Love and Dependence

Not long ago I wrote a piece titled, “Loving Biblically.” After giving it some thought, I realize that my approach was more in the line of a defense of my recent actions and less than a complete definition. I am not going to retract anything I wrote in the former piece, but I am going to define love in a different way. The muse for this piece is, believe it or not, a cat – my wife’s cat to be precise. You may have read the article I wrote some time ago titled, “For the Love of Cats.” In it I confessed to NOT loving cats, and I felt guilty about it since the Psalm I was reading that day informed me that God loves cats as He does all His creatures. If I am to be more like God, I must love cats.

I was thinking about my failure to love rightly because the aforementioned cat was wandering unleashed around the camper as she often is allowed to do when we are dry camping. Occasionally she will stray a considerable distance from the RV, and we have to go looking for her. Being primarily an indoor cat, I fear she may not have the necessary equipment to find her way home. She once jumped off our sailboat while we were living in a marina and didn’t return for hours. She does have a collar with a phone number on a tag, but that presumes a level of human decency that may or may not exist in a stranger who finds a pretty kitty wandering around. Then too, a fast-moving Chevy would make the collar tag of little import.

Today I began to replay the emotions I experienced during the marina episode. The cat had escaped while I was aboard alone, so I felt responsible. As I sat in the sun today, and the cat wandered while my wife napped, I thought again how I would feel if the animal didn’t return. I confess: I don’t think there would be sadness in my heart over the loss except for the empathy I would have for my wife’s distress. She loves her cat. I sometimes think, given the choice, she might even prefer the cat to me. She is one of those pet people who treat their animals as surrogate children. If I let her, she will refer to herself as Mommy and me as Daddy with regard to the cat. I am uncomfortable with such language.

 I relaxed when the cat strolled back into sight this afternoon, but I began to ask myself what I am missing. I don’t naturally feel love for the cat; I have to jinn up the feeling in order to fulfill my godly intention to be like Jesus. With my wife, as with millions of other pet people, the love is apparently natural. Cats, and to an even greater degree dogs behave in ways that can be interpreted as returning the love of their owners. There is a mutual relationship there that I have never felt for an animal. My wife’s cat can sense this by the way, and she shows me none of the loving behavior. I am fine with that.

As I continued to ruminate, I was somewhat dismayed to realize that I have a similar situation with my human relationships. I was raised in a dysfunctional home by two parents who were themselves raised in homes with difficult emotional environments. I don’t remember my mother or father ever saying they loved me. They probably did at some point, but the fact that I don’t remember even one occasion suggests that it must not have been said frequently. I was nearing forty when I first realized that I am seriously crippled in my ability to have a relationship. At that point I apologized to my wife (then twenty years into the marriage). I confessed to being a jerk and promised to do what I could to make amends.

Thirty years later and approaching our fiftieth wedding anniversary I am still struggling to some extent. The cat I live with knows how to make my wife feel loved. I don’t always do so well. I am wondering if it is the state of utter dependence that comes across as love in a pet. Dogs are particularly helpless, but an indoor, de-clawed cat isn’t much less so. The need for a human to provide food and water is essential; maybe the occasional scratch behind the ear; throw a ball to fetch. Then there are the other needs: I prefer the litter box of a cat to the multiple in-and-out routines with a dog. In either case, need-meeting is the main ingredient.

Is the animal simply trained in some Pavlovian way to “love” the one who cares for it? And if dependence is the essence of animal love, I don’t like the implications for human love. I have seen it. Some men would say if my wife feeds me, does my laundry, and keeps me happy in the bedroom, I love her. If she fails to do these things, I divorce her. If the wife does those things primarily to keep her husband happy, I wonder how far removed that is from simple dependence because if she fails and divorce follows, she loses something too.

This discussion has gone into a dark place, but I know people who live there. Surely, that can’t be love. If we dismiss dependence as the essence of love, we are left with two other possibilities: the hormonal, biological element – making love in modern parlance – and affection which may or may not have a tie to hormones as well. It may be love to say I enjoy being around someone as long as the feeding, laundry and etc. are not the reason for the “enjoyment.” It may be loving to say I “love” spending time with her; I “love” how she makes me laugh; I “love” that she accepts me for who I am. In the case of my wife, I love her because she has stuck with me in spite of my failure to love her properly all these years.

The Genesis account tells us it was good that the animals in the Garden of Eden needed Adam to care for them, but God saw that something was missing. Adam was not complete with just the animals; he needed something more. God met his need with a completer, a woman. God made Eve to fill a need that was lacking in Adam. Paul makes it clear that a man can serve God without marrying, but he also implies that it is critical that the need for a woman is met in a righteous way or treated as a sacrifice for the sake of the gospel.

The concept of love languages (Gary Chapman) seems to be at play here. Find out what the other person needs and fill that need. The problem is that this sounds like feeding dependence again. I do see how this fits the biblical concept of love, agape. Meeting the needs of the loved one is the essence of agape. Caring more for the other than for one’s self is the hallmark of biblical love. The Apostle John said, “This is love: not that we love God, but that He first loved us.” God met our deepest need: salvation, redemption, rescuing us by sending Jesus to live and die for our sakes. We love Jesus because of what He did: we depend on Him to meet our need. Maybe love is dependence.

In my case, my devotion to God is of a practical, intellectual nature. He made me; He owns me; therefore, He has the right to dictate the terms of our relationship. If this sounds cold and calculating, it is. I grew up in a home that lacked the warm and fuzzy side of love; it’s no surprise that my parents took me to a church that was equally lacking. I sang the song, “Jesus Loves Me” throughout my childhood, but the words of the song provide only an intellectual basis for that love: “the Bible tells me so.” Church was all about what the Bible tells me.

I didn’t encounter people who were in love with Jesus until my older sisters introduced me to the charismatic movement in my early twenties. I liked what I was seeing, but my approach was largely analytical. I wanted to know for certain that they were doing what the Bible said we were supposed to do. I still appreciate the fact that charismatics want more than just to know what the Bible says; they want to do what the Bible says. Years of analysis led me to believe they were right on most things, but maybe a little too much emphasis was placed on the emotional aspect of their relationship with Jesus. This conclusion is natural for a man who has little or no emotional relationship with Jesus. For the second time I ask: what am I missing?

There is an enigmatic interchange between Jesus and Peter recorded in the final chapter of the Gospel of John. Jesus and the disciples were hanging out at the beach eating some of the fish they had just caught when Jesus takes Peter aside and asks, “Simon, son of John, do you love me more than these?” We get the sense that Peter was taken aback by the question. First, Jesus left behind the pet name He gave the disciple, Peter, and used his legal name, Simon bar Jonah. Jesus also used the formal word for love, agape, in the first question. It may be Jesus was saying, “Are you devoted to Me and the cause of the gospel.” Peter answered with the more personal term, phileo, which implies affection: “You know I like you.” The Greek word Peter used for “know” implies intuitive knowledge. It is interesting to me that Peter took that direction.

Jesus was asking Peter if his level of devotion for His Master rose above his devotion to these things, these men, this life. Peter answered, “You know I like you.” Jesus second question used the formal agape again but without the “more than these.” Peter gave exactly the same answer, “You know I like you.” I think it was at this point that Jesus dug deep because in His third question he reverted to Peter’s term, “Do you like me?” Peter had to be exasperated at this point; he answered by saying that Jesus had intuitive knowledge of all things, and, using a different Greek word, he told Jesus that He had experiential knowledge of Peter’s affection.

If I could paraphrase how Jesus wound up the questioning of Peter it might sound like this: You had better hold onto that warm feeling you have for me because there are some cold, hard things coming your way. When everything dear gets stripped away, cling to that affection; that will be your happy place when life goes down the tubes and things get really ugly. Jesus seems to be putting a premium on the affection although throughout His years of instruction He commanded the agape, the devotion. Nowhere does the Jesus command us to “like” Him, the Father, or anyone. Paul does recommend “brotherly love,” phileo for our brothers, but Jesus had always used agape, the more formal term until this exchange with Peter.

I suspect in Peter’s place I would have said I agape Jesus in response to His agape question. That seems like the appropriate answer to me. If Jesus had then hit me with the phileo question, I may have faltered. This is not to say that I dislike Him or that I have no appreciation for what He has done for me. But when I search my heart for an example of my love for anyone in the phileo sense, I struggle find much at all. Because I was not shown phileo love as a child, I think I may have temporarily lost access to it. I don’t need it; I don’t share it; I don’t have it. There it is, throbbing like a thumb struck with a hammer. I don’t feel love for because I haven’t had or haven’t recognized love from. Cats or people.

This may explain why I enjoy worship immensely, but I seldom get teary-eyed or blubbery about it like so many others. On some occasions, the Holy Spirit has overtaken me to the degree that I have become overwhelmed with an emotional reaction. Perhaps the Spirit is triggering the phileo that is buried inside me. This may also explain why so many orthodox worship services are so devoid of emotion. Is there a lie that we have been told about love and worship lurking here that phileo does not belong there? (For more see “Lies WeHave Been Told”)

When I attended a Bible college that was sponsored by the same group of churches in which I was raised, I was in the midst of my first exposure to the charismatic movement. My professors were more than dismissive of the charismatics; they berated them for their lack of scholarship and excessive emotionalism. One young don even suggested that speaking in tongues was from the devil. And they agreed with the cessationist position that miraculous signs had ceased to be evident in the church when the last Apostle died centuries ago. As I became more familiar with the people my sisters were following, I agreed that their theology had some holes in it, and they did go overboard emotionally sometimes, but I longed for a little of their fervor.

When I wrote “More Than a Feeling” a while back, I admitted that my understanding of agape love needed adjusting. Agape does involve a sense of compassion. I now see that passion is what I have been missing in most of my love relationships, particularly worship. If you have been feeling a bit dry during worship, perhaps you too could use a fuller filling of the Holy Spirit. Raise those hands; move those feet; let the tears come if they will. It seems to me that would be the way to love God with your whole being: spirit, soul and body. Maybe that’s what the ancient Shema was actually trying to elicit from God’s people: “And you shall love Yahweh your God with all of your heart and with all of your soul and with all of your might.”

I wonder if it is going too far to ask the Spirit to help me love my wife’s cat.