Two Competing Loves

For some years now I have felt a tension between two different definitions of love.

The first is quite popular in American culture, but especially prevalent among the liberal elites of our society. This is love as kindness. In other words, if we would all just leave one another alone, tolerate behaviors as long as they do not directly interfere with the happiness of another human being, and rid ourselves of old-fashioned religious standards (which "suppress" our humanness), then the world would be a much better place. This is indeed an attractive option to me. For example, on a certain level I would be very glad to have my closest of friends simply "accept me for who I am" and not try to change me and not feel the need to rebuke or reshape my character on some level. This form of love would see my imperfections, but instead of attempting to surgically remove them (which would undoubtedly be a painful process) it would embrace them as being part of the essence of Greg Coates -- a lovely and yet imperfect being. Under this definition of love, the phrase "Your God loves you as you are, but He is not willing that you should stay that way" is an object of mockery. In short, love of the first type is a "live and let live" love, a love that places tolerance above confrontation, and a love that looks askance at "objective standards of morality" as oppressive -- a wet rag on the goodness of life. Furthermore, this love is rooted in an anthropology that insists we are basically good.

The second definition of love goes something like this: Who you are and who you ought to be are different from one another. The intense love that I feel for you refuses to allow me to remain indifferent toward the deficiencies in your character because who you OUGHT to be would ultimately lead to a greater level of happiness for both you and those to whom you relate. C. S. Lewis describes this love well in the third chapter of his book "The Problem of Pain:"

You asked for a loving God: you have one... not a senile benevolence that drowsily wishes you to be happy in your own way, not the cold philanthropy of a conscientious magistrate, nor the care of a host who feels responsible for the comfort of his guests, but the consuming fire Himself, the Love that made the worlds, persistent as the artist's love for his work and despotic as a man's love for a dog, provident and venerable as a father's love for a child, jealous, inexorable, exacting as love between the sexes.

In other words, the second form of love believes in objective standards of behavior which are weaved into the fabric of the universe such that only those who live in consistency with them could ever experience true happiness. To tolerate and allow the "stains" on our character to fester and linger like a cancer is the opposite of love. And we can no more wish them to remain within ourselves than "a dog, once having learned to love man, could wish that man were such as to tolerate in his house the snapping, verminous, polluting creature of the wild pack." (Lewis)

The first love insists that there is not need for me to be tamed. The second insists that a loving person/God will do anything possible to tame me. The first love looks at the second and calls is judgmental, Pharisaical, smothering, and harsh. The second looks at the first and calls it wimpy, Hippy-ish, diluted, and fake.

Lewis argues for the second love and I'm inclined to agree with him. He calls the first love "mere kindness" and claims that those who want God to show them their type of love are actually asking for less love, not more. Lewis concludes: "Whether we like it or not, God intends to give us what we need, not what we now think we want... If we will not learn to eat the only food that the universe grows -- the only food that any possible universe could ever grow -- then we must starve eternally." Hence, we have an argument for what Christians down through the centuries have called "holiness." We are not what we should be and love has an obligation to bring us to the place where we are ultimately happy (i.e. holiness).