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blogging, culture, faith, hormones, insanitybytes, love stinks, opinion
Violet has a post here that I wasn’t going to respond to, but in a perfect confluence of events, I find myself compelled to.
It’s somewhat amusing to me, but for recreation I often visit the churchian manosphere and try to convince them that love is a real thing in the world. I probably don’t need to explain that this often goes over like a ton of bricks. As in, hell hath no fury like a bunch of men who don’t believe in love anymore.
Honestly I am as gentle as possible, although the words “pig headed” and “theologically unsound” may have recently escaped my fingers. And the words, “banned for life” may have escaped theirs.
Are my misadventures self serving? Perhaps, as in dog gone it, I have struggled to love Christ’s people, other people, no matter what their brokenness and wounding, and so must all others who claim His name! It’s only fair! I am sorry, (no not really) but one simply cannot believe that love is nothing more than a chemical soup of hormonal activity related to vague evo/psych theories having to to do with evolution. That is simply unacceptable! It reminds of me of the Gong Show, in the back of my mind I hear that gong being struck, telling you to stop, just stop the nonsense…
Violet, you would fit in so well there, these are so called Christian men that would agree with everything in your post! Ai yi yi… And Dudes! You are agreeing with ideas first put in place by Richard Dawkins. What is wrong with that picture??
Back to Violet’s post however, I don’t disagree with everything she’s said there nor do I wish to mock her. Her perspective is cynical and somewhat nihilistic, but cynicism is a special kind of wisdom. Let me just address a couple of points,
“When I was younger, I was obsessed with love. I wanted to find ‘the one’ and spend the rest of my life in utter bliss with this perfect match.”
I found that kind of love, although the “perfect part” would never have worked on account of the fact that I am not perfect myself. Utter bliss, yes often, a kind of bliss that springs from gratitude, as in I am so blessed to have found a soul mate as imperfect as I am. Our broken bits fit together well.
“Why does no-one write a best-selling book and film about a teenager discovering that the hormones that make them crave this magical bonding are only there because we’re animals who have to breed to survive?”
You seem to have left out the part about grown ups, no longer teen agers, no longer trying “to breed to survive,” who simply enjoy each other’s company. Also, you’ve left out all the other forms of love, the non sexual, the sacrificial, the brotherly! What is it with our modern day obsession with teenagers? Why has no one written about a teenager’s hormonal wisdom? Well, perhaps because teenagers are dumber than a box of rocks…. I know I certainly was.
Let’s ask our 90 year olds to write about love. Let’s allow those who have sacrificed all, to preach to us about how love is nothing more than an oxytocin bliss hit or a breeding strategy.
I have studied that four letter word, “love” for half a century now and I still don’t understand it. I do know that, Greater love hath no man than this, that a man lay down his life for his friends. That’s the kind of love that might be called anti-breeding, anti-evolutionary, and certainly can’t be explained away by oxytocin or hormones.
This may well sound crazy, but the things that are wrong in our world today are not being caused by too much love. We are not suffering from a plague of romantic love, nor does there appear to be an excess of forgiveness, mercy, and charity in the world. What is happening is more along the lines of trying to separate and compartmentalize ourselves, to create disunity and division, and to disconnect from any spiritual aspect of our lives.
With her sagacious post on amore, Violet the Princess of Love Chem 101 warmed the cockles of my…
…of my…
…of my…
Oh well, let’s put it this way:
My cockles, all one of them, will never, EVER, be the same.
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Ha! Very true, Silence. I doubt any self respecting bivalve mollusk would try to reduce it’s own cockles to love chem 101, and yet people do this thing all the time!
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And still those of us who follow Jesus are commanded to love them… More often than not, they won’t be changed by it but every time I choose to treat the unloving and unlovable in a loving manner, I grow a human being. I believe love is found in caring, respectful actions and that’s a good thing because I can’t feel all warm and mushy about everyone.
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Loving the unloveable, yep, that is certainly how we ourselves grow. I can’t feel all mushy about everyone either 😉
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I see your point (and Violet’s, to a point). The difficulty I have is that I married twice- both times for what I thought was love. And, perhaps, it was. The problem I see is that you can love someone for any reason you wish. The difficulties are: 1) sustaining enough of those feelings to stay with that person, and 2) trying to make certain that person has enough of a reason to stay with you. The second one is the most difficult as you don’t have much control over their thoughts and/or actions.
I suggest that, instead of a tick list or paragraph or two, that you simply look. Keep looking until you find someone you care a lot about. Then stay with them for a reasonable time until you both know that this is what you really believe you want.
Then try it out. Sex is not the most important thing in the world. After you have had children, you have fulfilled that, so-called, obligation. Now, you must find someone you can live with, hopefully until “death do you part”.
I said sex is not the most important thing, however, I would put it up there in the top 3-10 things. Bad sex leads to bad relationship. Anyone who seriously argues with that logic has never been in a serious relationship – at least, for long.
No, I don’t particularly agree or disagree with Violet; I simply don’t want to agree with here.
Ah, back to the search…
Scott
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“Ah, back to the search…”
May the force be with you 😉
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I have to wonder anymore if the ideas expressed like these in our popular culture gain currency because people no longer WANT to believe in love—anymore than anybody wants to believe in ideals like freedom, justice, &c. I saw Obama last week handing out Presidential Medals of Freedom to Hollywood Idiots who’ve spent their careers undermining freedom. Then we have the new Political Correctness Mandate: Islamophobia.
Really incentivizes one to fight the Jihadists, especially since Obama is planning restrict domestic gun ownership next year at the same time he’s selling weapons to the same Islamic Radicals and Mexican Drug Gangs he’s importing into the country by the scores of thousands.
But since Love no longer matters to anybody, this should be no big deal because, under Jihad, the Elites can still be Homos; the Churchian Gamers can have disposable harems, and the Femihags can wear burkhas and be objectified sexually by anyone.
Expatting is looking better and better all the time…
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You make a good point about some of those other virtues we seem to be not wanting to believe in either, like freedom and justice. Those are ideals, somewhat romantic ones, but they serve a vital purpose in the world, as in we do our best to try to bring them into being. Freedom and justice, not unlike love, all require a leap of faith and for us to place our eyes on an ideal we can’t really see evidence of as of yet.
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True love comes from knowing God and His Son Jesus Christ. We love Him because He first loved us. Then because we love Him we love our neighbors as ourselves, which includes our family members. Loving ones spouse as a believer is demonstration of God’s love to us through Jesus Christ. Think about how much mercy, grace and forgiveness He has had to pour out upon us, how can we not do the same with the one we are married to and they do the same with us? Physical relations foster intimacy and bonding, but they are not what keep a marriage and love together. Kindness, tenderheartedness, forgiveness, thoughtfulness, courtesy, caring, and accepting one another as Jesus Christ has accepted us keeps the flame of love burning. Dying to self for the glory of the Lord Jesus Christ and the good of those we love is instrumental. What kills love? Sinful rationalizations and selfish preoccupations. May Christ bless us to love one another, Amen!
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Oh amen to this! Indeed, “True love comes from knowing God and His Son Jesus Christ.” The same love, mercy, and forgiveness we ourselves have received, spills over onto others. Scripture says of the woman with the perfume, “Her sins, which are many, are forgiven; for she loved much: but to whom little is forgiven, the same loveth little.”
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Amen!
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That post does have a very manospherian tone to it. Sad
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It does, doesn’t it? I started noticing an over lap among churchian manospherians and non believers a couple of years ago and found it rather disturbing. Call me crazy and demanding, but I expect my Christians to reflect something different 😉
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That’s an interesting comparison, which you’ll know I’m not pleased to see. I think while both myself and this Manosphere urge people to recognise the base biological motivators in ‘love’, where we take this recognition is key to understanding what love is. Perhaps we’re both urging people not to be fooled by the intoxicating chemicals of love and the seductive notions sold to us in our cultural stories. What’s their conclusion? They’re bitter and angry about all heterosexual relationships. My conclusion is that being aware helps us make more sensible decisions about positive and long lasting relationships.
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I’m all for sensible decisions and positive, long lasting relationships, but I do wonder what “being aware” truly means? Sometimes I think of having children, if one were to weigh a cost benefit analysis and really examine the decision rationally, I’m not sure many of us would be having children. Love is one of those things that often costs you everything, and if we were to truly
“be aware” at all times, I’m not sure there’s a rational argument in favor of it.
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Yes, I agree. There’s too much risk involved in having children – mainly for the new created life itself. I certainly don’t think it’s a logical decision until you properly weigh what is natural for us as animals into the equation. Like everything else, we will never have all the variables to make a truly informed decision, but we do know that much of the balance of our lives is derived from reproduction – it’s what we’re geared to do. It doesn’t mean we have to but it means our lives are likely to most feel at balance if we do.
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“What’s their conclusion? They’re bitter and angry about all heterosexual relationships. My conclusion is that being aware helps us make more sensible decisions about positive and long lasting relationships.”
Some folks in the sphere are “bitter and angry”. Others do use the information to “make more sensible decisions about” relationships in general. Quite often, folks might go through the first phase to get to the next.
You and I have kind of the opposite pattern, Violet. In my youth, far from being “obsessed with love”, I didn’t believe in it at all. But life experience taught me otherwise.
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I still ‘believe’ in love – most of my life decisions have been based on this strong human attachment, and I don’t regret anything. I just think it’s important to keep what drives these feeling in your vision. For example, the “I’m the only person ever to have felt this way” teenage delusion could be helped by properly raising awareness of the biological reasons so many humans experience it. Love doesn’t need to be irrational, it can be enjoyed to the full in a context of logical decisions and awareness of the process.
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