Love Never Fails or Ends

Mini-Love-Lesson  #253 

Note: This is the 16th and last in our series of What Is Love: A New Testament Reply based on Paul’s description of love and informed by the relational and behavioral sciences.

Synopsis: For your own personal use, explore the proclamations that love never fails or ends; search into the theology and psychology of these precepts; look at mysterious lifelong love; delve into three of the major ways to comprehend Paul’s teachings; contemplate the wide-ranging coverage of the English translations; review a bit of what science says and consider gambling on never and forever.

It’s Over, Or Is It?

Love may never die but love relationships do cease even if love is still felt.  Many a divorced person feels a love in their heart for an ex and at the same time they feel a strong, real love for a new spouse.  “I love my ex so much better now that I know I don’t have to live there anymore” is an idea I have often heard expressed in post-divorce counseling (see “Exes and Love”).

Love for a child, parent, sibling or other family member or even a deep friend, if estranged or on hold with little or no chance of reactivation, still can persist.  For many, once they strongly love someone that love is an ongoing state of being lasting a lifetime.  For millions who have lost those dear to their heart due to death, this ongoing love remains very true, real and active.  It has always been amazing to me in counseling with help when a client talks to a dead loved one and then listens for a reply, amazing things often happen.  Several counseling techniques assist this process but often they are not needed.  Replies almost invariably come, whether silently heard or spoken by the client, and most commonly are extremely heartfelt and beneficial to the one grieving.

Intellectually we all know to think that the replies come from the client’s own mind but at the heart level it still works.  Clients usually leave those sessions feeling a love connection event has occurred, nurtured them and they are better for it.  Perhaps it is because they were able to engage in the action of sending their love but then too they seem to have also received some love in the process.

Then there is the hard to explain, getting a reply containing information that seemingly could not have been known prior to the session.  That is rare but it does occur.  I can only conclude we see through a glass darkly and, therefore, who really knows what realms love can reach into?

Some think that once love is born and grows, it gets to a certain point of strength where thereafter it is always able to be tapped into and is a lifelong part of us.  In those cases, love seems to live on, deep in our subconscious. 

Think of the many loving friends who have not seen each other, maybe even for years, and they pick up right where they left off years ago.  Think of long lost relatives who do the same thing upon reuniting.  Many a parent and child who have been, for one reason or another, sometimes separated for decades rejoining together and manifesting love feelings that seem both old and fresh at the same time.  Then there are the exes who broke off relating years ago, then grew and came back together more successfully than before.  They rejoin with a love that they sometimes say it both has restarted and it was there all along.

There appears to be much evidence pointing to the truth that, as far as we can tell, real love is indeed often long lasting love.  As related by Paul, love may not fail or fade away but indeed be, just possibly, everlasting (see “A Dozen Kinds of Love to Have in Your Life”).

Contemplating and Comprehending Paul On Love

This is the last in our series on Paul’s precepts on what love is and is not and what love does and does not do.  This last precept is thought to be a sort of summation teaching aimed at having a final, potent impact with a compelling action-oriented effect.  For a great many readers it seems to succeed at that.

There are, however, some interpretation ponderments.  Translators seem to see two interrelated but definitely different ways of understanding this teaching. Then to make matters more complicated, other scholarly research appears to point to a third still interrelated yet different discernment.

Paul’s words in ancient biblical Greek are “he agape oudepote ekpiptei”.  Eighteen of the 30+ English translation efforts we reviewed decipher this as “love never fails” but eight others as “love never ends” or something very similar.  Then other scholarship now understands this to perhaps mean “love never weakens” (see “Spirituality and Love Great and Grand”).

So which is it “love never fails” or “love never ends” or “love never weakens”?  It is quite possible Paul’s words mean all three.  Just as is true in English, biblical Greek words can have more than one meaning.  Sometimes variations of meaning are simultaneously meant to be communicated.  Especially is this true in the communications of the more widely educated and intelligent of ancient Greece.  Paul was both according to what we know about him.

From a psychological perspective, it can be quite rewarding to include all three in our study and thoughtful usage of Paul’s summation precept on love.  Even so, there are some more to be intrigued about, contemplated and understood.

The English Possibilities

“Love never fails” in English has a wide variety of meanings.  It can mean love never succumbs, loses, goes down to defeat, and is ever victorious.  It also can suggest, love never declines, does not perish, waste away, flag, deteriorate, falter or flounder.  Then again, it can be understood as love never collapses, crumbles, is found defective, comes to nothing or is inconsequential.  Some put it as real, strong and healthy love always wins out in the end.

“Love has no end and/or love is eternal” can be seen as love always was and always will be, love once begun will last forever, love was and/or is self originating, love is ceaseless, perpetual, timeless, infinitely ongoing and once love is given birth love never dies.

“Love never weakens”, i.e. love never diminishes, depletes, declines, decays, degrades, fades or becomes de-powered is a third rendition being considered for interpretive value.

All of the above can be seen as having possible truth.  Arguably, the deity is seen theologically as eternal and omnipotent, plus the nature of deity is understood to be love and, therefore, love also is eternal and of an undiminishing strength.  In more than one world religion, these concepts have been posited or are articles of faith (see “7 Other Definitions of Real Love Worth Considering” which includes A Metaphysical Definition of Love).

What Does Science Say?

Science and especially the psychological sciences can not really adequately deal with much in the world of theology. As one researcher put it “We just can’t seem to fit eternity and all the other totality concepts into our labs so, alas, we best treat them as outside our jurisdictions”.  That, of course, has not stopped any number of scientists from proclaiming they know the real truths of existence.

The history of science is replete with examples of arrogant proclamations which turned out to be mistaken.  It seems all scientific truths are subject to at least greater elaboration later.  It would seem that we do well to remember that we see through a glass darkly but with science we probably do see far better and far more than ever before.

From a social sciences point of view, the fact is love relationships do end even if love itself does not. There are those that argue the evidence says love is like everything else – it is something that is born, grows, diminishes and then dies.  Arguably that might refer to false love relationships or relationships that did not grow to the point of strength that they could last a lifetime or beyond.

Now on a personal note, let me say that I, as a clinician, have seen and experienced things my scientific self can not come close to adequately explaining.  Especially has this been true in matters involving love.  I must say that from my astonished and awed perspective it appears the heart often sees far better and further than the mind.

Gambling On Love Eternally Today

A Theolog I knew and respected once wrote me a report on Paul’s precepts which ended with his collective take on Paul’s teachings.  It was, “In all circumstances and human relationships, when in doubt: love; it is never wrong to love.”  I agree.

I suggest gambling on love is likely, almost always, to be your best bet.  Believing or at least hoping and suspecting that love lasts forever and that love relationships may indeed go on beyond the grave is frequently a very life affirming and helpful thing to do.

Here is a suggestion to contemplate.  Work at doing ever better love everyday you love someone.  Adopt the perspective that it is a joy and privilege to do that work.  Therefore, why not hope to do it forever if you can.  That, I suggest is an attitudinal gamble well worth taking.

Likewise, there is a usefulness to knowing that at any moment a love relationship can be brought to an abrupt, earthly end.  So, do not waste your time, use it to do more love relating actions soon, often and better.

One more little thing.  I bet some good things will happen if you get to talk this mini-love-lesson over with some loving others.  If you do, then please mention this site and help spread love knowledge around a bit.  Thank you.

As always – Go and Grow with Love

Dr. J. Richard Cookerly

Quotable question: In the high valley of the heart summer love is easy, but what about in the deep snows of winter?

Love Endures All Things

Mini-Love-Lesson  #252

Note: this is the 15th in our series “What Is Love: a New Testament Reply based on Paul’s description of love and informed by the relational and behavioral sciences”.

Synopsis: The amazing, enduring nature of real love along with its big difference from false love; the many and diverse ways of enduring love; the intriguing things Paul may have meant, with a special emphasis on those who endure; the many attacks on love done differently.

Millions of Endurance Miracles

Side-by-side he was with her and she with him as they got past the disfiguring accident, then through the years of serious surgeries and rehab, the loss of a child, a medical insurance-caused bankruptcy and the rejection that came from both their families when they changed religions.  They endured it all together and a lot more.  Why?  How?  The answer is real love can empower us to miraculously “endure all things”.  Are they happy today?  Yes, immensely!

Did they sometimes think about splitting up and looking for an easier way to go?  Yes, of course, lots of times.  Did they tire of supporting each other and caring for one another when one was down and the other the caretaker?  Yes certainly, especially when things seemed hopeless.  Were they tempted to seek care-free other love.  Yes, in fact when things seemed at their worst both sought and found comfort and support in the arms of others and then they endured recovering from that also.  I am pleased to say I had a little to do with that part.  For me, the best part was when I was invited to attend their 40th wedding anniversary celebration years after the agonies they had endured were over.

Here is the real miracle.  Though it has some unusual features, their story is not as uncommon or as rare as you might at first think.  Thousands upon thousands of examples exist showing people, with love’s empowerment, enduring horrendous difficulties of all kinds.  Back to the very dawn of written history, there are examples of love relationships enduring hardships, catastrophes, losses, crippling diseases and every sort of tragedy.  Time and again, comrades have risked death to save their deeply loved brothers in service, countless parents have toiled for years to give their loved offspring a better life than their own.  Lovers have dashed into harms way to save their heartmates, lifelong friends have stayed side-by-side facing nearly endless trials and tribulations.  On and on go the stories of love empowered enduring all things (see our book Recovering Love).

False Love Endures Little

When she was hospitalized for three days, her lover did not visit although he did call each day.  Everyone else who loved her did visit.  He said it was because his amateur sports team had practice during visiting hours, and besides, hospitals made him nervous.  He later complained that he could not understand why she broke up with him over this and that it was most unreasonable and unfair.  After all, she was in safe hands and well cared for.  Months after the breakup she learned he had spent the second night she was in the hospital with another woman.  She said, “I’m so glad, relieved in fact, that he proved his love was fake before I found out about his cheating on me.  That would’ve hurt but now it’s just validation.  I know I’m worth a lot more than his stupid sports club”.

One of the best differentiating signs of real versus false love has to do with the answer to the 3D question.  “Will someone professing love willingly endure ongoing, discomfort, difficulty and danger for the well-being of the loved? (See “Why You Need To Know More About Real Love” and our book Real Love False Love.)  Remember: real love causes us to want for and, if possible, act for the well-being of the loved (see “The Definition of Love” and “A Dozen Things Love is and A Dozen Things Love is Not”).

False forms of love tend to be about the paramount desires of the self, not about the loved.  They may be well masked and hard to detect but they tend to surface in time.  Good, healthy love of another does not preclude actions of good, healthy self-love.  It just is that love of another is equal or stronger and shows up especially when a loved one faces ongoing discomfort, difficulties and dangers.  Real love often, but not always, can be genuinely happy to be of service and assistance when facing difficulties.  Acts that come from duty, obligation, guilt, etc. – not so much (see Real Love False Love).

There are some forms of false love that seem to show signs of love’s enduring quality.  One of these is the form called Fatal Attraction Syndrome.  Its enduring actions come not from love but from an obsessive and compulsive mental health problem.  In its moderately serious form, it results in annoying, continuous harassment and stalking behavior.  In its most serious form – death by murder and/or suicide can result (see “Fatal Attraction Syndrome”).
       
Paranoid syndromes may also seem to have enduring signs of love in a seemingly protective way.  The protectiveness usually is a mask for possessiveness  and insecurity.  This is birthed  from fear not love.  Addiction syndromes can manifest pseudo-love endurance behaviors so long as the supposed loved one continues to be a facilitator of the addiction.

What Does It Mean to Endure

Love empowers us to keep going in adversity, continue in spite of difficulty, remain, last, tolerate, withstand and, when needed, to suffer patiently.  It also can mean to bravely resist, courageously carry on, stoically live through and with resignation weather the storm.  It is love’s enduring quality that gives,  assists and defends love’s longevity.  Enduring love means not only do we come to the aid of our loved ones but we stay there, not withdrawing or retreating in the face of adversity or adversaries.

Is This What Paul Meant?

At first glance, it can seem like this precept in Paul’s discourse on love is just another way to say love bears all things (see “Love Bears All Things”).  There are, however, some important differences.  I am told those may be easier to understand in the ancient biblical Greek than in English.  Love endures all things in the ancient biblical Greek is “agape panta hupomenei”.  Remember, just like in English, Greek words can have more than one meaning.

Some scholars suspect that in Paul’s day it perhaps was understood that these words emphasized not fleeing or removing oneself from the fray, abandoning the field of conflict, or to stand one’s ground under attack.  The word agape is thought to carry with it the connotation of compassionate love and continuously active love in the needed service of the loved.  Interestingly, some think Paul’s teaching also implies willingly enduring or putting up with awkward circumstances caused by unloving fellow church members, or something like that.  Love endures all things is further thought to especially imply to endure persecution, afflictions and troubles caused by those acting against the Christian movement.

Of the 30 biblical translations reviewed, 17 translated Paul’s words as “love endures all things” which is the most common interpretation.  It is, therefore, the one we use here.

Other interpretations, both in Bibles and suggested for possible future consideration, include “love endures”, “ love is always no matter what”, ”love endures through every circumstance”, “love - she is full of patient endurance”, “love never gives up”, “love always remains strong”, “love always perseveres”, “love never looks back”, “love needs never retreat”, “love will never remove itself from adversity”, “love does not flee from its opposition”, “love makes us stand our ground”, “love prevails over the unloving”, “love will endure the persecution and afflictions of all who move against it”, “love gives us endurance over all troubles”, “love has the power to endure all difficulties” and “love is forever”.  I suggest all of those may be used to broaden our understanding of what Paul’s words may cover.  The all things part is thought to mean, by implication, all things difficult.

Enduring the Attack on Love

A lot of the world has been intolerant and attacking of love when it comes in forms different than that of its attackers. In my career as a family and relational therapist I frequently was called upon to assist individuals, couples ,families, alternate lifestylers and others in their fight against those who did not want them to do love the way they were doing it. In counseling sessions, often in court, once in a while in public forums and in politics I and others like me have battled for loves diversity and against anti-love bigotry, prejudice, intolerance, bias, and ignorance.

One of the most common difficulties concerning tens of thousands of couples, parents, families and others who are challenged to endure is the ongoing intolerance for who, and how, others do their love.  Issues of bi-racial love, bi-sexual love (see “Gender Diversity Love”), gay love, throuple love (see “Throuple Love, A Growing Worldwide Way of the Future?”), elder love (see “Elder Love”), age different love (see “Should Age Make A Difference – In Love” and “Age Differences and Romantic Love”), different religions love, parental love, family love, etc. –  all have their active and often well-meaning but sometimes vicious enemies.

Those who choose a path of love different from the accepted can face family banishment, legal battles over custody of children, public shaming, forced isolation from loved ones and their home communities, efforts to break up their marriages, costly legal entanglements, episodes of hate, rejection and condemnation and even being honor killed –  all because of who and how they do their love relationships – differently.

Enduring family rejection that lasts for years unfortunately is very common in the lives of those who do love out of the norm.  It is so wonderful when this is finally overcome and reconciliation occurs which very often it does with the help of family counseling and/or coaching.  When loving re-connection does not happen, escape to a new environment full of new and more loving people frequently is the best solution.  Given the chance, love will find a way.

One more thing: Do you have friends who like to discuss things religious, spiritual, denominational, theological or ecumenical?  If so, you might want to talk over this mini-love-lesson and this series with them.  If you do, please do mention this site. Thank you!

As always – Go and Grow with Love

Dr. J. Richard Cookerly

Quotable Question:  Is your way of doing religion leading you to the ways of more love?  If not, where is it leading you to?

Love Hopes All Things

Mini-Love-Lesson  #251

Note: this is the 14th in our series  What Is Love?- A New Testament Reply based on Paul’s descriptions of love and informed by the relational and behavioral sciences.

Synopsis: Love’s Hope and hope itself are quickly, freshly and rather deeply explored here with probes into a new defining of hope; ways to keep hope alive; an introduction to co-hope love relating; listening to your own hopes “all things” insights; cultural conditioning pro and con; and the results of love’s hope.

The Miracle of Love’s Hope

Love gives birth to great hope!  Let’s look into that.  Love’s Hope is of incredible importance.  Every love relationship starts with hope and grows with hope.  The hope of love gives both joy and power to love relating.  Sharing the hope of love bonds and brightens us as we love.  In down times we are lifted by hope and in up times hope helps us soar.  But do we understand the nature of hope?

Is not Hope an enthusiasm for the future, a sort of pre-happiness that future happiness can and will occur?  Does not love’s hope encourage, inspire and empower us to go forward even when there is little or no reason for optimism.?  Is it true that with fear held at bay by love’s hope, love’s hope sustains incredible endurance, achieves victory in the face of overwhelming odds and cheers up the most dreary of our days?

Is the following a truth about hope?  Hope and love have a circular relationship with each other.  Love breeds hope which then in turn feeds love which then in return feeds and breeds more love and more hope.  To grow love, grow hope and to grow hope, grow love.

Research shows Hope to be one of our most powerful psychological forces for surviving and thriving.  Hope has been found to be wonderfully assistive in helping our biological and our psycho-neurological processes be and get healthy.  It also is a major factor in the dynamics of all types of love relationship and love relating well.  Suppose it is for those reasons that hope and especially love’s Hope exists.

What Is Hope Actually?

Hope is an emotion that occurs in higher order species and much like love is a natural, often vital process assisting survival and advancement toward well-being.  We can define hope as an elated, positive suspicion that a desirable, positive something can or will happen.  In addition, Hope creates the elated, positive suspicion that when positive results occur, positive feelings will accompany them.  In effect, hope is a positive emotion about the possibility of future, positive emotions brought on by future, positive occurrences.

Hope is thought to be processed in the limbic system of the brain which activates and involves our good feeling neurochemistry and neuro-physical brain regions.  It also is thought to frequently, quickly activate when the brain’s love processes activate.

Simply put, hope can be seen as a happiness about the chance for more happiness.

Hope From, With and For Love

Giving love contains the hope that the love given will be helpful, nurturing, enjoyable, perhaps bonding and, when needed, healing.  Hope is pretty much vital to joint love action.  Hope gets people to cooperate toward mutual goals, motivates giving, getting and sharing love experiences and works to heal love relating wounds when they occur.  Love’s Hope can come from love, with love and work very much for love’s health and well-being.

When love relationships get mired in difficulties, it is love’s Hope that keeps the people in those relationships trying for repair and recovery.  When things get so bad, for so long, hope can be lost and then the love relationship itself can be lost.  Keeping love’s Hope alive, therefore, is a major concern for all love relationships having troubles.

Keeping Love’s Hope Alive

When couples, or any close or intimate love relationship, are having trouble it helps if the people in the love relationship decide to be lovingly co-supportive as they work on their troubles.  That helps them work as a team against problems instead of against each other.  Whenever couples or others go against each other, their connection with each other loses and hopelessness tends to grow.

When love relating is suffering, hope can help a lot.  It can make more love-hope happen by sincerely making encouraging remarks, mixing in statements of affirmation and appreciation, taking a break to do shared enjoyment, practicing loving listening skills more than talking, and showing loving care for a loved one’s pain no matter where that pain came from or who caused it.  Making a mutual goal of getting past the troubles and back to happy love relating also can help get love’s helpful Hope going (see “Dealing with Love Hurts: A Dozen Love Hurts to Know and Grow From” and “Conflict, Power and Love Success”).

Co-Hope Love

Do you hope for your loved ones to receive what they hope for?  One way to use Paul’s “Love hopes all things” is to include hoping for what your loved ones hope for.  Then show it to them in a sharing way.

Let’s think about this a little.  Do you seek to know and understand what your loved ones hope for?  Do you help your loved ones discover and understand their own hopes?  Do you share your hopes with them?  In sharing hopes, will you do it in a way that is joyful, celebratory and love bonding for you both?  Doing those things is doing co-hope love .

Here is one of the better ways to love someone via co-hoping.  Joyfully agree to co-share your more outlandish, whimsical or intimate and perhaps secret hopes and dreams.  Then do so sweetly and tenderly.  That often accomplishes doing some Self-Disclosure Love and sometimes some Affirmational Love too.  Both are major ways to communicate Love (see “A Behavioral (Operational) Definition of Love” in The Definition of Love Series).

As you do co-hope, it is important to remember not to go negative.  Any hope is best enjoyed together before and without it being realistically analyzed and/or its down sides being discussed.

Worries and fears are sometimes aroused when hearing what loved ones hope for.  When that happens it usually is best to first examine our own feelings before trying to change those of your beloved’s.  What a loved one hopes for can represent and reveal deep, cherished parts of themselves.  I suggest such revealing is to be not only cared about but enjoyed, even if you do not like the subject matter.

Generally for good love relating – celebrate first, critique later and do not mix the two.

The Importance of Listening to Your Own Hopes

Let’s say you notice you are hoping for something.  Where did that hope come from?  Maybe it came from deep inside your own inner wisdom.  Maybe it is a message that is telling you something you need for your own well-being which is coming to you in the form of a hope.  Perhaps it is a message about someone you love and what they need.  Is your subconscious talking to your conscious via your hopes?  It probably is safer to conclude the answer is yes than no.  It can be good to delve into your hopes to see if they are telling you things you would do well to know.  So often hidden in our hopes and wants are our needs.  This has to do with healthy self-love so do not be too quick to dismiss even your wildest and strangest hopes as merely idle and frivolous thoughts.  Remember, we are talking about hopes ALL things.

All Things- Good?

Translating is tough.  Perfectly interpreting one language’s word into another is like all other earthly perfection --impossible.  Some words in other languages carry or suggest different and additional meanings than our own words for the same thing and vice versa.  For instance, let’s look at our words for believing and for hope.  In English, the word believing does not automatically connotate believing good things but our word hope does.  The word hope, by definition, suggests looking forward to something desirable, or in other words, something good from the point of view of the one doing the hoping.

Some people in language studies posit the ancient Greek words for both believing and hope may connotate a good things meaning.  Therefore, making both believing all things and hoping all things more easily logically sensible and not mysteriously open-ended.  Then perhaps Paul’s words can be accepted as meaning all things good i.e. positive, beneficial, constructive, helpful, healthful, virtuous, holy and sacred.  But that is only a maybe.

These semantics are important because they may help us to more fully understand Paul’s teachings about love.  Thus, Hopes All Things connotatively may mean love automatically goes toward the well-being and benefit of the loved and, perhaps, never against them or it.

Consequently, if you get upset at a loved one and start to want, and/or to act toward hurting or harming that person, according to Paul’s teaching, those destructive feelings did not come from real love.  In fact, they may have come from love-destructive-factors inside you.   Remember, it is posited that healthy, real love always works for and not against well-being.

Not everyone believes love is so purely constructive.  When I worked with law enforcement, I found many who thought there was a strong, dark side to love that caused people to do violence and even murder those they supposedly loved.  Some quite openly saw Christian teachings about love to be wrong or at least ill-informed and incomplete.  Then there are those who see love is a sick thing.

I suggest destructive actions come more from the under-loved, miss-loved, the brain and heart wounded, and the psycho-neurologically malfunctioning than from those who have real love.  I also suggest those who would contemplate or do violence operate from non-love, anti-love and the various forms of false love.  They often manifest things like jealousy, hate, possessiveness, fear, frustration, desires to control, etc. and not the manifestations of healthy, real love.  To this concept, there is the possible exception of mercy killing.  What do you think?

What About Love’s Hope and Cultural Conditioning?

Let us not forget that along with family conditioning, many are conditioned by their culture to be either non-loving or anti-loving.  Love’s hope seems to have little conscious or collective significance for them.  In the more love-positive cultures, spousal murder, physical and psychological child abuse are rare.  Stress illnesses are much less severe and less frequent.  Generally speaking, the more love-positive a society is the more physically and psychologically healthful it is.

The people of love-positive societies are those who teach and model frequent use of the major known behaviors that stimulate love processes in the brain, love feelings in the emotions, and love actions in responding behavior patterns.  In such groups and living conditions, those people exhibit much hopefulness about many things small and large, short-term and long-term and they exhibit the evidence of having healthy and happy love relationships of a number of different kinds.  One of those kinds tends to be good self-love.  You can read about all that in Love and Survival by Dean Ornish M.D. and in The Meaning of Love in Human Existence by Ruben Fine PhD, both of which I highly recommend.  For the major behaviors of love, I proudly recommend my book Recovery Love.

For more knowledge about love’s hope and hope itself, I suggest you check out The Power of Hope: Overcoming Your Most Daunting Life Difficulties--No Matter What by Anthony Scioli, PhD and Making Hope Happen by Shane J. Lopez, PhD (which stems from three interrelated, really interesting, meta-analysis projects).

Love’s Hope Gets Results

When love and hope together work their motivating magic love, relating tends to bloom, broken relationships recover, love happiness mounts and love’s endeavors come to fruition.  Not only that but via love’s hope, causes become victorious, breakthroughs are discovered, potentials  get actualized, advances attained, wrongs righted, and even lives saved.  Of course, it doesn’t always happen that way but because of love’s hope it happens more often than it would without love’s hope.  So, with your love, hope for all things (good).

One more concept.  Some good things might happen if you talked all this over with some friendly, positive others.  If you do that, perhaps mention this source and site and, thereby, maybe help to spread some positive knowledge about love.

As always – Go and Grow with Love

Dr. J. Richard Cookerly

Quotable Question: If your hopes bear little action, will your life likely have much actualization?

Love Believes All Things

Mini-Love-Lesson  #250

Note: This is the 13th in our series What Is Love, a New Testament Reply based on Paul’s description of love and informed by the relational and behavioral sciences. 

Synopsis: An examination of believing in believing; looking at how different believing was in different times and places; questions about Paul’s way of thinking; introducing Heart, Gut and Head approaches to believing; and searching into “good” and “bad” for you believing are all pondered here.

Believing in Believing

Let’s think a bit seriously about believing and belief.  Lots of people do not think about this, you know.  Oh, they may think about what they believe but not so much about believing itself.  Psychologically believing has many uses, benefits, drawbacks, confusing factors, dynamics, psycho neurological effects on our bodies’ health and a whole lot more.  We will not be dealing with any of those here but you could if you wish.  We, however, will be dealing with some other beguiling belief factors concerning love and life (see “Thinking Love to Improve Love”).

Did you know, that in current popular usage, belief has become a mild and what some call a cheapened word.  Its impact does not nearly carry the weight it once did.  Nowadays, belief and believing are words rather glibly tossed around with little thought or concern, and even less emotional impact, but it was not always so.

In a number of historical times and places, what you said you believed could be of immense significance.  It even could determine whether you lived or died.  Announcing your beliefs carried considerable gravitas and could have profound influence on how people related to you.  Beliefs were weighty and serious matters which people did not speak of easily or lightly like they often do today.  Instead, thoughtful people tended to speak of their notions, speculations, conjectures, contemplations, sentiments, etc.  When they did speak of what they believed, it tended to have a connotation of passionately held, life affecting conviction.  In short, at those times and places in history people deeply believed in deeply believing.

The above has been said to set the stage for comprehending what Paul may have meant when he, in Greek, put forth “ panta pisteuei” as one of love’s major characteristics.  This most commonly is translated as “love believes all things”.

Can You Believe All Things?

Many modern, thinking people read that love believes all things and wonder what in the world could that actually mean.  Is it a prescription for being gullible, naïve, innocent, easily manipulated, unrealistic or what?  Could it be a sort of fill-in-the-blank test question?  Was it understood or meant to imply all things good, spiritual, holy, etc.?  Is it a projective technique meant to elicit your own personal understanding?  As it reads, it just is not cognitively clear.

Intellectually, to actually mentally believe in all things means to believe in things that are obviously not true, contradictory, toxic, dangerous, destructive and disastrous, not to mention perverse and evil.  Well, that is true if what you mean by belief is our modern world’s cognitive functional concept of belief.  For a great host of people a belief can be anything accepted or judged as more likely to be so than not or, for many others it can be anything desired to be so or not.  For some, believing in something requires data, proof, reason, evidence, or at least authoritative consensus.  But all that refers to conscious, intellectual belief.  It is my suspicion this is not the kind of belief Paul was talking about.  So, let us look at some additional ways to see belief and believing.

Heart, Gut and Mind Believing

It is thought that originally believing meant to hold something dear, something like a thing to be passionate about, cherished and precious.  It was dear to your heart.  That leads me to introduce you to three forms of believing here called the heart, gut and head approaches to believing.

Belief of the Heart If we hold something or someone to be dear in our heart, we can be said to believe in it or to believe in that someone.  To believe in them, or it, implies a conviction that, they are, or it is, perceived to be of positive value and possesses essential quality and significance.  It is heart judged and believed to be intrinsically worthwhile.  Whoever or whatever you believe in, heart wise, means you are genuinely for them or it, respect their or its existence and are more likely to support and strongly act in favor of them or it.  You might even fight for, defend, promote and honor or them or it because, in your heart, you profoundly believe in them or it.  That is the meaning of heart belief!

Belief of the Gut  If we believe something at the gut level, we do so because it is our hunch, instinct, intuition, subconscious reaction, unconscious proclivity, etc..  All of which probably is influenced by our upbringing, emotional history, cultural conditioning, habits and tendencies, current mood and bio-neuro-chemical state at the time (see “Limbic Love & Why You Will Do Well to Know about It”).
Depending on how competent your non-conscious processes perform, this gut belief approach can work for you extremely well, or extremely poorly or somewhere in between.

Belief of the Mind  Mind belief nowadays may be seen as requiring logical reasons, general consensus, expert opinion or perhaps empirical proof, support from a preponderance of objective evidence, replicated research, valid and reliable studies showing high statistical significance and having a lack of significant counter indicating data (see “The Three 3's of Love”). Mind Belief, in that case, is a thing of conscious cognition backed by tangible evidence.  Or at least something coming from a tolerably well-informed, cleverly thought out and well-prepared presentation.

In the past, belief from the mind largely seems to have been influenced by the wisdom masters of old, sundry schools of philosophy and theology, social movements and political ideologies, subtle slow evolution and sometimes sudden breakthroughs of discovery, existential crises or traumatic upheavals and revolutions.  All of those still have impact and influence today but more and more, these days, the guiding light for believing comes from science and technology.

How Did Paul Think?

We cannot know for sure.  From a psychological vantage point, it seems probable that when Paul spoke of “believing all things” he was most likely thinking from a framework of heart-type belief or a combination of heart and gut belief much more than from a head-type belief approach.  Evidence suggests he was intelligent and rather well educated.  However, the cultural ethos he lived and taught in was substantially different from the one we live in.  It is likely that the concept believe had a much more emotionally passionate connotation then than it commonly does today.  Also, Paul lacked the influences of the evidence-based exactitude and empiricism of our day because those had not been invented yet (see “Contemplating Love”).

From my point of view, much of the New Testament presents its truths in a more novel-like form than that of an accountant.  Its expression is more Impressionist like than Realist.  It teaches much in the metaphorical parables manner rather than in factual delineations.  Its great lessons are often global and seldom picayune.  It  reaches more deeply into the heart and gut of matters than into the conscious, rational mind.  I think that is also true of Paul’s way of conveying knowledge about love.

What about the “All Things” Part?

The languages of the New Testament are not understood to be technical languages.  It is said that Hebrew, Aramaic and Greek are all much more like passionate, loose and free Italian than precise, structured and technical German.  Using an Italian mindset, “believes all things” can be seen as an impassioned abstract pronouncement of metaphysical and inspiring grandness.  Using concrete factual German, “believes all things” might be seen as the thinking of a none-too-bright child or the illogical mutterings of a madman.

All things from a heart belief perspective (i.e. Italian like) can be seen as a way to refer to the great, the grand, the miraculous and the mystical.  Of course, that is only one of many possibilities.

Various translations of Paul’s tenants on love may shed light on the “all things” question.  Other translations and interpretations of this, Paul’s 13th precept on love, include “love trusts God always”, “love’s faith never fails”, “love never stops believing”, “love trusts in all things” (spiritual, holy?), “love never loses faith” and love (she, in the feminine) is full of trust”.  Of the 30+ translations reviewed, 18 indicated “love believes all things” to be the most used and agreed-upon interpretation.

Is Believing a Good Thing for You and Yours? 

One way of looking at it suggests believing can be a lot like gambling.  Especially is that so for believing in things which cannot be proved.  In science, one learns you can not prove tomorrow.  You only can acquire evidence of its likelihood.  Nevertheless, every day we act like we believe with certainty (i.e. gamble) that tomorrow will come, and it probably will, but intellectually that is not at all certain.

Belief comes in many formations and amounts. Some people believe (i.e. gamble) on things that turn out to be false and they become severely hurt and/or harmed in the process.  Bad divorces are examples of that.  Lots of people are sustained, strengthened and assisted through difficulties by their belief systems.  Other people believe in as few things as possible seeing life as unpredictable and irregularly dangerous.  Still others are true believers about all sorts of things that seem strange, peculiar, unproven and unlikely to others.  Then there are those that do not believe in believing.  They prefer to be skeptical, dubious and questioning while relying on their suspecting, hoping and speculating processes.  They often see going all the way to believing to be a set up for disappointment, self-deception and for creating blind spots of vulnerability.

Beliefs can empower hope and ongoing endeavor.  It is true many people have been severely harmed when who, or what, they believed failed them.  So for you and yours, will it be better to not believe but instead suspect, hypothesize, doubt, re-check, cross check, double check and question most things?  Or is it and will it be best for you to have strong, passionate, deep beliefs about many things for which you can not find proof but for which you can have heart and gut belief in?  Or will it be a dynamic confluence of both, ever tumbling and twining in your head, heart and gut? (see “Quality Love, Quality Life?”).

One more little thing: how about telling somebody about your thoughts concerning this mini-love-lesson and, while you’re at it, please mention this site and thereby help spread love relating knowledge.

As always – Go and Grow in Love

Dr. J. Richard Cookerly

Quotable Question: About love, are you more of a true believer, a doubter, or a “hopey” and, most of all, are you a love activist?

Love Bears All Things

Mini-Love-Lesson  #249

Synopsis: Here we raise into awareness love’s amazing power for enduring life’s difficulties and destroyers; along with some myths about love’s inadequacy and pathology; a fuller meaning of “bearing”; love relating while bearing all things; possibly wrong and “psycho sick” interpretations and ending with thoughts for developing your own endurance-providing love strength.

Love’s Power for Enduring

Indications of the great and often incredible power of love are able to be perceived as one explores this, the 12th of Paul’s tenants on love.  Think about it.  To be able to bear all things requires monumental strength for empowering stupendous endurance.  Does love really do this?  Countless examples of exactly that are to be found in the history of what people have done with love power.  Risking their own lives, many have saved their loved one’s lives in deadly situations.  Others have ceaselessly searched for and finally discovered their long-lost beloved ones.  Still others have worked for decade upon decade to discover a cure for the disease-afflicted for whom they care deeply.  Millions of others have continued endlessly, supporting and fighting side-by-side for their loved ones who faced overwhelming trials and tribulations.  All these exemplify and offer proof of the endurance power real love gives.

In my own long career as a therapist, I have seen the brave, steadfast power of love empower people to endure seemingly impossible pain, ongoing horrendous stressors, lengthy threatening situations and lifelong heartbreaking occurrences.  Often, but not always, love brought a prevailing ability to survive and often eventually become victorious over monstrous problems.  Without the strength of authentic love, I am quite sure such outcomes would not have been achievable and those involved probably would not have survived.

The Myths That Love Is Weak, Ephemeral Or Bad for You

There are those that have proclaimed love to be a fuzzy, fickle falsehood that makes people weak and powerless.  Some have held that love is an insubstantial, puny, whimsical thing of no lasting consequence.  Still others posit that those involved in love are being entrapped by a seriously de-powering and very detrimental and destructive addiction.

I like to contrast those ideas with the health, psychosocial and animal comparative researchers who have discovered love behaviors to be crucial and powerful for higher life form’s survival and advancement.  Then there are the brain scientists who are discovering more and more about the brain regions and chemistry for processing love and finding them  to be very real and very powerful.  Add to that, the relational scientists who have found the most lasting and healthiest relationships are the ones saturated with the actions that convey love.  Lastly, we also can point to the biblical teaching about love’s power, that no one has greater empowering love than those that lay down their lives for another.  Every day all over the world there are people who, out of love, are risking or sacrificing their own lives for the well-being of others.  Sometimes this is done in a crisis and sometimes in the slow enduring way.

My suspicion is that the nay-sayers of love have not been looking at healthy, real love but rather at various forms of unhealthy, false love (see the “False Forms of Love” series).

The preponderance of evidence points to authentic and well grown love being of enormous power enabling people to survive and thrive, frequently even as they bear all things hurtful and harmful.  Countless love-active parents, comrades, love mates, siblings and strong deep friends have done courageous and long-lasting acts because of their love.  This gives ever mounting evidence to the conclusion that strong, healthy, real love can indeed Bear All Things.

The Fuller Meaning of “Bear” for Your Life

Think about what may be covered by the word Bear.  To bear means to hold up under pressure, endure that which is painful, trying, difficult, hard and/or difficult.  Also to bear is to have the power to withstand while going without adequate support or sustenance.  It can mean not to flinch, break, retreat, surrender, compromise or be crushed.

To Bear also means to carry forward, take on, take to, and deliver unto.  Sometimes to bear can indicate to resist, buck, abide, tolerate, and/or to allow.

Love, healthy real and well-developed love, is seen here as making all the above not only possible but likely when severe and long-lasting difficulties bear down upon you and you remain love-centered (see “Love Centering Yourself”).

Love Relating While Bearing All Things

One of the most important features of love is that it keeps love relationships going as they face hard times.  I saw this most clearly in my work with the parents and families of murdered children striving not to be driven apart and dragged down by this horrendous experience.  I also frequently saw the power of love in helping people endure and co-recover from the anguish of infidelity, the destructive effects of addictions, the miseries of various forms of mental illness and a great deal more.  With enough love and well developed love-relating, all these can be endured and, more often than not, overcome.  This especially is true when receiving some love knowledgeable, caring, professional help.  By the way, you also can apply these concepts to your own self-love relationship.

Interpretation Quandaries

It is always possible we are using a wrong interpretation.  I see that as a good reason to look at a wide variety of translation possibilities as we explore what Paul, in the New Testament, put forth about love.  However, remember finding the one true, right, perfect, translation of anything seems to be beyond human capability.  For constructive cognition, being open to differing ideas of new and ever widening understandings seems to work better.  It also is psychologically more healthful.  As a rule, trying for perfection often tends to block and/or slow progress and can prevent improvement.

In regard to this 12th precept of Paul’s, I explored over 30 translation efforts.  The most numerous of Paul’s Greek “panta stegie” was “love bears or beareeth  all things”.  This interpretation occurred 14 times.  The intriguing variety of other translations included love “never gives up”, “puts up with all things”, “never stops being patient”, “patiently accepts all things”, “puts up with anything”, “always protects” and “she (I like the inclusion of a feminine factor) knows when to be silent” - see my caveat below.

The most different translation I found being considered by some scholars reads something like “love covers the unpleasant in others with quiet” and “love cloaks over what is displeasing in others”.  To this mental health professional, both of those interpretations sound rather pathological and the one about a “she staying silent” quite dubious.

Hebrew issues exist concerning the type or kind of love meant by Paul.  It is suspected that when Paul taught in Hebrew he probably used the form of the word love called Ahava which has to do with very actively giving caring love.  That conveys a meaning somewhat different than using some of the other love words available.  Some of these other love word possibilities suggest Paul could have meant a more maternal type love, or a more brotherly type love, or altruistic love or even chaotic love.  Paul also may have taught in Aramaic that has its own words for love which may possess additional connotations and shades of meaning.

It is interesting that the Hebrew word Ahava sometimes has been interpreted as being similar in meaning to the Greek Agape love and Metta love in Sanskrit.  All these interpretation factors and issues can be used to inform and broaden our understanding of what might be included in the meaning of this 12th tenant of Paul’s.

“Psycho-Sick” Interpretations

Mental health professionals working in the environs of Christendom tend to get rather familiar with psychologically toxic understandings of the Bible.  Here we seem to have a passage that unfortunately lends itself to such psychopathological possibilities.  “Bears all things” has been used to justify needless and useless self-sacrifice, self-flagellation and other forms of self-inflicted bodily harm, destructive self-denial and syndromes in which people experience profound guilt over having not suffered enough.  Other interpretations such as “love puts up with all things” have been used as justification for accepting abuse.  It also can be a prescription for unknowingly rewarding and encouraging seriously abusive and destructive behaviors.

These sorts of interpretations can be seen as teaching people to become docile victims.  They also can be seen as manipulative justifications for sociopaths and psychopaths who use Bible quotes, like “love patiently accepts all things”, for their own ends and against the well-being of others.

Accepting a strict interpretation of  “bears all things” as a Christian duty has helped put no small number of wives into hospitals and/or early graves, not to mention men into jail for wife beating and murder.  It also has been ruinous for children growing up in homes where toxic religiosity, rather than religion, is manipulatively and abusively practiced.

The “she knows when to be silent”, along with the “covers”, “cloaks” or “ throws a cloak of silence” New Testament descriptions, seem perversely useful for curbing free speech, suppressing individuality, encouraging authoritarian relationships and getting away with the criminal use and misuse of the naïve, gullible, trusting and less self assertive of those among us.

It seems to me, though I am of course heavily biased, that most all scriptural passages might do well to have a psychological health commentary available or accompanying them.  Ah, if it were only so.

Developing Your Endurance Love Strength

To grow your love, healthy real love that is, is to grow your courage, your power for positive impact and your cooperation skills; it also means you are likely to grow your love bonds with others and your ability to bear all things.  Also involved here is growing your self love, your other love, your spiritual love and probably your love of life.

What do you do to grow your enduring love strength?  You exercise it!  First you do what you are doing now which is to study love and love relating.  As you continue to do that, find yourself opportunities for doing love action that are not so easy to do.  Maybe you volunteer to work with the disadvantaged or get really involved in a political action group working with or for a cause needed and helpful for the less able.  Maybe you practice giving love via volunteering at a handicapped children’s camp, Red Cross, Good Will stores, library literacy programs, etc.  Then maybe someday you can go on to children’s cancer wards, hospice, campaigns for assistance to the abused elderly or anything you think might be difficult for you.  Yes, your heart may be wrenched in the process but it also may be amazingly enriched and strengthened.

You also can learn and think more about love itself and, as you do so, you can practice giving your love as well as working to receive love and soak it up as much as possible.  In times of trouble, you can get and give caring compassionate love and in times of goodness, you can do joy and happy love as much as you can and in ordinary times, you can give out a countenance of lovingness everyday.  At least, that is how I see it today.  Now, what do you think?

I hope you will not have a great deal to Bear in your future but, if you do, perhaps what you have just read will help some.  It also might help some others you know or encounter.  So, you could tell them about what you have just read and that might help them too.  If you do, please talk a little about this mini-love-lesson and this site.

As always – Go and Grow with Love

Dr. J. Richard Cookerly

Quotable Question: Is love better seen as something you fall into, or something that falls on you, or as something you give?