“Love is patient, love is kind. It does not envy, it does not boast. It is not rude, it is not self-seeking. It is not easily angered, it keeps no record
of wrongs.” I Corinthians 13: 4-5
I
|
’m going to make a confession. Sometimes I am assaulted by a streak of
rebellion. Everybody who knows me well
knows that as a “little boy” growing up in East Texas, I was a dyed-in-the-wool
rebel, but I am here to confess to you that vestiges of that rebellious nature
still occasionally rise up in me and have their way. They often rise up,
specifically, in the area of well-established, commonly-accepted
aphorisms.
Yesterday
I heard an old song on the radio that I’ve been hearing and singing along to
for as long as I can remember, and I’ll lay you nine-to-five odds that you have
too. Here are some of its lyrics: “You
always hurt the one you love, the one you shouldn’t hurt at all. You always take the sweetest rose and crush
it till its petals fall. You always break the kindest heart with a hasty word
you can’t recall…” So far, I have no huge problem with what I assume to be the lyricist’s
logic: Vulnerability is indeed the
thoroughfare on which pain most effectively travels, and thusly, many live the
remainder of their lives after serious heartbreak stony hearted and heavily
fortified against a repeated offense. I don’t think he was saying any of this
in a bragging way but likelier as a confession of falling prey to the terrible
temptation to take advantage of those who are easiest – the ones we know we
have already “caught” and won’t likely run off too easily with our cruelty
borne of familiarity and laxity of self-control. But then comes the final,
climactic line of this would-be (but sharply failing to be) romantic ballad. Are you ready? “So if I broke your heart last night, it’s because I love you most of all.”
Wait a minute—WHAAAAT??? Even my very sketchy research reveals that at
least fourteen artists have made this
sad and sadistic melody a hit. I am
astounded that I have easily and naturally sung these words for years without
any recrimination from my conscience or even from my common sense, for Heaven’s
sake! (Yes, I do remember that the goal of my writing today is to come up with a
worthwhile devotional meditation; truly, Your Honor, I am about to get to that
very thing! Can you tell I’ve been
watching “Matlock”?)
The
lyricist here seems to be doing the devil’s work for him quite effectively,
subtly gaining the agreement of thousands, maybe tens or hundreds of thousands
that we always go around picking on
the ones we love, bruising and battering the sweetest and kindest of hearts. He
makes it sound as though this is normal— that this is just the nature of true love. It ranks right up there with the much-repeated,
grossly unbiblical, line from the 60’s movie “Love Story”: “Love means you
never have to say you’re sorry.” Both
are attempts to give us permission to ravage tenderness, to despise kind
vulnerability, to treat with scorn those whose love will surely easily turn the
other cheek. That’s way more than enough commentary of these ridiculous notions
for the likes of you, the choir. I’m
done singing to you about those first few lines. You can easily fill in the rest
of the blanks.
But about the song’s climax, I have a little more to
say. “So if I broke your heart last
night, it’s because I love you most of all.”
Really? Is the indicator of some people’s depth of love for others how
poorly they treat them? Well, it does go right along with the song’s
theme, so here, I suppose such a sad conclusion is to be expected. That’s
written as a representation of the pagans, right?
Our reflex answer is yes,
but in fact, no. I’m afraid the truth is
that even with us who love Jesus and claim to want to follow Him, the
confession of this emotionally worldly song bears out some sinister reality. Many of us give ourselves silent, subtle
license to maim those closest to us with our sharp tongues (or, just as often
or moreso, our silent tongues!) and
with our offhand treatment of them which shouts our testimony that they have
become invisible? I watch with mounting
concern so many who act this way toward their spouses. This is no better than
luring a dog into a cage with a t-bone steak and then tossing him only bare
bones for the remainder of its life.
The truth, from God’s
point of view, is that if we broke their heart last night, there might be
several reasons, many of them understandable and even forgivable, but among
them is not that we love them most of
all. It might be that they love us most of all, and that is why they
were standing close enough to get burned.
It could be that we love the fact that they keep staying and giving us
someone on whom we can explode when an explosion feels necessary for us to get
back on an even keel. It might be that
we love their loyalty and faithfulness and ability to keep turning that cheek
time and time again. But let’s not deceive ourselves into thinking that we
mistreat them because we love them.
The closest that can come to being true is that we mistreat them in spite of
the fact that we love them.
Ever since I caught
myself singing those words the other day, these thoughts have taunted me. I plan to go back and study in depth God’s
definition of love and ask Him to help me be brave enough and humble enough to
measure my treatment of my “loved” ones against His standards for us, His
children. He has given us lots of words
about how He wants it done. Will you
join me?
