Love bears all things

The growing edge of love

I’m part of a monthly discussion group that meets at church, and last Sunday we talked about love — not the sappy, romantic kind of love, the self-emptying, Mother Teresa kind of love.

The discussion was tougher than I imagined. As our conversation progressed and we explored the painful growing edges of our own compassion, I noticed that long silences of reflection seeped into our conversation.

It is hard to talk about real, compassionate love, and it is even harder to talk about where we fail to embody real, compassionate love.

One of the participants shared that he found it easy to love the suffering earth, the species threatened and dying in the face of global warming, but he found it exceedingly difficult to love his own neighbors in West Oakland.

“It’s a hard life,” he said, resigned. “How do you keep from becoming cynical?”

I shared the story of my visit to an Oakland elementary school in a rough neighborhood, where I was warned about one kid in particular.

“He may seem like the sweetest kid you ever met,” a staff member told me, “but he’s been suspended 3 times for slashing tires of substitute teachers visiting the school.” He was in fourth grade.

I heard stories of gang violence in the streets outside the school, of kids stealing and fighting, of property being destroyed. The day was filled with fist-fights and cussing and teachers yelling at kids. It was a challenging environment.

My tires survived the day, but my heart had a tougher time. I wondered how to balance the need for discipline and consequence with the need for love and forgiveness?

I could relate to my friend who shared his difficulty in loving his West Oakland neighbors. How do you keep your heart open in places like this, where the response to offered love may be violence or hatred or indifference?

Bearing all things

At the close of our Sunday discussion, someone read from 1 Corinthians 13:

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 or resentful; it does not rejoice in wrongdoing, but rejoices in the truth. It bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things. (vv 4-7)

And that last part struck me deeply: love bears all things.

Love bears slashed tires and thrown fists, angry language and cold disinterest, petty crime and dirty neighborhoods. Love bears these things without resent — without allowing itself to be drained or wounded — just faithfully, with belief and hope. Love does not allow abuse, but it does allow mistakes and suffering.

It is easy to say that love will not work in Oakland’s schools and streets, that they are too hardened already for love to be useful. But I think the love that is needed in these bleak places is a stronger, more profound kind of love.

The kind of love that waits, and continues to offer patient hope. The kind of love that can bear these things and endure.

I am a Childish Adult

Learning to Love

At our after-school gift exchange, the kids stood in a circle, eyes wide and eager as they held shiny presents in their tiny hands. I read a story, and each time they heard the words “left” or “right,” they passed those shiny presents accordingly. They giggled and sighed as they watched the presents pass around the circle.

And then, at the end, each held one gift.

We told them they could exchange their gifts, but only if there was mutual agreement, and only if they did so before they unwrapped their packages.

The mystery was part of the fun.

And of course, there was a chaotic shuffling of presents back and forth, the kids all cheering and yelling as though we were at a stock exchange.

But when the dust settled, one kid was lacking a gift.

“Where is your gift?” I asked Albert.

“I ate it,” he answered. When I gave him a quizzical look, he explained. “I traded my gift to Michael for a fortune cookie, and I ate the cookie already.”

A fortune cookie??

I confronted Michael. He explained, unabashed, that since Albert had agreed to trade for just a cookie, a cookie was all he got. So Michael had ended up with two gifts; Albert with none.

“Where is Albert’s gift?!” I demanded.

He had given it away to someone else. After tricking a younger, more trusting child out of his gift, Michael had simply given it away to someone else. And Albert, gullible and clueless, had accepted the cookie as fair trade for his gift.

I thought of Esau, tricked into selling his birthright for a bowl of stew — something so precious for something so fleeting.

I was so disappointed and angry. Even worse, the other kids admired Michael for being “smart” enough to trick Albert out of his gift. But, then again, I thought to myself, they are just children. Maybe I’m expecting too much from them. They are still learning how to behave, how to be generous and kind.

An End to Childish Ways

But, as I thought about it more, I realized something else.

It’s true that children are still developing their ethics and integrity, but isn’t it true that we, as adults, are also still developing our own ethics and integrity? Does that process ever truly end?

After all, Jacob and Esau were adults.

Perhaps no one has called me out recently, but I have certainly committed crimes that are as manipulative and selfish as stealing a child’s Christmas gift.

And, like the children I work with, I still have much to learn about how to behave and how to be generous and kind.

Paul wrote to the Corinthians:

When I was a child, I spoke like a child, I thought like a child, I reasoned like a child; when I became an adult, I put an end to childish ways. For now we see in a mirror, dimly, but then we will see face to face. Now I know only in part; then I will know fully, even as I have been fully known. And now faith, hope, and love abide, these three; and the greatest of these is love. (1 Cor. 13:11-13)

I have put an end to some of my childish ways, but not all of them.

Like Jacob and Michael, I know how to be dishonest in order to get what I want from those closest to me.  And like Paul, I am still on the journey toward abiding in faith, hope, and love — doing my best to grow out of my childish ways.

Fear, Love, and Revolution

Some words I’ve been thinking on lately:

For many years I’ve been trying to figure out why revolutionary movements almost always fail to materially and permanently help the poor. …
Perhaps it has to do with the incapacity to attend to our own feelings omnipresent in a severely traumatized people. Perhaps our marvelous capacity to adapt to even the most atrocious situations is the major reason revolutions fail. We’re so good at getting along that we do so at the expense of actions that would in a meaningful sense bring change in those original circumstances that cause our suffering. …
Then I had another thought: perhaps the problem is that those of us striving for egalitarianism, or just trying to make a fine, noble, and happy life, tire of this struggle more quickly than those whose wounds for whatever reason give them a superhuman stamina in their indomitable quest to control and destroy. Perhaps revolutions fail because those in power feel more fear than we feel love. Or perhaps because we ourselves feel more fear than love. I don’t like to think this, but evidence suggests it may be at least partly true. …
If we wish to do away with bosses, we need to do away with the primacy of production. We need to learn from egalitarian religious and especially extant indigenous groups that the emphasis of our society must be on process: not on the creation of things and the accumulation of monetary or political power, but on the acknowledgement and maintenance of relationships, on both personal and grand scales. (Derrick Jensen, A Language Older Than Words, pp. 257-262)

Beloved, let us love one another, because love is from God; everyone who loves is born of God and knows God. Whoever does not love does not know God, for God is love. God’s love was revealed among us in this way: God sent his only Son into the world so that we might live through him. In this is love, not that we loved God but that he loved us and sent his Son to be an atoning sacrifice for out sins. Beloved, since God loved us so much, we also ought to love one another. No one has ever seen God; if we love one another, God lives in us, and his love is perfected in us. … There is no fear in love, but perfect love casts out fear, for fear has to do with punishment, and whoever fears has not reached perfection in love. (1 John 4:7-12, 18)

Paul wrote to the Corinthians that they should wage a different kind of war, one with divine weapons against spiritual strongholds. He encouraged the Romans not to conform to the world but to be transformed and renewed mentally. The battle, according to Paul, is fought within.

And then there’s Jesus, in John 15, who offers the command to abide in love, to be willing to sacrifice for others, as one of the highest commands we can uphold. Then he promptly follows that statement with the sobering reality that this kind of behavior is bound to be met with hatred from the world.

If you do this, he warns, if you bear the fruit of God — radical life-giving love — you will be hated as I have been. You do not belong to the world. You belong to God.

I find I cannot be reminded of this enough.

What about you? How do you think followers of Jesus can bear this mark of difference today: how can we continue to bear the fruit of love in a world that fears and hates? How does the battle between fear and love play out on a more personal level, in your own life and heart? How do you think we can create meaningful change in our communities that will emphasize relationship over production?