By the Way: Be open to loving and being loved
By Rev. Oz Lorentzen on March 14, 2020.
“Love means never having to say you’re sorry,” is one of those pearls of wisdom the 1970s gave us. Instead of describing love, however, this describes the opposite of love. An unwillingness or inability to acknowledge one is wrong, or that the other is upset or offended does not come from the freedom of love, or knowing one is loved, but from the anxiety and fear of not knowing one is loved. Not saying sorry is a sign of a defensive and self-defensive attitude – one that is self-regarding and self-focused, whereas love is always other-orientated. We see this contrast brought out in an event in the life of Jesus. He has just proclaimed that Love (of God and neighbour) fulfills the whole requirement of God. And his questioner, “desiring to justify himself” rejoins, “who is my neighbour?” A legitimate and understandable question, if it were not for this insight into the motivation behind it. The question is, “What is the best, highest, way a human can live his/her life?” The answer is, “Love others – your neighbour – as you love yourself!” And, instead of being grateful for such a clear, if not hard, answer, the questioner says, “Ah, but who is my neighbour?” He creates a loophole whereby he can continue to live as he does. Instead of saying “sorry” for failing to love, one justifies their lack of love by re-framing the requirement of love inside their existing pattern of life – loving those it is easy to love. Of course, we will automatically seek to defend ourselves, to justify ourselves, until we are made secure (unless we are already secure). I believe it is a generally reliable psychological fact that no one is loving unless they have been loved. Love does not begin with us – we can love because we have the security of being loved. What is true on a psychological plane is also true in the spiritual – “This is love, not that we loved God, but that He first loved us,” says the ancient text. Not saying “sorry” indicates that we are locked into a logic that exists apart from love, one dominated by the need and desire to justify ourselves. Saying “sorry,” however, has the potential to open us up to love, as it confesses that one does not love, that one desires to be loved and that love is trustworthy. That is, saying “sorry” makes a break from the logic of lovelessness (the logic of self-justification) and opens us up to the logic of love. As the ancient wisdom goes: “The one who fears is not made perfect in love, because perfect Love casts out fear.” To walk By The Way of Love is to say “sorry” easily and thereby be open to loving and being loved. Rev. Oz Lorentzen is from St. Barnabas Anglican Church. 7-6
