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?

Love Rejoices In The Truth

Mini-Love-Lesson  #248

Note: This is the 11th in our series What Is Love?: A New Testament Reply based on Paul’s description of love and informed by discoveries in relational science

Synopsis: Here is provocative help in examining your relationship with truth as it applies to issues of you and love, examining your inner and outer truth sources, the genius of truth versus wrong instead of right, and helping yourself and your love relationships through truth rejoicing.

You and Truth

What is your relationship with truth like?  Can you be truthful with yourself in answering that question?  If you can, the answers to the following queries may both help and surprise you.

Deep down in, do you usually really want the truth?  Do you usually really give the truth as best you know it to be?  Do you sometimes hide from the truth?  How are you with honestly admitting the truth when you are shown to be wrong?  Could you be one of those people who is usually quite sure you are right and others are not?  Can you face difficult truths well?

How important is accuracy to you?  What about you and revealing the complete truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth; and when is that not a good idea to you?  How are you with both giving and receiving white lies, embellishments, spin, avoiding hurt feelings and slanting the truth in your favor?  Are you good at lovingly being truly magnanimous (seeing both sides) as differing and disagreeable truths are presented to you?

You, Truth and Love

In love relationships, and especially in romantic love, truth has been largely but subtly discredited and, in a sense, quite frequently taught against.  So many romantic love stories are tales of deceit and subterfuge done for the sake of succeeding at love (see “Lies And Love”).  No small number of books exist about how to use deception to attract a mate, catch a mate, keep a mate, control a mate and even cheat on a mate and not get caught (see “Betrayal in Love and Handling It Well”).  They all tend to ignore the super important love question “can something real be built out of something false?”.

The evidence for truth in love being necessary is pretty strong and that is true not only for romance but for love relationships with kids, friends, family, comrades and even with oneself.  I know that in my long career of having counseled thousands of couples, families and alternate lifestyle relationships, I have seen significant lies and falsehoods work better than truth – maybe only four times (see “Compersion: A Newly Identified Emotion of Love?”).  I hope that you at least suspect that in the long run truth, even hard truth, mixed with love works far better than falsehood.

Let’s look at love and truth in your life.  Are you more or less truthful to the people you love?  Do you think they are mostly truthful with you?  Do you think your way of treating them encourages or discourages your loved ones telling you their truth?  Do you see giving your truth as a way of giving your love?  If you tell a hard to hear truth do you mix it with love i.e. gentle tones, caring facial expressions, affectionate touch, comforting gestures, etc.?

Are you prone to watering down some truths, making it sound better than it actually is or perhaps seeing it through rose colored glasses?  Is being unnecessarily blunt, abrupt, brutal, harsh, mean, cruel and sometimes using truth as a weapon to hurt or be harmful in your repertoire?

Paul told us to rejoice in the truth.  Do you do that?  Paul seems to indicate real love motivates us toward truthfulness and truth works against wrongfulness and toward doing right.  What are your thoughts about that?

So, even though your culture and perhaps your upbringing may have taught you against it, are you good and getting better at doing love with truth?  Do you want that skill and to be good at it?

What Is Your Truth about Truth?

Truth, for us humans, is a whole lot more complicated than a lot of people seem to think.  It would appear that about truth we all “see through a glass darkly” as the Bible says.  Arguably, for us to rejoice in truth, it will help to have a fair understanding of truth and its complications.  Here is an example.  In an area called phenomenological psychology, experiments show that no two people ever have precisely or exactly the same perception, concept, or truth about anything.  Different people mean different understandings of everything.  So, if you go far enough into exactitude, you will find diversity not sameness.  I suggest That Is a Truth To Rejoice About because it means sharing our diverse truths can be ever so intriguing, enriching, enlightening and bonding if we do it with enough love.  Otherwise, it could just mean trouble.

Who and what do you trust to give you the truth?  Where do you suppose, what you call truth, comes from?  Do you think you really have trustworthy ways to discern truth from falsehood?  It would appear Paul sees Deity as wanting us to, via love, seek the truth, find the truth, live the truth, see truth as opposed to the wrong, and rejoice with and in the truth.  I find it interesting that, as usually translated, Paul did not juxtapose right from wrong but instead used the word for truth.  In philosophy, truth often has been linked with concepts of right, goodness, justice, beauty, fairness, well-being, virtue, righteousness, etc.  Ergo, is this indicative of the truth being more important than being right?  That certainly is not true for some people.  How about for you?

In your life, do you think truth usually is easy or hard to ascertain?  Have your ways of deciding what is true and what is not worked well for you or not?  Are you open to finding new and perhaps better ways of discovering and working with truth in your life?  How about in your love life?

Inner and Outer Truth Sources

We all can be said to have available two sources of what we decide is our source of truth.  One can be called our inner source.  This can encompass our reasoning, IQ, insightfulness, gut reactions, expanse of knowledge, type and form of habitual cognition, accessibility to our subconscious, emotional proclivities and more.  Some rely on this inner source almost exclusively and others as little as possible.

Our second source can be called outer and it may include popular consensus, conformity pressure, authority figures, religion, preponderances of facts and data, science, global awareness, philosophical frameworks, historical trends, parents and family, status figures, influential charismatics, friendships, spouses, lovers and news media, etc.  Some rely on one or more outer sources almost exclusively and others hardly at all.  How about you?  Do you know yourself well enough to know what you really are relying on and how much you are counting on that as your prime outer sources?

Now, factor this in.  Some psychological research points to most people depending on a rather undependable source for deciding what is true and not true.  That source is what their subconscious impulses, conditioning and emotions nudge them toward believing about what is or is not true.  This can enable quick decisions but not necessarily good ones.

It turns out our subconscious sense often is heavily influenced by how it has been programmed in childhood to guide a person.  It also is influenced by our psycho-neurobiology.  For example, who becomes your first mate choice is thought to be mostly a non-conscious impulse driven choice for the majority of people.  Scientific research predominantly points to your prevailing gender preference, psychologically and biologically, mostly to be coming from your genetics.  This also can be true even for some of your political leanings and vacation preferences.  To what degree those things are true for individuals varies as does how much those things are affected by psycho-social factors.  Reason and facts often have very little to do with a great many of the choices we make unless we train ourselves to give them high importance (see “What Your Brain Does with Love – Put Simply”).

Right and Wrong Versus Truth

What we humans call right and wrong is very problematic.  That is because so much of what is called right in one culture is called wrong in another.  The same can be said of different times in history.  Furthermore, a great many things called wrong in one era become either right in another era or of no particular consequence one way or the other.  In certain places and times not so long ago, a member of royalty loving a commoner was considered a scandalous wrongdoing.  Actually this is still forbidden and even punishable by death in a few places.  The same is true for love between people of two different religions.  However, the prohibitions against interracial love and non-his and her standard gender love still exist but are fading or are under attack all over the world.  Love itself is becoming the truth that is important rather than the classification’s status in which that love is done.

Perhaps this is the genius of using the term “truth” juxtaposed to the word “wrong” and instead of the word “right” in Paul’s teachings about love.  One way I see this goes like the following.  If we use healthfulness as the standard for arriving at what is right, we might have a much greater possibility of developing a far wider consensus about what we view as right and wrong.  That in turn perhaps could at least reduce some of the contentious and destructive disagreements about who is and what is right or wrong going on in large and small relationship struggles all over today’s world.  Arguably and in a sort of haphazard way, that very thing seems actually to be something of a slowly spreading trend.  There is reason to suspect Compassionate Love (see “Compassionate Love, A Big Sign of True Love?”) and what is healthful, both individually and collectively, are increasingly a mutually emerging goal of people in a great many different places around our planet.  Wouldn’t that be a truth to rejoice in?  It seems likely that Paul and also perhaps Moses might concur. 

Perhaps thinking along these lines may be of help in your own personal life.  It has for me and for others I know.

A “Best” Translation?

There are well over 20 English translations of the Bible and other partial and in the works translations that exist.  Here we are dealing with what Paul wrote as “sugchairei de te aletheeia” interpreted here as “love rejoices with the truth”.  Some other translations variously read “love takes pleasure in the flowering of the truth”, “is full of joy when the truth is spoken”, “joyfully sides with the truth”, “rejoices whenever truth wins out” and a favorite of mine “forsooth it (love)  joyeth with truth”.

Eight translations read “love rejoices in the truth” and eleven as “love rejoices with the truth”.  There are others with minor variations of those two.  Remember, all translations can be used for studying and pondering what Paul hoped readers would understand from this 11th precept on love.

Rejoicing with Truths

Rejoicing, perhaps with loved ones, as you discover new truths and as you hear about others’ discoveries and understandings can be ever so enriching.  Rejoicing also can help you plant memories of what has been discovered or understood, as well as motivate further searching for more truths.  Rejoicing together with loved ones helps love bonds grow as does lovingly exploring, sharing, discussing and even disagreeing about sundry discoveries and understandings.  Yet, there are some issues and concerns to look at.

What do you do if you come across a new discovery or fact that differs from what you thought was true?  Do you get upset, deny ignore, denounce, work to disprove, or what?  Or do you get intrigued, want to look into it further, see it as a challenge for integrating into your compendium of knowledge, regard it as an anomaly to be tolerated but not unduly troubled by, or what?  Can you perhaps have fun with it?

What do you do if, from a loved one, you hear something indicating their truth does not coincide with yours?  Will you be lovingly magnanimous seeking to really understand their understandings, as well as your loved ones personal feelings about the matter?  Bare in mind, we imperfect humans seem to manage only imperfect understandings i.e. “see through a glass darkly”.  We also delightedly can learn there always is more to learn about everything, even contradictory truths.

How are you at handling bad truth and scary truth like a cancer diagnoses or your most dearly beloved doesn’t want you in their life anymore?  Do you get busy checking it out to see if it is really true, look for what you can do about this bad or scary truth, get some help in dealing with it, seek to understand it more deeply and learn from it, or instead of those ways, fall into one form of dysfunction or another and stay stuck there.

How are you and handling good and happy truth?  Do you let yourself really enjoy good truths, share them with others, linger with them, fully soak them up and let them nourish you as you celebrate positive truths?  Do you let good truths inspire, energize and motivate you?  I hope so, because that is what they are good for, along with “upper” feeling truths being able to trigger a lot of health-making responses in our neurobiology.  It turns out rejoicing is really good for you and when shared it is good for your love relationships.

One More Thing – share these ideas with some others and while you’re at it, we would be pleased if you would recommend this site to them.  Remember, it’s all about helping real and healthy love-relating and it’s free, totally free.

As always – Go and Grow with Love

Dr. J. Richard Cookerly

Quotable Question – When you give your truth, do you also give your love?

Anti-Love Myth # 2: You Will Have Eyes Only for Me

Synopsis: This mini-love-lesson starts with some shock and dismay examples; goes on to examples of the ‘totally opposite’; then asks some intimate questions; gives intimate and surprising answers; discusses unnecessary breakups; and ends with ideas of what to do if this love myth is giving you trouble.

Examples of Shock and Dismay

Angela crashed into despair!  She just had discovered porn on her fiancé’s computer. Along with her shock and dismay her self-esteem was blown away by this revelation.  She was sure that if her man wanted to look at other women it must mean he did not really love her.  It also must mean her looks were insufficient and inadequate to hold her lover’s interest and keep him attracted.  She wondered how she could have been so gullible and naïve as to believe her fiancé when he told her he “ had eyes only for her”.

Bradford first became furious, then hurt and then confused after he found his new wife reading a trashy, super-sexual romance novel and sexually pleasuring herself.  He lamented that he had thought only he could get her ‘turned on’.  He wondered, was she secretly a ‘bad woman’ and not ‘good’ like he had thought?  Had she purposely deceived him?  Did she really not love him?  Had he married the wrong woman?  Previously Bradford was sure women were different from men, and a woman who loved him would “have eyes only for him”.

Caroline intimately revealed to Derek, her lover, that she wanted him to take her to a nudist beach because she wanted to see naked men and their “special parts” which “secretly fascinated” her.  Derek couldn’t handle it and broke up with her knowing that he had to have a woman that would “have eyes only for him” and his special parts.

Eleanor and Flynn got into big fights every time they went out in public because she repeatedly caught him secretly ogling other females.  Flynn explained he couldn’t help it and Eleanor accused him of being a sex addict, and not really loving her because if he did he would “have eyes only for her”.

Those Totally Opposite

Contrast the above situations with these.  Helen described feeling really intimately close and wonderfully naughty when her husband was able to tell her about his sex fantasies concerning other females.  She began pointing out sexy looking women in crowds and asking him what he imagined when he saw them.  Then he started doing the same with her which led to them rushing home to have all sorts of sexy times together.

Isaac bragged that he knew he really had a special wife when early in their marriage she got him  subscriptions to Playboy and Penthouse magazines, and they began looking at the sexy pictures together.  Later they got into Internet couples porn.  Isaac was sure that helped he and his wife be more emotionally close and intimate than many couples achieve.

Wanda advised her friends that in her opinion “a man who doesn’t look and lust at lots of different women isn’t a real man and, therefore, wasn’t worth having”.

Kevin explained that he discovered his wife was very sexual when she shared her orgy dreams with him.  Sometimes they role-played the orgy dreams, each acting like they were various other people, some of whom they actually knew.

Intimate Questions

How is it that one woman loses her self-confidence when her guy looks at other women, while another feels more intimately special and connected to her guy when he shares doing the same thing?  Why is it one guy gets angry when his wife enjoys looking at other men, while another guy gets turned on by that?  Why does one couple grow closer when they openly lust for others while another couple breaks up over this sort of thing?

Please note:  In this mini-love-lesson about a love myth we are discussing ‘looking’ and ‘sharing’, ‘not acting upon’ the lusty thoughts with someone outside the couple relationship.

Intimate And Surprising Answers

One answer to the above questions comes from the world of ‘positive psychology and psychotherapy’.  As people develop healthy self-love, self appreciation, self-esteem and self-confidence they come to trust their own attraction power more, and more.  Consequently, they are not much threatened with the fear of a lover being attracted away to someone else.  If it were to happen, their solid sense of being attractive and worthy helps them know they would tend to attract new, quality lovers, if they want to.

Some, more psycho-pathologically oriented, posit the ‘issue of projection’ to answer these questions.  Sometimes what we see in others is actually what is more true of ourselves. Fearing someone will be attracted away or cheat because of looks or other attraction issues may mean the one having the fear might do the same thing.  They project onto another what could be secretly true of themselves.

The social sciences offer another approach to answering these questions.  There is evidence suggesting it’s ‘all in the culture and family influences’ that get inside our heads as we grow up.  If you are brought up believing “my lover will have eyes only for me” you may be severely disappointed if it doesn’t work out that way.  If, however, your upbringing teaches you something like “looks do not determine love”, your lover looking with lust at others is likely not to mean so much to you.  Were you to be brought up in a culture that says “looking is part of the fun and to be shared with your love-mate” you probably would look forward to it.

We have the brain sciences to thank for providing the most recent answer to these types of questions.  Brain functioning evidence points to some very intriguing facts.  It seems that most men, and quite a few women, are neurologically ‘hardwired’ to enjoy looking at a variety of sexy appearing and acting people whenever they can.  That has nothing to do with love or commitment.  It’s just a natural, automatic, neurologically-caused phenomenon.  Apparently more women than men are auditorily or tactically, sexually stimulated, so for them the sounds of voices, the spoken word and various kinds of touch will be noticed more than good looks.

Unnecessary Breakups

Sadly a lot of relationships breakup over the “you look at others” issue.  It appears that highly, visually-oriented people will look at others they find attractive, no matter what.  It seems it’s just in their nature to do so.  By itself this behavior is not a threat to a relationship.  What is a threat is the interpretation that ‘looking’ behavior gets.  If the interpreter is insecure about their own attraction power, the interpretation is likely to be negative and fear-based.  That, in turn, probably will cause relationship difficulties.  With more self security and ‘owning’ one’s okayness, things usually get better.  If the person doing the looking tries to hide it, lies about it, promises not to do it again but does, things in the relationship are likely to get worse.

What to Do

If you are upset because your love-mate ‘looks’ at others, maybe it’s you and your relationship that needs some help.  So get some!   If your love-mate has trouble because you are ‘looking’ and that’s leading to relationship difficulties, be kind and loving about your love-mate’s possible insecurity.  Then go get some help.  We can de-program and re-program and get past this sort of love myth problem, and usually it’s faster with good help.

As always – Go and Grow with Love

Dr. J. Richard Cookerly

♥ Love Success Question If you have a ‘looking’ issue, what is your attitude about getting the coaching help that can come with relationship counseling?

Related posts:

1. Anti-Love Myth # 1: True Love Means You’ll Know What to Do
2. Anti-Love Myth # 3: Your First Love Is The One You Are Meant To Be With
3. A Romantic Myth That Kills Love
4. The Anti-Love Forces Are Out to Get You
5. Touch Only with Love: an Anti-Violence Tool 

Love Does Not Rejoice At Wrongfulness Or Wrongdoing

Mini-Love-Lesson  #247

Synopsis: Exploring the opposing dynamics of love and the wrong together affect us and our love relationships; even clusters of  wrongness; the controversy over love as a cause of wrongdoing; the provocative relevance of Paul’s 10th point on love; ever-changing ideas of wrongdoing; the rejoice factor and using this knowledge for better love relating.

Love Versus Wrong

Love is against wrong!  That is the simplest way to put it.  Wrongness in all of its many forms and love (especially “agape” love) are in opposition to one another.  Therefore, they are not rightly seen as causative, supportive of, or cooperative with one another.  At least that is how this discernment of Paul’s10th tenant on love would lead us to understand.

Love As a Source of Wrong and Wrongdoing

There are those that disagree about love being the enemy of wrong and wrongdoing.  They see love as a great source of wrongs such as crimes of passion, acts of vengeance, pathological jealousy, a trigger of obsessive/compulsive dysfunction, destructive dependency, gender oppression, much toxic depression/anxiety and many cases of excessive relationship agony.

A counter argument to those who think this way is that they do not understand healthy, real love at all, and/or they have it confused with various forms of false love (see “Ever Think Seriously About Real and False Love?”).  There also is a scriptural based argument.  The quote “God is love” is cited and then it is reasoned real love (i.e. God’s nature) cannot be the progenitor of wrongness.  Who is right?  To help figure that out let’s take a quick broad look at this thing called “wrong” and it’s relationship to love.

Love Versus Wrongdoing.

As we are informed by Paul, Love is against doing wrong!  That too is a very simple way to say it.  More comprehensively, real love can be said to be against people doing wrong to anyone, including self or to anything, to supporting wrongdoing by anyone and to assisting and/or promoting wrong action by anyone and everyone- always.  The problem is there is great disagreement about what actually is doing wrong.  Added to that is all the disagreement about what is more wrong and less wrong, and when is something wrong and when is it not, plus the question are some things wrong for some and not others.  There also is debate over what are the different kinds of wrongness and wrongdoing encompassed by Paul’s teaching and are there types of wrongness not included in Paul’s statements on wrongness (see “Lies and Love”).

Now Add Translation Ponderments and Wonderments

Interpretations and translations have, do and will continue to come in sundry variations.  This is due to the ever-changing and living nature of language.  This may be especially true for our highly dynamic and now worldwide use of English.

Instead of the English words wrong and wrongfulness, some interpret Paul’s Greek “ou chai epi te adikia” to variously mean, not wrong but unrighteousness, wickedness, inequity, injustice, evil, sin, etc.  One translation even puts it as” love does not revel when others grovel”.  However, many contemporary scholars seem to agree that for attaining a fairly accurate understanding of what Paul meant in current English, the terms wrong and wrongfulness will do rather well, hence their use here.

What Is Wrongfulness Actually?

Have you ever contemplated what is involved and encompassed by the word wrong?  Simply put, it means not right, incorrect and/or mistaken.  It also means evil, sinful, unjust unethical, etc.  Paul’s teaching holds that wrong and wrongfulness are not of or from real love, but then from what?  The old answer was from Satan.  A more psychological-based answer is that wrongness perhaps comes from lovelessness and/or that which is anti – love, (i.e. indifference, hate, etc.).

So as not miss anything important, let us look at wrongfulness broadly.  If getting happy or pleased about any type or kind of wrongness is not a component or result of healthy, real love, it seems wise to develop some understanding of the types and kinds of wrongness we might have to deal with in life.  Wrongness is actually a rather complicated topic.  For a greater comprehension, I suggest you take a few minutes to scan the following seven groups of words.  Each is related to different kinds of wrongfulness for us to be concerned about.

? WRONGFULNESS & WRONGDOING ?

Term Clusters:
I. Being bad, unfair, shameful, sinful, unethical, wicked, reprehensible
II. Being untrue, false, fake, fallacious, dishonest, counterfactual, misleading, deceptive
III. Being incorrect, mistaken, in error, erroneous, inaccurate, invalid, misguided, ungrounded, inexact
IV. Being unjust, unfair, criminal, felonious, illegal, lawless
V. Being bigoted, intolerant, narrowminded, prejudice, extremist, close minded
VI. Being schadenfreude (i.e. pleased about others mishaps, misfortunes, losses, injuries, illnesses, etc.)
VII. Being cruel, malicious, sadistic, vicious, indifferent, uncaring, hateful
What others you can think of ?


It would seem that with a truly and fully loving orientation, real love would have us be not rejoicing but unhappy about each of the above and, when possible, have us acting to reverse them.  It also would seem likely Paul was pretty much indicating that.  Basically and more succinctly, yet still broadly, wrongdoing can be seen as encompassing most things unduly hurtful, most things harmful, and most things mistaken.

The Ever-Changing Understanding of Wrongfulness

It is to be noted that what is called wrong varies greatly all over the world and throughout history.  Not only that but many things are simultaneously considered both very right and very wrong depending on your cultural and/or societal frames of reference and functioning.  For instance in certain places it is wrong not to murder your daughter if she comes to love a person not within your cultural/religious frame of functioning.  Similar to so-called honor killings, revenge murders also sometimes are semi-justified in a large number of even modern Western world social spheres.

The degree of wrongness something gets judged to have is very different in various places.  Publicly chewing and spitting out gum on the ground in Singapore can bring chastisement, a fine and even jail.  Acting homosexually loving or sexual in more than 70 countries is illegal and in some places can even result in execution.  However, in 26 nations homosexual marriage is legal.  In most of the remaining countries, to one degree or another, it is increasingly accepted (see “What About “Bi” Love?”).

Sometimes what is called quite wrong evolves into being called right or even becoming of no significance at all.  Most of the modern world is now largely unconcerned about double religion marriage though that is still punishable by death in a shrinking number of lands.  Bi-racial love and royalty/commoner love relationships, in most places, are no longer illegal, shameful or scandalous like they once were.

Right and Wrong in Love Relating

Slowly in much of the world, that you love is becoming far more important than who you love and the categories that they are placed in.  That you have love is becoming more significant than whether or not you have societal approval for the labeled form in which you do your love.  Good, healthy love relating is being increasingly recognized as the substantive core that matters while gender classification becomes somewhat more peripheral. Link “Gender Diversity Love”  Hence, it is that love and being really and healthfully loving along with being really and healthfully loved that is becoming more right than is official marriage, progenitor genetics, social propriety, legal authorization or formal religious sanctification.  It is not that these things still do not still matter to many but that they matter less than does healthy, real love and love relating (see “Throuple Love, A Growing Worldwide Way of the Future?”).  It seems it is being more and more recognized by some that there is a deep, natural inadequacy or wrongness to loveless living.  It is a sort of wrong, in a healthfulness sense, and in an actualization or fulfilling our potential’s sense.  Consider these two ideas “the more we do healthy, real love the more right we do healthy, real life, and conversely “the more we do not do love the more, in a sense wrong we do life”.

A Core Concept for Rightness in Love-Relating

Remember this core concept for love success “Love feelings come naturally.  Love-relating takes learning”.  From this concept, we conclude things can be wrong in the sense of making a mistake for us to remain love-relating ignorant or without available love and love-relating knowledge.  Therefore, what you are doing right now is doing right by reading, thinking and learning about love.  Congratulations, and hurrah for you.  Do allow yourself some delight about that (see “Love Is Natural --Love Relating You Learn”).

Paul must have recognized the importance of learning about love.  Why else would he have worked at telling us about what love is and is not.  He wanted us to do love well and wrote the often quoted 16 points to help us with that.  So, now learn some more.

It is thought that at least half of all attempts at love-relating fail.  Another fourth never get close to their potential for success.  This may be true for love relationships of all kinds not just for couples love.  Parent/child, family, deep friendships, comrade love, self-love, pet love, etc. – they all count.  By the way, some are beginning to think, percentage-wise, comradeship love may be the most succeeded at form of love, others think it is pet love, while many more suspect romantic love to be the least successful.  What is your guess?

Why?  Possibly because a lot of couples seem to do a lot of love-relating wrong or not nearly as well as they could if they learned and practiced more about the how-to’s of healthy, real love-relating (see “Destroyers of Love: The 7 Big “Ds” Most Likely to Ruin Your Love Relationships”).  That of course (similar to Paul’s points perhaps) is what this site is all about.  So, we would like it if you would tell some people about this site and talk over your ideas concerning what you have just read.

As always – Go and Grow with Love

Dr. J. Richard Cookerly

♥ Love Success Question: It is said “we learn better what we teach” so, what part of what you have just read might you most like teach somebody and how will you do that?