after the needs of our persecuted and neglected brethren, we tend to justify our indifference: “Well, trials are necessary for the Christian life.” However, so is mercy and compassion:

• Speak up for those who cannot speak for themselves, for the rights of all who are destitute. Speak up and judge fairly; defend the rights of the poor and needy. (Proverbs 31:8-9)

Clearly, too many can’t speak for themselves. Many are driven to martyrdom, leaving their families bereft, and hardly anyone – especially the world powers and the media – are speaking up for them.

I met a gentle and sensitive Christian man who has committed himself to traveling internationally as an “ambassador” of friendship and kindness. I asked him about the form that his acts of kindness take. He explained that he backs away from any conversations that might lead to disagreement and discomfort.

Since he has many friends in the Islamic world, I asked him about the murder of Christians so prevalent in these Islamic countries, and whether he felt that “kindness” should lead him to speak up on their behalf. I was shocked by his glib answer:

• Well, if they are martyred, they will be in a better place.

Although this is true, his answer ignores too much:

1. The intense suffering that precedes martyrdom
2. The bereavement
3. The fear and intimidation under which Christians must live
4. The loss and subjugation they must endure
5. The impediments for living out the Gospel
6. And, most importantly, we are commanded to speak out for the oppressed!

It is hard to not think about Jesus’ parable about the Good Samaritan. A priest and a Levite avoided a naked man dying on the side of the road (Luke 10:31-32). He had obviously been mugged. How did they justify their avoidance? Jesus doesn’t tell us, but the possible justifications are almost limitless:

1. Blame the Victim: “He had no business being out on this road by himself.”

2. Karma: “He probably brought this fate upon himself. He was just getting what he deserved.”

3. I’m a Busy Man…

Perhaps Jesus doesn’t tell us their rationale because any rationale fails to justify why the priest and Levite didn’t offer aid.

We are confronted with a genocide of global proportions. How can we remain silent as God’s children are being slaughtered! John warns us that we must have pity on our brethren:

• If anyone has material possessions and sees his brother in need but has no pity on him, how can the love of God be in him? (1 John 3:17)

Lord, help us to be faithful to You! Grant us a heart of compassion for our needy brethren and direct us in wisdom. Forgive us our many sins – our complacency and unfaithfulness.

Happiness: Do-Good-Feel-Good

While most agree that a greater level of happiness can be obtained by changing the way we live, I think that it requires far more than a change of actions. For instance, psychologist Sonja Lyubomirsky sets forth eight suggestions for better mental health (happiness).  Perhaps the most popular one is to “Practice acts of kindness.” She writes:

• These should be both random (let that harried mom go ahead of you in the checkout line) and systematic (bring Sunday supper to an elderly neighbor). Being kind to others, whether friends or strangers, triggers a cascade of positive effects – it makes you feel generous and capable, gives you a greater sense of connection with others and wins you smiles, approval and reciprocated kindness – all happiness boosters. (Time, January 17, 2005)

She is correct about the payoff. We even derive satisfaction when we give a stranger directions. We can even get the payoff when the stranger doesn’t even have a chance to acknowledge our good deed.

Walking down the street, I saw a driver pulled from his car, about 30 yards in front of me, and repeatedly punched. A crowd was watching the “entertainment.” I screamed repeatedly, “Police – Get down of the ground,” at the top of my feeble voice. The assailant immediately fled, and I resumed walking. No one congratulated me, but I felt good about what I had done.

However, this strategy – do-good-feel-good – has its limitations. For one thing, there is the law of diminishing returns. The pay-off decreases. The “cascade of positive effects” no longer seems to flow as it once had. This strategy might work admirably in the short-run, but eventually, we become weary of well-doing.

I worked for the New York City Department of Probation for 15 years. I signed on for the same reason that many others had. We wanted to help others get back on their feet. But we also wanted to feel good about what we were doing.

However, there are few people who become as jaded as social workers. Why is this so, if we are helping others? Perhaps we are helping them for the wrong reasons. While there is nothing the matter with doing-good-feeling-good, this strategy will produce disappointment if it’s our main motivator.

For one thing, it’s not that easy to help others. If we become a social worker to do-good-fell-good, we are therefore going to be disappointed. For one reason or another, our clients fail to comply with our expectations. They do not noticeably change. In fact, even when we think that we are making progress, they will eventually thoroughly disappoint us, depriving us of our payoff.

Many social workers therefore get burn-out, hate their clients, and perform their jobs with noticeable disgust.

Similarly, atheists often adopt the do-good-feel-good moral code. They don’t believe in an ontological good or bad – moral absolutes that exist independently of human thinking – but they try to act in a “good” manner for the payoff. They might call it “enlightened selfishness” or “pragmatism,” But it comes down to the same thing – do-good-feel-good. However, the diminishing payoff is not substantial enough to support this lifestyle, and it is gradually abandoned.

Besides, if we are only doing good for the payoff, it is not really good. Instead, it’s self-centered. Relationships cannot survive on such flimsy stuff. Commitment to higher principles must provide the necessary glue. We cannot bail out of our commitments when we are not getting the expected payoff, when the “cascade of positive effects” becomes a trickle.

Love says, “I’ll stay beside you even if you break down, even when you are terminally ill.” Biblical love doesn’t depend upon the payoff. It knows that pleasing God is enough of a payoff, even when we hurt. The conviction that I was doing the right thing with my probationers had to be my primary payoff.

I even suspect that our high divorce rate of 50% is largely due to this pay-off philosophy. Consistent with the understanding of do-good-feel-good, many marriage counselors give their couples exercises – performing acts of kindness - to jump start their relationships.

I am not saying that these exercises can’t be used profitably. They can. But if they are used with the expectation that it will always “win you smiles,” you will be greatly disappointed. Your partner will eventually catch-on and realize that you are using these techniques to selfishly get what you want.

If you only bring your wife flowers to obtain certain favors, she will eventually regard your flowers as manipulation and will cringe at your gift. Instead, love is a matter of giving when there is no expectation of getting your payoff.

How then can we live unselfishly? How can we transcend the shallow do-good-feel-good way of life? At this point, I must confess that – naturally speaking - I am a selfish person. Last month a stranger asked me for directions, but before I could open my mouth, another person overheard the request and jumped in, preempting me. I left in a huff. He had deprived me of my satisfaction!

We all want our payoff. How then can we defer gratification and live in an other-centered manner? For me, this only becomes possible if I am convinced that an all-benevolent Savior is looking out for me. I can only begin to forsake immediate gratification because I am convinced that He is my ultimate gratification.