There is yet another way to think about love: Love is a choice.
Most of the literature about love portrays it as an irresistible act of fate: Cupid's arrow, star-crossed, soulmates, "the heart wants what the heart wants": these terms all imply that it is something beyond us which is out of our control. The original Greek god Eros was a primal force of nature, before the gods, before the titans; one of the first beings to come into existence, along with Chaos and Fate. The feelings, when you are really in love, certainly do seem that powerful and mysterious, and can easily get out of control and even come to control you. But feelings are not all there is to love. And I submit that even our feelings are, to some degree, under our control, or at least subject to our influence. Feelings follow thoughts. If, as you are getting to know someone, you choose to see them as wonderful, lovely, good, and desirable, your emotions will eventually catch up with your ideas, once they've seeped down into your subconscious and become a part of you. I am not embracing a pragmatic, rationalist, materialistic behaviorist view here. I do absolutely believe that there is an element of "fate" in our lives (also known as 'God's will'); love included: God loves us and knows us better than we know ourselves, and brings people and situations into our lives to give us opportunities to be and to receive blessings. But we must still choose, and we are very capable of choosing wrongly, missing His guidance, refusing His will for our own, and generally screwing up our lives.
What I am saying is that no matter how hard the feelings hit you, you've still got to choose whether to actually love the person, because there is no true love without choice. This is why we were placed in the Garden with a tree from which we should not eat: so that we could have the capacity to love our Creator, and not merely to serve Him. Or to put it another way, loving feelings don't become real love until there is a choice. Human "love" without choice is not love at all: it's emotion, need, desire, and sometimes something darker. If someone claims that they "can't help loving" someone else, then they either don't understand love or do not understand their own heart. You may not be able to help having feelings for someone, but whether you actually love them or not is your decision. This may seem confusing, if you are only thinking of love as a feeling. But to be true love, love must be expressed in action. Jesus says, "If you love me you will obey my commands." St. James says, "Faith without works is dead." The theme runs throughout the Bible: if you say you love Jesus, but live as if you don't, then you are not a Christian, but a Pharisee: you are not a sheep, but a goat, and He will tell you at the last judgment "Depart from me, I never knew you." And the same principle applies to human relations. If you say you love your wife, but cheat on her, then you really don't, do you? Not that the action has always to be exterior: Jesus also taught the principle that if you are guilty of lust or hatred in your heart, you are also guilty of adultery or murder. It only follows that if you are guilty of love in your heart, you are truly loving. But in both cases, it's the element of choice that makes the difference; having feelings of anger ("be angry and sin not') doesn't make you guilty of murder in your heart: willfully entertaining and harboring them does. Remember that in both cases, Jesus associated an action with the sin: in the case of anger, cursing your brother, and in the case of lust "looking on a woman to lust after her". So with loving. I know it's a very complicated thing, and not always clear and apparent to one's own observation, and I don't wish to oversimplify.
And it's not just an isolated, one-time choice, either. It's a choice that has to be made continually, throughout the life of your love. That's what marriage is, and that's the sense in which the pragmatists are right about marriage being hard work and commitment (they're not wrong about it being that: they're just wrong about it being only that). We have to choose, day to day, moment to moment, to continue loving the people we love. And God too, for that matter: there's another parallel there between romantic love and our relationship to Him. You can't just "get saved" one time in your life and then set Him aside and go about your life. You've got to live every day, every moment, making that choice to love and serve Him rather than yourself. That is what it means to die to yourself; to take up your cross and follow Him daily.
Here is the crux of the matter: Love is not truly love unless it's given away. So how does one give one's love away without external action? How does one truly love another who refuses that love? Through prayer and willful well-wishing, and through self-sacrifice, kind thoughts, and consideration. Does the person you love not only not want any expression of love from you, but not even want you around? Then honor that wish. Don't be around. Give up the things in your life which are connected to her, so that she can enjoy them. Make her happy by your absence. Give her the gift of freedom from yourself. But don't let yourself grow bitter and resentful for it, and don't let yourself become a martyr. In other words, "Love your enemies, bless them that curse you, do good to them that hate you, and pray for them which despitefully use you, and persecute you." Is that easy? @*#% no. It's the hardest @*#%ing thing in the world. But that's what Jesus would do.
So this is how I love her. Appreciatively, self-sacrifingly, needfully. With friendship, affection, desire, and unconditional charity. And intentionally, as a free choice, while honoring her free choice not to love me in return, and asking nothing of her. Well, that's not entirely accurate, I guess. I do ask her to set aside her fears and anger, or whatever it is that stands between us; exchange forgiveness with me and re-enter into genuine Christian fellowship. Of course, I wish that she would love me back. I wish that she would want to be my friend again. But I demand neither, nor have I tried to force or pressure her into them. What she and her parents apparently see as obsession and fixation, is really just a conscious and continual choice to love, in my absolute best effort to obey God both in His active leading and in His written Word, and not conditional on its being returned or even accepted. In other words, I try to love her as He loves us. No matter how much or how long we refuse Him, curse Him, and shake our fists at Him, He loves us just the same, but never forces His love on us (although He does sometimes lead us rather heavy-handedly back to Himself, for our own good; but there the parallel ends--I have neither the right, the wisdom, nor the power to presume to try to act on her behalf against her wishes).
So then, what now? That's one of the chief questions I started this series to consider. And although it has been very helpful in many ways, I still don't have an answer to that one.
I go back and forth on whether to just sell my house, pack up my things, and hit the road for some other place and a new life. But I feel pretty clearly that that isn't the Lord's will. And also, I've got quite a bit invested in this version of my life, and rather like it, apart from current circumstances.
My dream is to publish some writing, make a little money on it, and then start a Christian artists' colony and retreat center, where we would be devoted to seeking, learning, enjoying, and creating genuine, deep, complex works of art in all forms, in the great classical Western tradition: Shakespeare, Bach, Michelangelo, et al., along with the great Christian classics of all ages: Tolkien, Lewis, MacDonald, Chesterton and all the other great minds of the Church throughout history. (This would definitely not be the place for the kind of trite Christian art--or entertainment, rather, that fills the shelves of the Christian fiction section, the airwaves of the Contemporary Christian music station, or the walls of most Christian bookstores.) I envision writers, poets, painters, dancers, and musicians milling around the grounds, studying, working, interacting, sharing ideas and critiques; concerts and plays in the evenings; communal dinners; a chapel with high liturgical worship and gorgeous sacred music; a library; woods to walk in; a woodlot, gardens and some livestock, where we could both raise some of our own food and people could enjoy the benefits of physical labor. This would actually be a perfect area in which to do it--I'm thinking somewhere near Staunton--another reason not to leave. I've also got the various charities and volunteer works I'm involved in, and don't really want to just up and leave them. Nor my friends. But all that seems a long way off, and even longer right now. I can't seem to get my mind settled to do any work, with all this stress, pain, and uncertainty buzzing about in it.
But it just doesn't seem to me right now that I can continue in this life with this awful weight hanging on me. I mean the hostility, ill-will, and disrupted fellowship, not my own broken heart and loneliness: those are my concern to deal with, with the help of God. And especially it seems wrong to keep going to church and receiving the sacrament alongside people who refuse to reconcile and forgive. And it disrupts our fellowship with other parishioners as well. So I'm kinda stuck, and just have to wait on God. He can do anything. And I believe, in spite of everything, that these are good people at heart, and will see more clearly and do the right thing eventually. And I still love them, dearly. I know it seems like I'm wasting my time, and I should just give up and write them off. But I love them. I consider them family, and families argue, get angry, stop talking, sometimes for years, and even betray each other. How long do I wait, and hope and pray for reconciliation? I don't know. I have to wait on God for that too.
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