Venipuncture and the Essence of Love – Conclusion

Synthesis

Perhaps the two definitions are not different. Maybe we just are bad judges at what ‘benefit’ is. Indeed, our modern working definitions of ‘relationship’ seem to give us an average of one year of pleasure before it’s used up and we need to move on (slightly longer in ‘marriage’).

Is it really “more blessed to give than to receive”? That is, are we happier when we give to others, or when we get? In a materialistic world, this statement is sheer insanity. Anyone who has truly given something knows the truth of this statement. Even Derek Zoolander knows this is true, “The other day I was thinking about volunteering to help teach underprivileged children to learn how to read. And just thinking about it was the most rewarding experience I've ever had.”

Maybe the best marriage is one around giving. And that means that it doesn’t matter what the other person is doing. If either party is getting more pleasure out of giving than getting, their happiness is independent of the other person. If you get when you give, and you get when you get (instead of just getting when you get), there is no reason not to give. It’s like an easy game theory problem:

On Sacrifice Theory

	(Husband) Give	(Husband) Don’t Give
(Wife) Give	+2/+2	0/+1
(Wife) Don’t Give	+1/0	0/0

On Benefit Theory

	(Husband) Give	(Husband) Don’t Give
(Wife) Give	+1/+1	+1/-1
(Wife) Don’t Give	-1/+1	-1/-1

The jump from this situation to a political system is not that long. An employer and employee:

	(Employer) Pay Well	(Employer) Don’t Pay Well
(Employee) Work Hard	+2/+2	0/+1
(Employee) Don’t Work Hard	+1/0	0/0

Why doesn’t this happen in relationship or the workplace? Because we’re operating under the benefit theory. We think the way we get happiness is getting stuff. Like trying to drive a car on the highway in reverse, we’re doing it wrong. The car has nothing wrong with it; there is just ignorance that can easily be repaired with knowledge.

Conclusion

Jesus says, “Love thy neighbor as thyself.” This, if it requires anything, requires sacrifice. When asked to expound on this, Jesus tells the parable of the Good Samaritan. The Samaritan finds a Jew robbed and beaten, and gives him oil and wine, lets him ride on his own donkey, and then pays for his stay at a first-century hospital (the inn). This is a story of sacrifice. Sacrifice is the essence of love.

If this is true, then we should seek to love and make love abound in every aspect of life. It seems to me that God has arranged the world to permit us to sacrifice for each other. I think that we should order our relationships, our careers and our society after the same pattern. If the essence of love is sacrifice, then we have a lot of work to do in our own lives and in the world.

Part 1, Part 2, Part 3, Part 4

Venipuncture and the Essence of Love – Miscellaneous Implications

Politics

I think most modern people (or at least most of my peers) operate from a Utilitarian framework: the greatest good for the greatest many. It makes The Good into something at least conceptually measurable, appealing to our science instincts. But fundamentally, I think the reason so many of my peers believe in it is because they hold the second definition of love: to benefit maximally. About a third of my generation thinks Socialism is a better economic system than Capitalism. In a Socialist system, benefits (health care, housing, etc.) are universal. It is the State that sacrifices, not the People. And (assuming Socialism worked) this would clearly be the optimal solution. It is a society with the greatest benefit-love. However, with benefit maximized, opportunities for real sacrifice to neighbors are minimized. To maximize sacrifice-love, there needs to be more suffering available to bear, and people need to have more freedom to bear it.

I think I have finally discovered the root of my support for small government. A country with a small government demands that people sacrifice-love one another. It is a dangerous place, and a place exactly as beautiful as the people who reside in it. A big government benefit-loves its people. It is a safe place, and a place that is neither very beautiful nor very ugly.

Medicine

Doctors avoid suffering. We are taught to turn off our emotions because it hurts. We’ll ‘burn out’ if we empathize with patients. A benefit-love for our patients is curing them; no empathy is necessary. If we do not suffer for our patients, then our job is simply a job; we have shown no sacrifice-love. A friend of mine in nursing was too close to a patient in the psychiatry emergency room. The charge nurse told her to keep her distance and to protect herself; she advised my friend to treat the patients like “rabid dogs.” You can benefit-love a rabid dog through cure; you cannot sacrifice-love one.

Problem of Evil

Why is there suffering? This is a profoundly important question that I can only give superficial treatment to here; I recommend that you look at the many other great resources on it (Job from the Bible asks this; contemporary philosopher William Lane Craig gives a good talk on it; Dostoyevsky’s Grand Inquisitor from the Brothers Karamazov also discusses this question). How can God permit suffering? Let us ask an easier question: how can a father permit his child to suffer (say, by needlestick)? He, if he is good, must have some morally justifiable reason for it (like immunization). God, if He is good, must have some morally justifiable reason for it. Since the evaluation of this question requires a full accounting of all people in all time, this is a question we are woefully ill-equipped to answer. This is a point of human ignorance; we cannot draw any logical conclusion from it. We don’t have a complete fossil record and never will but it does not follow that Evolution did not occur; it is valid to fill in the gaps with inference. We can bridge gaps in knowledge by anchoring on things we do know (this is called in science a ‘theory’ and in religion ‘faith’).

One of the theories is that the morally justifiable reason God allows suffering is freewill. God may permit suffering because only by it can humanity have true freewill. Only in a world of suffering can God show His sacrifice-love for us, and only in a world of suffering can humans truly sacrifice-love each other.

Part 1, Part 2, Part 3, Part 4

Venipuncture and the Essence of Love – Relationships

In my last post, I talked about how Christian love was, at its essence, sacrificial. This is in sharp contrast to the common understanding of love which seems to be, at its essence, for the benefit of the other. If love is as Jesus defined it, then it changes everything. The first thing it changes is what is for most people where they will experience the deepest love: the romantic relationship.

This Christian view on love turns relationship on its head, or at least it turns what we’ve been calling relationship on its head (I feel like I’m late to the party on this one; St. Paul seemed to already understand this 2,000 years ago). We Americans believe that relationships (that is, sexual relationships, both “boyfriend/girlfriend” and modern “marriage”) are about love, and love is about pleasure. Both parties get peace/happiness/pleasure by entering the relationship, and so long as that peace/happiness/pleasure endures, so does the relationship. This theory of relationship is supported by data collected by the dating site MyCupid that shows that people of my generation have an average of about 1 new sexual partner per year from the time they’re 18.

On the American definition of love, Biblical passages on marriage like Ephesians 5 sound terrible: “Wives, submit yourselves unto your own husbands, as unto the Lord… Husbands, love your wives, even as Christ also loved the church, and gave himself for it” (Eph 5:22,25). Why should the wife have to submit when the husband only has to love?

But what if love was not pleasure? What does a marriage entered into under Christian terms look like? It is not about pleasure (or at least not directly), it’s about suffering and sacrifice. Suffering and sacrifice are not things that must be endured for the love. They are the love. Today, suffering is a red flag, it’s a sign that we are in the wrong relationship; we try to minimize our own suffering. Christians would rather forget about the Godly marriage of Hosea who was commanded to marry a prostitute named Gomer, and stay married to her while she stayed a prostitute. For that matter, we want to forget about Christ, who did the same thing except we, the Church, are the prostitute.

On Christ’s definition of love, the Ephesians passage takes on an entirely different meaning: women have to serve men; men really have to serve women. CS Lewis explains, “The husband who gets this verse is the one whose marriage most feels like a crucifixion…This verse is most embodied in the husband whose wife receives most and gives the least.”

Then how do we pick our partners? Could we maximize suffering by picking the least compatible person possible, a person who hated us? Would that lead to happiness?

To answer that question, I think I need the council of St. Ignatius. Christians in the first and second century died violent deaths with such joy that it was inexplicable to the world. This witness was so dramatic that it became a major factor in the conversion of the brainy Justin Martyr (whose given last name gives some clue as to the fate he himself would later ‘suffer’). People were legitimately asking, “If you like death and martyrdom so much, why don’t you actively seek it out, or commit suicide?” Ignatius, on his way to his own martyrdom, wrote that it is something that must be borne, but not sought. As a warning, he tells the story of another Christian who volunteered for martyrdom, but apostatized at the moment of truth. He denied Christ; he chickened out. So we should not seek martyrdom, neither in the lions' den nor in the bedroom.

So the question remains. How do we pick our partners? Well, how does Christ pick the Church? It seems arbitrary, following no pattern that we can understand. We, the Church, certainly aren’t intrinsically beautiful; we have nothing to offer, neither dowry nor wealth. Contrary to all reason, Jesus chooses us nonetheless. What does that sound like? Could that be anything but romance?

Surely all of our desires can honor God when used properly, even (perhaps especially) romance. Romantic feelings seem to follow no rules, pairing up people that really have no rational business with each other. In a culture without arranged marriages, I think this is as good a pairing rule as any. The important part is not who you pick, but how willing you are to sacrifice for the person you’ve picked.

Sacrificial love completely transforms relationship. It’s no longer about maximizing your own benefit, but your own sacrifice to your partner. If this is love, it does not need to be bi-directional; one partner can always give and never receive, and still have love. But of course, the most loving relationship is one where both parties are sacrificing completely to each other. How often would we cheat on each other if our eyes were perpetually fixed on sacrifice instead of pleasure? How many arguments would be averted? How many tears of sadness prevented? How many more tears of joy would we shed? How happy we would be if we stopped obsessing so much about pleasure, and thought more about love, that is, about sacrifice!

Part 1, Part 2, Part 3, Part 4

Venipuncture and the Essence of Love – Introduction

[This is a working "paper." I’m not sure all this (or the connected posts) is right, and would really love feedback on it]

Today we were practicing drawing blood on each other (everybody’s favorite day in medical school). My partner (who shall remain nameless), had trouble hitting a vein, and so I encouraged them to try again. And again. I now have 13 holes in my skin.

The person felt terrible. Part of it was pride (not being rock star doctors after 11 months of medical school instruction is infuriating for most of us here at Stanford). But part of it, and I would venture to say most of it, was because of the pain that the person caused me. I said that I was happy to be of service. And I really meant it. I was legitimately happier after the session; I was in a significantly more pleasant mood having served the person in this way (and, indirectly, a patient who would not have to get poked). The pain was significant, but the pleasure in service was far greater. But why? What theory of pleasure/pain was I working under? I’m no masochist; pain did not directly become pleasure. I searched for something encouraging to say. I said, “It’s an important part of my religion to love my neighbor as myself, and there aren’t too many opportunities to serve my classmates.” I’m not sure it helped much.

Later in the day, I thought about what I said. Why was it that I connected love with service, and service with pain? I thought of Jesus’ words: “No greater love hath a man than this, that he lay down his life for his friends” (Jhn 15:13). Christ was no hypocrite; He gave up His life for us day by day in Palestine, and then literally, dying on the cross. But why is that the greatest love? Why isn’t it, “No greater love hath a man than this, that he benefit his friends maximally”? Why was suffering so connected to the Christian definition of love? This is a really important question that I do not have a good answer for yet but will be praying and thinking about in the days, weeks and probably years to come.

The why is still a mystery to me. But the what is clear: love as Christ defines and demonstrates it, is sacrifice. But if that is true, it changes everything. Everyone agrees with “love thy neighbour as thyself,” but the statement has entirely different meanings if love is sacrifice or if love is benefit. We all seek love, and to a lesser extent, we seek to love in relationships and in society. Jesus’ flip of the definition of love threatens to change everything that we thought we knew. Over the next few posts, I’ll discuss some of these implications.

Part 1, Part 2, Part 3, Part 4

Why you can’t believe in Dandelions (Part II) - True Love

I thought this would be a simple task, but it's turning out to be a lot longer than I first expected. So what was going to be a 2-part post will be significantly longer. I'll post as I finish sections.

In case you missed the first part, I'm claiming that a Christian worldview is most consistent with Humanity. That is, it allows for things which are integral to our being human. Belief in Please, Soup Kitchens, Science, True Love, and Dandelions are all explained best by Christianity. Naturalism, the belief that nature is all there is and all basic truths are truths of nature, offers an inadequate explanation for all these.

And without further ado, here is the first part.

True Love

Therefore shall a man leave his father and his mother, and shall cleave unto his wife: and they shall be one flesh.

– God, Genesis 2:24

You have ravished my heart, my treasure, my bride. I am overcome by one glance of your eyes, by a single bead of your necklace. How sweet is your love, my treasure, my bride! How much better it is than wine! Your perfume is more fragrant than the richest of spices.

– Solomon, Song of Solomon 4:9-10

That what seemd fair in all the World, seemd now
Mean, or in her summ'd up, in her containd
And in her looks, which from that time infus'd
Sweetness into my heart, unfelt before,
And into all things from her Aire inspir'd
The spirit of love and amorous delight.

-Milton, Paradise Lost V:472-477

My bounty is as boundless as the sea, my love as deep; the more I give to thee, the more I have, for both are infinite.

-Shakespeare, Romeo and Juliet, Act II, Scene II

There is no basis for true love or romance apart from God.

You can’t believe in love. Or at least in the way that it has been understood by humanity.

As an Naturalist, all you can believe about love is chemicals. Never mind about all the human things that happen when one is in love. The risk and terror of asking a girl out? Chemicals. The inexpressible joy of relationship? Chemicals. Lovesickness? Chemicals. How you felt after your first kiss? Nothing but chemicals. The terribly cheesy poetry in love letters? Chemicals for sure.

The theme of romance has inspired the greatest poets and authors throughout history. From the love of Perris and Helen through Romeo and Juliet and continuing today in terrible supermarket novels, we have been enraptured by this idea of love and romance. It has inspired the greatest works of our race. And we want to say that we’re on the verge of the answer? For the great observers of the human conditions (playwrights and authors), love was a transcendent, and only through their wonderful ability can we understand a glimmer of it. Romeo’s words resonate in some special way with those of us who have looked across a room to see the most beautiful woman we thought ever could be.

But as it turns out, it’s not a transcendent. It’s chemicals. Your happy relationship? That was just good deterministic luck and the action of chemicals. Neither of you really had a choice in the matter. There’s a bit of work left to be done as to which unpronounceable chemicals it is, and when one bounces off the other. But that’s the answer.

And we’re supposed to be satisfied with it? You know what love is. All 6.5 billion of us do. And it’s not what’s written about in scientific papers. Shakespeare’s a lot closer to being right. Who are these ‘scientists’ who would contradict the observations of the rest of the race, including the precedent of 3000 years of publications supporting an opposite view?

It is utterly un-scientific to explain away 6.5 billion (plus all the dead observer who wrote about it) without powerfully compelling evidence. And what is the evidence? Because we know chemicals do some of the things in the human experience. Therefore they must also explain all the things. Convincing?

But what is Christian love? It is a major theme of the Bible, and many words have been written on it since then. Christian love is that which we received from God, the ability to choose to care more about another than we do for ourselves. Being from God, it is higher than just another biological instinct. And love depends on freewill; we must of our own volition choose to love for it to have meaning. But all of my rambling cannot compare to Paul’s wonderful description: “Love is patient, love is kind. It does not envy, it does not boast, it is not proud. It is not rude, it is not self-seeking, it is not easily angered, it keeps no record of wrongs. Love does not delight in evil but rejoices with the truth. It always protects, always trusts, always hopes, always perseveres. Love never fails…” (1Cr 13:4-8).

If you allow for God and souls, you can have love. Love remains transcendent, something above us which like the stars which we look towards, but its transcendence is founded in God. We receive the holy gift of love from Him. And regardless of our acknowledgment of the gift, we are able to express it and experience it with the will that we each have. When humans make love, it is not two animals procreating by instinct; it is two people uniting in body and soul.

When I choose to ask a girl out, I choose. My soul, and the freedom it has, chooses to love. And it is in this way that love becomes real; it is in this way that love rises above instinct. And it is this which we have all felt, some higher thing, sitting on top of our instinct.

We would not express our humanity if we were driven by chemicals alone. It is only when we transcend the physical that we express our humanity. It is when we choose whom we love that we act as humans.