Herein is Love

R >> Reuel L. Howe >> Herein is Love

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Our own generation has a special need for a reaffirmation of the
personal because of our preoccupation with science and technology, and
with vast space and enormous power. One wonders, and hears others
wondering, what good is a person in the face of all these masses,
spaces, and complexities. But it was revealed in Christ, and every now
and then it is revealed to us afresh, that the whole vast structure of
life is dependent upon the power of persons and upon our exercise of the
power of the personal. The character of man, expressed in his relations
with his fellow man, will finally determine whether we will use our vast
powers creatively or for our destruction.

The primary vocation of the Christian in this time is to respond to the
call of the person to be personal. The church members with whose
conversation we began this book, seemed oblivious to the personal nature
of the church's purpose. They were concerned about substitutes for the
personal, about institutions and professional groups, about a legalistic
morality, and about knowledge for its own sake. Any one of their
concerns, if caught up in the vitality of the personal, could have
valuable meaning. Law, as we have seen, has its role, if it is a part of
love. Human effort is important as personal response to what God has
done for us. Dependence upon the clergy is a part of the life of the
church, but the work of the clergy, as we have seen, cannot be a
substitute for the ministry of the whole church. The church is
important, but it does not find its meaning in its isolation from the
world. And knowledge about God, His creation, and redemption is
necessary to the Christian life, but such knowledge must find its
meaning in our living relation with God.

The recent emphasis on the interpersonal and group process has
contributed much to our understandings of the human relationships of
Christian fellowship. As a result of the emphasis, a new polarity
operates in the life and teaching of the church: one pole is the content
of the Good News; the other pole is the encounter between men in which
the Good News is realized. Unfortunately, the image of the relationship
between the encounter and the content of the Christian faith has been
and still is that of opponents in a battle. This concept is erroneous,
for any dialogue must have content. The conversation between two people
that is not informed by learning produces nonsense. Discussion groups
have revealed their poverty when they have not been informed by
responsible knowledge; fellowship for the sake of fellowship becomes
tiresome; and relationship without good discipline, whether in the home
or elsewhere, becomes chaos and anarchy. So, there are some disciplines
that we need to observe as persons in whom the Spirit of God seeks to
incarnate His love.

_We Need Informed Christians_

First, if we are to embody and express the love of Christ in our
generation, we must keep our minds alert and our interests alive. At
this point, church people fail in several ways. Instead of having minds
that search for the meaning of life in Christian terms, they sometimes
have minds filled with musty opinions and prejudices. An otherwise alert
lawyer, for example, said that he did not want his church to take a
stand on any of the great social issues, but stick to its subject,
namely, religion. This preoccupation with the subject matter of religion
apart from its relevance to life is a characteristic failure of many
church people.

As Christian churchmen, we do not need to be scholars in religion, but
we should be interested in the issues of life, open to new
understandings, and engaged in some kind of reading or study that will
keep us informed and intellectually awake. Only in this way can we keep
ourselves from falling into narrow little ruts and pulling the world in
after us. A part of our ministry is to participate in and help to keep
alive the dialogue between man and man, between the church and the
world, between Christian thought and the problems of existence.
Emotional and opinionated thinking about religion, values, and social
issues is appallingly prevalent among "religious" people. The
conversations of church members often are pitiful in their concern for
the trivial affairs of the local church and institution, about its
building and organizations, its suppers and bazaars. What a pathetic and
inconsequential way of serving Christ! He needs, instead, men and women
who are out on the frontiers of modern life, representing His message to
the world.

The accomplishment of an intellectually and socially responsible
ministry calls for some effort on the part of the local church. In the
first place, the minister will have to preach, and teach out of, the
gospel in its relation to life. Instead of talking so much about
religion as an end in itself, he ought to talk about life in the context
of the teaching of religion. The content of his sermons and instructions
should be the affairs of men, for these raise the questions for which
the gospel was given. The discussion of religion apart from life
produces a laity who, in their life in the world, are unable to
represent the message of the gospel, because they do not know that the
message of the gospel has any relation to the affairs of life. Then we
hear such laymen say to any minister who might try to speak relevantly
to human questions: "Stick to your subject; I don't think these things
are the business of the church."

Church members, as a part of their devotion to Christ who had love for
the world, should try to understand the life of the world in terms of
its deepest meanings, and not be content with merely its superficial
values. They will read articles and books and editorials, and listen to
speeches and forums on television and radio, not only that they may be
informed, but also that they may be informed for God and may serve Him
better in the world. Religion that seeks escape from the world, and
similarly the person who will not assume responsibility for God in the
world, is sinful and idolatrous. Protection against this sin and
idolatry is partly secured by serving God with our minds and our
interests.

_Prayer and the Life of Devotion_

A second discipline of the responsible Christian is the discipline of
prayer and devotion. We cannot live in relation to God and serve Him if
we do not communicate with Him. Prayer is one of the indispensable forms
of the dialogue between man and man, man and God, and God and the world.
Unfortunately, however, many people, including some clergymen, have
given up prayer, because it seems unrealistic and unfruitful in this
scientific age. A part of our trouble may be that we tend to separate
our acts of prayer from our life of devotion. Or, to use a concept we
have employed earlier, we separate the forms of prayers from the
vitality which provides the life of devotion. Both public and private
prayer lose their vitality by this separation of form from life, and by
the separation of God from the world, so that we make Him the monarch of
religion instead of the creator and redeemer of life. Because of our
belief in love as God's chosen relation to the world and in the
incarnation of love in the personal, it becomes possible for our prayers
and worship to be quickened through our devotion to the purposes of God
in the world.

An analogy may help us here. Every relationship has its devotional
rituals and observances which are important to it. Husband and wife, for
instance, because of their love and devotion to each other, develop
little rituals and ways of doing that are designed to express their
devotion to each other. They come together for this purpose. There is
the kiss, the touch of the hand, the gifts on special occasions and
those which come as surprises; their physical union is the symbol and
instrument of their spiritual union and becomes the sacrament of their
relationship as persons. But these acts of love presuppose and depend
upon their over-all and lifelong devotion to each other in everything
that they do. Their life of devotion to each other provides the content
and drive for their acts of devotion, and their acts of devotion are a
means of expressing their life of devotion. Their life of devotion needs
these acts of devotion, and without the life of devotion their acts of
devotion will dry up and become meaningless.

So it is in our relation to God. We cannot fall on our knees and cry
with any meaning: "O God, O Father, O Judge, O Savior," if our whole
lives are not lived in the context of the meaning of these exclamations.
Then our words become empty and cannot rise above our lips, and we are
overcome by the despair and futility of our prayers. Prayer may not be
recovered by going to a school of prayer to learn various techniques and
kinds of prayer, but by rekindling our devotion to the people and the
world for whom Christ died. Then, by practicing our acts of devotion in
the context of such a life of devotion, we may rediscover the meaning of
prayer. Our acts of devotion cannot be quickened by the intensification
of our prayer activity alone. Many people who are frantically trying to
whip up their prayer life would do better to get up off their knees and
go out and do something about their loveless, purposeless, and undevoted
lives. The devotion of the so-called "children of darkness" to the
pursuit of their scientific or industrial purposes may be more
impressive than the vain babblings of the so-called "children of God"
about their souls. The trivial concerns of some religious people stand
in uncomplimentary contrast to the heroism of the researcher's devotion
to his project and to the scientist's devotion to his experiment.
Perhaps the purposes of God are more served by them than by us, although
by them His purposes may not be served consciously.

How can the life of devotion and the acts of devotion be brought
together? When employer and labor leader meet to work out the problems
of fair employment, they may do so either as a necessary part of their
business, which of course it is, or as a way of expressing their
devotion to God. God's love is concerned with justice between employer
and employee, and the employer and the labor leader participate in the
work of God in the world by their devotion to these problems. This is
both their way of being responsible businessmen and citizens, and their
way of loving God and assuming responsibility for Him. To whatever
degree they recognize this as being true, they will find satisfaction
and meaning in the offering of their effort as an act of reverence to
God, together with a private prayer for His guidance that each may be
open not only to what God is trying to do through him, but open also to
what He is trying to do through the other.

In our acts of devotion, therefore, we pray for a life of devotion in
which we may be the instruments of God's purposes in the incarnations of
His Spirit. We pray also for others, for our children, for our pupils,
for our associates, whether they be employees, peers or superiors, that
they too may be incarnations of God's Spirit and instruments for the
accomplishment of His purpose.

Acts of devotion, in the context of this kind of life of devotion,
change the whole focus of human relations and get them off their
self-centered, competitive, and alienating basis. Acts of devotion are
revitalized by being restored to a relation to the life of devotion, and
the life of devotion is given an opportunity in acts of devotion to
articulate its meaning, and to be guided and renewed in the dialogue
between God and man as expressed in worship. And the union of the acts
of devotion with the life of devotion will illumine anew for us the
meaning of daily life, and our relationship with one another. It will
improve our dialogue with one another and with God.

_The Practice of Creativity_

A third discipline to be practiced by the person through whom the
Spirit would work is the cultivation of creative activity. By the
discipline of creativity, I mean the discipline of learning and
perfecting some skill in art or music or handicraft or sport in which
there is opportunity to co-ordinate motor and mental powers and to gain
therefrom some sense of achievement. A creative approach to life, of
course, is a part of a life of devotion. Creative activity is
indispensable to the health of the human soul, especially in this day
when there is an increasing gap between our efforts and their result.

Mothers are often frustrated and unhappy because they do not see
immediately in their children the good results of their long and painful
efforts in their behalf. Teachers can work with a pupil for months and
years and still not have a clear-cut sense of achievement. The man in
his office may be but a part of a huge organization, and the results of
his labors are neither conclusive nor a source of immediate satisfaction
to him. The researcher may have to work for years before he achieves the
results for which he is looking. Indeed, he may never gain them for
himself, because the work that he does may only lead to the work of
others, and still others will reap the harvest. Then there are many
engaged in work from which little sense of achievement can be gained,
and yet it is necessary work and provides them with a living. Lack of
response or delayed response to human effort can be profoundly
frustrating to the human spirit, and frustrated people do not make good
instruments for the expression of love. It is imperative, therefore,
that those who would be lovers of man and God should find substitute
ways in which to close the gap between their effort and their
achievement.

The person who has a sense of creative outlets is one, therefore, who
has greater powers of endurance, patience, and courage with which to
face the challenges and threats of life. He is apt to be more free to
love, and he will grow old more gracefully.

The discipline of creative action needs to be planned, time needs to be
allowed for it, and those activities chosen which are feasible and
appropriate to the person and his circumstances. We can learn to plan
ahead so that from time to time we are prepared to undertake new
projects. An elderly person of the writer's acquaintance began, during
his sixties, to learn something new each year. The result was that his
spirit remained youthful and his interest in life was kept alive. Not
only is this kind of activity fun, but also it is a way by which to keep
oneself open to the possibilities of life. It becomes a way in which one
can live devotionally and realize within himself and in his relations
with others the image of the creative God by Whom he was created.

_Relationship as Resource_

We come now to a consideration of the quality of relationship that
nurtures persons. We discussed this earlier from the point of view of
the child's need to be loved, his need to love, and his need to have his
efforts to love welcomed. But now we turn to a discussion of
relationship as a resource from the point of view of the one who is
giving the love. We are thinking of the parent, the teacher, the pastor,
or any other person who makes himself responsible for others.

It is curious how little we think of our relationship with one another
as a resource. When someone comes to us who is in trouble, we often say,
"I wish I could think of something to do or say that would help him,"
not realizing that the greatest thing we can do is to be a person in
relation to him. Here again we realize the meaning of the incarnation.
Everyone who hopes to participate in the life of Christ in the world
today is called to be a person in relation to others, and whatever he
thinks to do or say should be an expression of what he is.

If we say or do something that is helpful to others, it is because we
are really present to them, really hear what they are trying to say, and
they know that we are with them. On the other hand, we all have had the
experience, when we were in trouble and needed help, of having would-be
advisers and comforters make all kinds of suggestions and verbalize all
kinds of would-be comforting thoughts, but have lacked the feeling that
they were really with us. I sometimes have the impression that we like
the idea of being helpful persons, but dislike the demand and
disturbance that goes with it. It is easier to be depersonalized and
professional, but professionalism is the enemy of relationship.

Professionalism is the conduct of a relationship for its own sake or for
the sake of the "helping" person who is conducting it, rather than for
the one for whom it was intended. Physicians, for instance, exhibit
professionalism when they practice medicine without concern for the
patient. Teachers exhibit professionalism when they teach their subject
as an end in itself or for their own satisfaction. Ministers can be
professional in relation to their parishioners. Parents can be
professional in relation to their children. Any relationship can
deteriorate into mere professionalism.

What are some of the marks of professionalism? In the first place,
professionalism is marked by condescension in which an attitude of
superiority is evident. Parents are heard to say: "Children are just
children, you know. They don't know what they want; they don't know what
they're talking about." Attitudes of condescension are contradictory to
the concept of incarnation, which means to be a part of and identified
with another. Condescension, therefore, closes us to the possibility of
being indwelt by the Spirit and from being the instruments of love.

Another mark of professionalism is its manipulative tendency. We push
people around and get them to do what we want them to do, because it is
easier that way. "Mother knows best," "You do it because I tell you."
Obviously, the professional attitude is alienating, because people do
not like to be pushed around, and they will not be, if they can help it;
and if they are, they resent it. Professionalism impoverishes
relationship because, for instance, neither the parent nor the child
gives or receives. The effect of professionalism does not need to be
spelled out in any greater detail, because we all have experienced and
participated in it. We may more usefully turn our attention to a study
of the character of relationship that is the source of life.

_The Values of Mutuality_

Personal growth is nurtured best in relationships in which the quality
of mutuality makes growth a possibility for both the child and the
parent, the pupil and the teacher. If growth occurs on one side, it must
take place also on the other. If parent or teacher does not grow, then
we must conclude that the relationship is not mutual and that the child
will not prosper either. Mutuality means that the teacher and pupil, or
parent and child, are open to each other. When one speaks, he expects to
be heard by the other.

Communication inevitably takes place in a relationship of mutual
expectancy. Communication produces a personal encounter in which one
addresses and the other responds, and a real meeting occurs. We cannot
make this kind of personal meeting take place. We can only prepare
ourselves for it, which is one way of thinking of prayer. When we
practice expectancy in our relationships, we are preparing ourselves for
possible depth meetings that may take place between others and
ourselves. Preparation means ridding ourselves of prejudices and
preconceptions, fears and anxieties, ulterior motives and purposes, in
order that we may speak the word of love and truth to others, and really
hear the word of love and truth that they speak to us. In similar
fashion, we may prepare ourselves to be open to whatever God may speak
to us through persons or situations during that day. Finally, because we
have thus prepared ourselves for a real meeting between people, we will
not so easily seek to manipulate and exploit them.

_Mutual Attention_

The quality of mutuality calls for mutual attention. Those who would
call each other into being and be the instrument of God's love in human
relations must pay attention to each other. It is difficult to speak if
we do not have the listener's attention; it is difficult to listen if we
do not have the speaker's attention. Absence of mutual attention breaks
down communication. Sermons may not have the attention of the
congregation because the preacher's attention is fixed only on the
sermon as a production, or on himself as a performer, and not on the
congregation that he is now addressing, and whose response is necessary
if his sermon, as communication, is to be completed. Likewise, a child
may not hear the parent because the parent is not really paying
attention to the child. We hear ourselves saying, "Look here, you pay
attention to me." We say it in desperation because we know that our
angry command will not accomplish the desired result. The inattention
that we receive from one another discourages us personally and blocks
the possibility of the dialogue that might reunite us.

How can we secure the attention of others? The answer is simple: by
being attentive. As a teacher I have found that if I am really attentive
to my pupils, they pay attention to me. But if I am just doing a job and
not really concerned about them, they do not hear me because I am not
hearing them. If we want attention we must be attentive. If we want love
we must love. If we want anything we must give it. This is a Christian
principle. We cannot demand something and get it. Attention, then, is a
gift that we give one another. We give the gift of attention and receive
it in return. We have no automatic right to it, nor does anyone.

Attentiveness is something that can be learned. We learn by having eyes
that see and ears that hear. Eyes, of course, are made for seeing and
ears for hearing, but we can learn also to hear with our eyes and see
with our ears. When I am seeking to understand another, for example, I
find that what I see in his face and manner helps me to understand what
he is saying; and, likewise, attentive hearing helps me to understand
what he is also revealing in his face and manner. We pay attention by
watching the eyes, facial expressions, and behavior of people, by
listening for the question behind the question and for the meaning
behind the meaning, remembering that there is tremendous content behind
what is said and shown. If we would be servants of love, we must have
ears that really hear and eyes that really see; and, like our Lord, hear
and see deeply in order that the truth which men are really seeking may
be found. Such hearing and seeing was the gift of Christ to men, and
should therefore be the gift of Christians to men.

It follows, then, that the good teacher is one who, participating in a
relationship with our Master Teacher, can accept any question that a
person may bring, knowing that if he stays with it, he will be led, step
by step, to that person's real concern. When the teacher gives that kind
of attention, the students are more apt to respond relevantly, which is
their attention to the teacher. Then the teacher has the wonderful
experience of mutual attention in which meaningful communication has
taken place. What I have said about teaching and the relationship
between teacher and pupil is true of all relationships. The reward for
the gift of attention is that others will respond with clues in the form
of questions or comments that will enable us to meet them at the point
of the meaning of their life. Not only does this kind of listening
provide a basis for a highly significant curriculum for teaching, as we
saw earlier, but also a basis for true human community and
communication. Our self-centeredness, however, gives us a natural pull
away from attentiveness. But the Spirit of Christ Who, in drawing us to
Him, draws us to one another, will make mutual attentiveness possible so
that two-way communication will become a reality for us.

One current objection to this kind of mutual attentiveness travels under
two guises: one is the possibility of being offensively nosy and
intrusive; the other is the fear of really violating the privacy of
other people. Certainly, privacy should be respected, and we should not
force ourselves upon others, but attentiveness is not intrusiveness.
Every human being wants to be known and to know as a person, and in ways
that are both conscious and unconscious. We seek others that we may be
known and may know. Attentiveness is really alertness to the lonely cry
of man, and respects rather than violates the individual's separateness
and sanctity.

_Mutual Respect_

Mutual respect is also a necessary quality in human relations. Respect
for oneself and for others is not as common as one might expect. We find
self-concern and some concern for others, but not respect. Respect for
others is hard to maintain if one does not respect oneself, and it is
appalling to realize what low estimates many people have of themselves.
Although they may disguise from themselves and others their despair
about themselves in many ingenious ways, lack of self-respect
nevertheless is characteristic of many people's self-image. Their view
of themselves results largely from their experiences in relationship,
many of which we have already discussed. We may try to prevent the
development of negative attitudes and feelings toward ourselves and our
children, but no matter how loving we try to be, we shall inevitably
cause some injury, distortion, and deprivation to the maturing person.

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