Love Ethics

People want to know how to effect change, especially with Love Ethics. We all want to experience deeper, more-fulfilling relationships now, and it’s hard to wait. But we must understand what must change before we know how it changes. This means understanding the Framework of Love Ethics.

Love Ethics becomes confusing. It is, after all, an effort to teach God’s wisdom about love as revealed in scripture. As with anything complex, a framework is an essential way to grapple with all the details.

“Grappling” describes the learning difficulty for Love Ethics. Even advanced Christians struggle understanding it, so it requires patient and careful consideration to apply God’s love. Much of the material published in the NeoZine Love Ethics Series is an attempt to put flesh and bones on these abstract principles. But understanding requires seeing with new eyes, and answers from Love Ethics are elusive and laborious. For three years Dr. Ankenman taught us in Columbus largely through discussing examples of his interactions with various patients, and he took this laborious approach because a change of viewpoint is more important than learning some terms.

But there’s good news: it is actually possible to experience fantastic changes almost immediately. To understand basic principles like the Love Bank is tremendously helpful. And so it is, all along: every effort pays off.

A growing body of medical evidence supports these ethics. Because the Bible reveals truth, medical research and Dr. Ankenman’s experience provides concrete ways to work with modern pressures against biblical love.¹ These modern pressures mean Christians must change the depth of their understanding of love, because upcoming generations desperately need something with fiber and staying-power. Christian parents are losing their children to a plague infesting streets and
homes, and to run away is not only impossible, it is lethal. Every effort spent mastering Love Ethics stockpiles munitions to win and save people from their spiritual hostility against God’s love.

Clinical Applications

As a Medical Doctor and then a Psychiatrist, Dr. Ankenman dealt with real-world problems which needed solutions, irregardless of the patient’s theological or spiritual background. Yet he leveraged a Christian outlook to heal patients. For example:

These
problems in society are a result of the failure of individuals to know how to give love according to the definition God has laid down. As a result they have deficit in their love accounts. Their response to a wrong understanding of love is to go off and seek a substitute. The result is the phenomenon behind psychological, psychosomatic, and sociological problems. They have a lack of feeling loved from the important people in their lives.  –R.A. T00286

This Christian outlook was verified in his own practice. Ankenman’s approach could be described as the Attachment Theory of developmental psychology, demonstrated in the famous wired monkey experiments of the 1950s which he cites often.²

Biblical Anthropology: Realms

The foundation for understanding Love Ethics rests on Biblical Anthropology or “human nature”. But it’s larger than a foundation: Biblical Anthropology envelops our emotional plumbing and explains why emotions are so useful.

Our anthropology is naturally comprised of two distinct but highly-interactive realms: the Physical Realm and the Personal Realm. Both are vital, but the Personal Realm is far more significant, because here lies individual personality and what makes each person unique and so profound.Secular Psychologists struggle immensely to understand “personality”, but if they read the Bible they would discover it’s complicated because it’s so hidden, and only God can understand it fully.³

It is clear that the Physical Realm is a victim of what happens in our Personal Realm (Matthew 15:18). Some may object, claiming our actions in the Physical Realm clearly impact our Personal Realm. It is a valid point, because behavior affects the person (James 1:15). Sexual immorality is one example of physical actions affecting the personal realm (1 Corinthians 6:18). But all actions originate in the Personal Realm (Matthew 15:18).

The Personal Realm is called The Heart in the Bible, and found everywhere:

• The center of our person (1 Samuel 16:7).
• The throne of human choice (Proverbs 27:19)
• The drive behind human existence (Proverbs 4:23)
• The source of emotions, desires, and behaviors (Isaiah 65:14)
• Not rational (Matthew 13:14-15)
• Provides the ability to love or hate (James 3:14)
• Fragile, easily hurt, is hurting in everyone (Isaiah 61:1).
• Something to carefully guard (Prov 4:23).
• Confused, conflicted, poisoned, corrupted, yearning, longing (Ecclesiastes 9:3)
• A dark place only God can really see and understand (Jeremiah 17:10).

There are many more passages, but with the above list we can draw some vital implications:

• God places a high priority on The Heart, and so should we.
• The Heart envelopes our emotional lives, so any understanding about emotions must fit within the larger context of The Heart. Still, The Heart is intimately tied to emotions.
• The Heart explains the difference between feelings and emotions (which we call Love Feelings). Feelings are a neuro-biological response to stimuli, but human emotions interact with The Heart and are not limited to biological responses (although they can be).
• The Heart helps put emotions in perspective: they are a part of the Personal Realm, not the whole. Emotions may contribute (or hurt) in The Heart, but they do not define our Personal Realm. Emotions are powerful and may require immediate attention, but larger issues working in The Heart must be resolved before emotions will stabilize.
• We need heart surgery. The Heart is the real mess, not emotions, and emotional adjustments provide only temporary relief.

Biblical Anthropology also includes the Spiritual Realm, described later. For now, the Personal Realm, which is The Heart, provides the foundation for the remaining discussion.

Anatomy of Love: the Basics

Three simple concepts explain much about emotional turmoil, and they are key points for change in the Personal Realm, since all our abilities and activities become irrelevant when emotional turmoil strikes. Human activity and willpower feeds on emotional fuel, which is generated from three vital structures working together in The Heart:

• Present Love Feelings (or just “Love Feelings”): the emotional fuel required for motivation and strength.
• The Love Bank: collects and holds reserves of emotional fuel for peak periods of activity and strain.
• Permanent Love Values (or just “Love Values”): govern the quality and quantities of Love Feelings and the Love Bank’s capacity.

Love Values clearly play the dominant role, and Love Feelings are subordinate. This is unfortunate, because Love Feelings are a vital fuel burning in our human endeavors, yet they are passive recipients of more powerful factors. Like a reactor burning in a nuclear submarine, when it works well the reactor is silent and ignored. But Love Feelings burn hot, and like nuclear fuel growing unstable, they become impossible to ignore. But also like a nuclear meltdown, the problem isn’t with the fuel, but the structures around it.

The Presenting Problem

Because the effects are so crippling, Love Feelings become the Presenting Problem, which is the evident problem screaming for attention. The Presenting Problem is deceptive, however, because the causes run much deeper, and a quick-fix for Love Feelings only creates a time-bomb.

To look outside the Presenting Problem opens real opportunities to change emotional turmoil never before realized by people fixated on their Present Love Feelings. Lonely, depressed, angry and unstable people are so overwhelmed by this Presenting Problem, they become obsessed by the need to change these feelings, so their behavior seems wildly irrational. How can some girls feel better after cutting themselves?Dr. Ankenman points out that deep depression is the most agonizing of all emotions, so the adrenaline from cutting is a welcome relief. It makes sense, but only when obsessed with the need to change Present Love Feelings.

Development: From Immature to Mature Love

Moving from what is changed to how change occurs means understanding development.

Ankenman distinguished between Immature, which means dependence, and Mature, which means independence. In emotional development these are complimentary, because the love-taking in normal infants benefits from the love-giving in normal adults. But problems arise when infant love-taking extends into adulthood and becomes abnormal Infantile behavior.

It may be simple, but this model is enormously helpful in Christian ministry. When the Bible was written, maturity was mandated by the culture and the harsh necessities of life, but the modern era is confused about effective discipline, morality and sacrificial love. This renders “traditional maturity” a concept of legends.⁴ Many Christians experience phenomenal growth simply by understanding how modern culture breeds Immature Love, and charting a new course.

For example, young Christians certainly grow as they practice sacrificial giving as taught in the Bible (Acts 20:35). But sacrifice alone becomes legalistic and ineffective for advanced growth. We need a deeper understanding.

Sacrifice must include the emotional dimension, and this is where the living faith of many effective, young Christians grows stale. Christian maturity is not detached philanthropy. Sanctification leads us to practice love the way God loves, which means emotions are involved. God loves with tremendous emotional concern, and He wants us to emanate the glory of such character.⁵ So “Love-Taker” and “Love-Giver” are more precise terms than “dependence” and “independence” when describing the immature-mature continuum.

Developmental Problems

Dr. Ankenman provided some insightful ways to identify problems in emotional development. He called them Love Defects. Left alone, Love Defects build toxic and painful emotional habits:

• Infantiles describes the immature love-taking so prevalent in adults today. All Love Defects practice a selfish form of love, but the Infantile is exceptionally selfish with a crippling inability to create their own Present Love Feelings. They become emotional leeches. Their dependence means their Love Banks are perpetually drawn toward emotional turmoil.
• Work-for-Loves and Work-Substitutes love more sacrificially, in the way mothers and fathers sacrifice in “traditional maturity.” We could cite the “Ozzie and Harriot” world of the ’50s as a prototypical mother-father, Work-for-Love/Work-Sub relationship, and although sacrificial love is practiced, it is defective. It is a world pending disaster. But the presence of some sacrificial love will delay the emotional consequences of these two Love Defects.

The chart below summarizes the differences in Love Defects:

Relational Handicaps

Love Defects will greatly handicap our ability to build love relationships by limiting the Love Spheres where we love others. Love Defects builds walls, like prisons, which can become tragically insurmountable.

• The Diffuse Love Sphere is full of variety and stimulating relationships, but the relationships are short-term, shallow, and not very emotionally-rewarding. Prisoners of the Diffuse LoveSphere are unable to build stable home lives.
• The Tribal Love Sphere is limited to a few relationships found within the confines of home. The relationships are deeper at home, but the lack of relational opportunities leads to emotional imprisonment. They may build apparently-stable home lives, but it’s a deceptive stability that only works within the narrow confines of a prison. Long-term Prisoners of the Tribal Love Sphere grow increasingly fearful, weak and incapable of moving relationally beyond their property line.

Today the term dysfunctional is used to describe these prisons, and it’s a good term: they produce weak relationships. These are emotional handicaps, coupled with the Love Defects.

Infantiles will be Diffuse, but the intensity depends on how chronic the Infantile condition is. Young Infantiles from loving homes first enter the world as naive Princes and Princesses, trouncing around the playground of the wide world. Their Diffuse Love Sphere is only beginning. But as their Infantile behavior continues, they become much like the older, chronic Infantiles who never experienced a loving home. Life becomes highly Diffuse in the search far and wide for ways to fill the Love Bank. Infantiles are in desperate pursuit of Present Love Feelings because they operate outside a framework of Permanent Love Values, and cannot build stable love relationships themselves.

Work-for-Loves and Work Substitutes are emotionally Tribal, and grow increasingly incapable of building meaningful relationships outside the home. The poison of the Tribal Sphere becomes pronounced after the kids leave the home, and husband and wife face the emotional emptiness of their shrinking Tribe. Tribal people rely on Permanent Love Values, which are foundational in the Anatomy of Love. Unfortunately, because they’re Tribal (coupled with other dysfunctions), their Permanent Love Values are defective and will eventually fail to produce Present Love Feelings.

The Damage

Love Defects are emotional handicaps which create a poverty of Present Love Feelings. As Described above, not only do we need Present Love Feelings, but we need a Love Bank filled with reserves of emotional fuel in order move in the unpredictable, destructive real world.

Love Demands erupt when the Love Bank grows low on emotional fuel. Love Demands are the epitome of Immature Love, but unlike a small infant’s demands, adults are more powerful and their Love Demands inflict tremendous emotional pain on surrounding relationships. The owner of Love Demands is oblivious (or indifferent) to the scars they leave on others, because their desperate emotional needs become an obsessive focus.

Each Love Defect unleashes Love Demands in different and characteristic ways:

• Infantile Love Demands are volatile and unpredictable.

• Work-for-Love Love Demands are subtle emotional manipulations, typically with guilt.
• Work Substitute Love Demands impose order, obedience and reserve the right to use their emotions to fuel their own tremendous work efforts. (Read a Work Sub’s true confessions, called “Rules”.)

The Goal for Change

Consistent with the Bible, Ankenman taught that overcoming selfishness greatly improves the quality of life through increased maturity. He called this Victorious Love Output, emphasizing the need to give love, which brings significant healing to people who blame their emotional problems on others and demand to be loved more and more.

The concepts above fit together in a cumulative fashion, building upon each other:

Footnotes:

1. See Building a Love Ethic, which identifies the unique pressures today Christians must face with intelligence. [↩]
2. Love Therapy leverages the research that ties emotional problems to the home, and leaves the evolutionary assumptions of Attachment theory. Love Therapy is certainly far less-confusing or fraught with the issues facing secular assumptions (see Ainsworth’s critique). [↩]
3. There are more than 30,000 words now used to describe personality and personality traits, Dr. Hughes reports, it’s still not understood. Jeremiah 17:10 explains why. [↩]
4. See Building a Love Ethic for a list of modern obstacles to love. [↩]
5. see The Power of Love and Spiritual Maturity [↩]