Letters to my niece series: The Case for Love

“Love without courage and wisdom is sentimentality, as with the ordinary church member. Courage without love and wisdom is foolhardiness, as with the ordinary soldier. Wisdom without love and courage is cowardice, as with the ordinary intellectual. But the one who has love, courage, and wisdom moves the world.”—Ammon Hennacy (1893-1970)

Dear Sarah,

As you know I’ve been thinking a lot about love and reading the sermons and writings of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. Sometimes it helps to know what something is not, in order to be able to understand it better. Love is not separateness, fear, passive, or destructive/violent.

To say that love is not separateness is to say that love is kinship. Fromm (2006) says it another way; love is oneness. Love sees others as related to self without being selfish. Much of the great work of psychology and sociology came from Germany in the first part of the 1900s. Arendt, Fromm, Frankl, and Bonhoeffer were just a few of the great minds who sought to understand what drives us. In their own ways, each one came to the conclusion that we all have a deep need to belong, to feel that we are not alone. But receiving love is not enough, we must love. Love is an action.

I know I am speaking of it as an object, but love cannot be love unless it is in action (Fromm, 2006). That is why I say that love is not passive. Some people think of love as weakness, that somehow it is a passive, apathetic response to aggression. On the contrary, love is courageous. The kind of love I speak of is the kind of love that forgives. This is radical love. This is the kind of love which few people who are only concerned about rights and justice ever understand. This is the kind of love that prays for the abuser, the killer, the enemy.

Fear of others is not love. The Bible says that where there is perfect love fear cannot remain. Fear leads to violence. Love chooses to turn the other cheek, rather than repay evil for evil. Love is not destructive. It doesn’t rejoice when bad things happen to other people. It doesn’t keep a record of grudges. It is not bitter. Martin Luther King (1986) wrote that “Hatred and bitterness can never cure the disease of fear; only love can do that. Hatred paralyzes life; love releases it. Hatred confuses life; love harmonizes it. Hatred darkens life; love illuminates it”(p. 514).

Love is connectedness, confidence, active, peace and life. It always hopes, always trusts, always perseveres (I Corinthians 13). Love recognizes itself in all of creation. Love understands that we are all related. When we hurt our sister, we hurt ourselves. When we love our neighbor or enemy, we love ourselves.

It takes great courage to love the way Jesus, Gandhi, and King spoke of. They suffered greatly, but they chose to love their persecutors. This is transformational, relational, redemptive love; the kind of love that moves mountains.

I hope that you will read some of Dr. King’s letters, books, and speeches and that you will live and experience this transformational love for yourself, for your generation, for your world.

Love,

Your Aunt Gigi