Trust & Respect > "Love"

I'm at a stage in life where trust matters way more than love.

Respect is a far more valuable currency than emotion.

Granted, the truest definition of love found in 1 Corinthians 13 is actually a battle stance: permutations and combinations of respect, trust, sacrifice, and endurance.

That's not what we usually mean when we say "I love you."

Our culture has grossly reduced love to mean positive affection and often the desire to sexually consume.

But the time-tested principles of the Bible?

Love is patient, kind, not easily angered, keeps no record of wrongs. It does not seek its own status or reputation; it doesn't envy or boast. It doesn't try to take the light away from others, but rather seeks to amplify it. Love always protects, trusts, hopes, and perseveres. Love doesn't fail.

“Faithless is he that says farewell when the road darkens.” - Tolkien

"I will never leave you nor forsake you."

God says this to His chosen people many times in the Bible, and He remains alongside them in many forms - pillars of fire (calling, instruction), pillars of smoke (conscience, conviction), prophets, brothers in the form of Moses/Aaron, or David/Jonathan.

There are always trials and hardships, desert wanderings, wars, around the times God says this stuff. Why would we need Him and his agents, if the coast was clear and the going was easy? Why would we need each other, or guides, coaches, teammates?

In Revelation, God says to one of His churches that He will "spit them out of my mouth; for they are neither hot nor cold."

Colin O'Brady, holder of many Guinness world records for adventures through harsh terrains such as Antarctica, says that all of his mountaintop experiences, his "tens," joy, love, victory, inspiration, flow, connection, were a result of going through the "ones," of discouragement, isolation, deprivation, anger, desperation. He describes the common "comfortable complacency" of living life in the 4-6 range, where everything is predictable, safe, but slightly miserable, because what's the point? Where are the experiences? Where's the progress?

Are we rushing through our day to day obligations so that we can get to a place where we can finally live? What does that even mean? To live, I believe, means to allow ourselves to actually feel what's happening in service of a better future. To enter in, without distraction. To integrate light and shadow, accepting all facets of ourselves and others, past and present, so that we don't have to avoid anything, and can be where our feet are.

To choose reality.

Not chase an ephemeral hypothetical future.

What does any of this have to do with love versus trust and respect?

Trust and respect take the past and the future into account when making decisions in the present. Trust and respect notice patterns in the people we walk with, do life alongside, and they recognize traits in people that are assets to our future selves - and more importantly, to sending ripples of healing into a hurting world. Trust and respect identify assets to the mission.

Perhaps trust and respect both allow us to have faith and loyalty when circumstances aren't what we wanted. If we've experienced something foundational in the past, we can have faith that that principle, that person, that lesson, will carry forward into a favourable future.

Is this remembering how we facilitate forward movement for ourselves as individuals (knowing which hills to die on and where to plant flags), and in relationships of all kinds (seeing the truth, the potential, the history, the best in others, and holding fast, faithfully believing in it steadfastly enough to call it forth)?

The only way to enact the persevering, enduring, faithful love that 1 Corinthians calls us to is if we trust in the fundamental worth of other human beings - and, crucially, our own. Why?

How can anyone choose anything and follow through on it through difficulty, unless they believe they are worth taking up space, and capable of effecting change around them?

What about envy, boasting, pride? If we have some self respect, we don't need to prove our worth. How do we attain self respect? We must believe God loves us. Well, what does that mean? That God created us for a reason. That He trusts and respects us?

We fundamentally have a need to matter.

To matter? What's that?

To influence the world around us for good.

What's good?

Intrinsically, "the law of God is written on our hearts." Even little children know that helping others is "good," and become extremely upset and concerned when, for example, one of their siblings gets hurt or is bleeding.

We can't matter in the broad scheme of things unless we exit our own clamouring for attainment and status in others' eyes. We need to know that we've already earned our worth simply by the fact that we were born, and then look around us at where there is a need. "He who knows the good he ought to do and does not do it sins."

"Procreation is not the only meaning of life, for then life in itself would become meaningless, and something which in itself is meaningless cannot be rendered meaningful merely by its perpetuation."

Viktor Frankl addresses head-on the paradox that our own worth and meaning cannot be found in merely perpetuating existence. The calling and character, the development, of each individual - myself included - must matter.

Just making a difference for others doesn't matter unless the difference in each of those people actually counts for something.

And yet, meaning is only experienced through self-transcendence. We only "self actualize" when we take on a cause, a service to someone else, an inner mandate to do something outside of ourselves that only we can. We are not closed systems. Those of us that believe stasis and equilibrium - tensionless states - will bring fulfillment, are the most empty of us all. We have all had seasons there.

When are we most alive? When we have a mission. When we are on mission. Challenged, moving forward. Cultivating and enacting the potential in ourselves and others to solve more complex questions and problems as we traverse.

When are we most fulfilled?

When we are partnered with those leaning in to their own sense of calling, mission, and potential, working together to bring some kind of influence to the world around us, be it through a business venture, art project, humanitarian work, raising of children, standing up for those who can't, inspiring people around us at the gym or in social situations.

Again, what does any of this have to do with tossing out the reductionist desire for and definition of "love"?

Fulfillment isn't found in emotion or consumption. It's found in progress, development, and partnership.

Life is war if you're willing to truly live.

Forces everywhere seek to dilute life force in the heart of the individual, to cause harm, to deceive and devour - within and without. We can accept the 4-6 range of predictable boredom. Or, enter in. Show up.

The ones bring us to the tens, if we endure.

Why are military comrades often brothers for the rest of their lives? Partnership in mission.

That's a love that no romance novel could ever touch, because it's forged by commitment, purpose, challenge and endurance. It's fire-tested. Perhaps one wavers, then the other. Sometimes we get disoriented and we drift. Sometimes we have to pause for solo specialized training.

Comrades stop for each other, for themselves, then continue. They both become so much more than they started out as, because they face trials together, internally and externally.

Read 1 Corinthians 13 again with a brotherhood perspective, a community perspective, a family perspective in mind. It's iron-forged loyalty that spans life, loss, valleys, mountaintops, and eternity.

Trust and respect are the fruit of those bonds.

Time doesn't change a thing once you've been through a few firefights and had each other's backs. It collapses in on itself when the mission resumes and iterates. No questions asked; no rehash needed.

With that much evidence of character? The sky is the limit.

Our synergistic actions in the world can matter.

When you know what matters, and who someone is at their deepest core, underneath any layers of change or pain - when you know who you are in a few key areas - you can say to your spouse, child, friend, teammate, or brother:

"I will never leave you nor forsake you."

And you can mean it.