Love, when betrayed, keeps on loving.
(source: (1) Love, when betrayed, keeps on loving. – Philip Irving Mitchell)
A friend and highly esteemed colleague has been posting a series of meditations on the character of Love, a way of re-calibrating thoughts in a time of trouble.
This one required a slightly longer reflection on my part, so it seemed worth reposting here:
Here we are going to have to parse meanings of “love.” Right?
Engaged persons should certainly be the sort who love each other in a fairly committed manner–else the wedding planning seems rather out of place. And yet, in a case that adds up to “betrayal,” it is hard for me to think that one would recommend continuing in the form of love, the relationship, the bond not yet rendered indissoluble, that is an engagement to be wed.
Here, we would encounter several paths. The betrayer may well be proving that real charity, the bond most fully realized in the bond between God and His People and most plainly manifest between husband and wife, is essentially a state including two people and not an act arising in one. (There is a Trinitarian matter, here, and also a Creator/creature one, to be sifted.) No amount of wanting-to-love from one creature to another (at least) makes up for a lack of mutual disposition to friendship.
Also, we may be encountering a conflict of levels of human loving–the betrayer may be functioning on a lower level, for example. Possibly both have not yet realized a level of love appropriate to their relationship, and the betrayal proves this. Also, it is possible that charity may require abandoning one bond of love in order to realize love more perfectly–the betrayal may demonstrate that this love is not proper to this pair, and one or both may respond by abandoning that love for a more perfect charity.
Finally, there is the question of whether “love” is a durable bond in all uses–even all common and intense uses. After all, many things we “love” are not really capable of the mutuality required for charity, for true friendship. In this category I would include one’s nation-state, which unlike a family or neighborhood is not really the sort of thing one can have a durable bond of love with.
We may have a strong sort of attachment and well-wishing, but when betrayal becomes routine, we should probably prefer charity to dysfunctional “love” in inappropriate pairings.