Apr 18 2007
Building a Love Ethic
It was clear that Dr. Ankenman’s Love Therapy was not his invention. He simply uncovered—or crystallized—what was already splashed across the pages of the Bible. It should be called a “Love Ethic” rather than “Love Therapy.” As a clinician, “Therapy” was appropriate for Dr. Ankenman, but it’s really a lifestyle and an ethical framework clearly explained in the Bible. “Love Ethics” guide us into Christian maturity.
As discussed earlier, much of Dr. Ankenman’s principles of Love Therapy are also found outside a purely-biblical framework. Since the Bible teaches the truth about the human condition, Dr. Ankenman noticed the same biblical principles at work in traditional, older cultures we so derisively label Third World (as if they were “third-rate” to our Industrialized World). Are those cultures really so “primitive”?
Research from our own scientists can be rattling. America is a world-leader in suicides, broken homes, murders, violent crimes and most other sociological measure of health. The difference is more startling when compared against impoverished countries we pity so much like Bangladesh.
What is the source of our social ills? What have we lost that other cultures—even non-Christian cultures—still retain?
What’s Our Problem?
The Bible describes what a truly sick society looks like. It’s a depressing list, but insightful:
But realize this, that in the last days difficult times will come. For men will be lovers of self, lovers of money, boastful, arrogant, revilers, disobedient to parents, ungrateful, unholy, unloving, irreconcilable, malicious gossips, without self-control, brutal, haters of good, treacherous, reckless, conceited, lovers of pleasure rather than lovers of God, holding to a form of godliness, although they have denied its power; Avoid such men as these. - 2 Timothy 3:1–5
It’s a 2,000 year-old prophecy that reads like yesterday’s news. Never before in human history did all these conditions come together like we now see, and many were impossible until recently. It’s a culture of moral freedom, from one view. But from God’s view it’s a culture where love doesn’t work and people are lonely. Break this passage into its components, and it’s clear how it works in our world today.
Dogmatic Moral Ambiguity
“Unholy, haters of good, holding to a form of godliness, although they have denied its power…”
This describes postmodern rage at biblical Love Ethics. Christians are tired of this ostracism, giving rise to the Emergent church and related movements which shy away from biblical certainties. Certainly the invasion of postmodernism into Christian thought and churches typifies “a form of godliness” that “denied its power.” Unlike modernism which denied the supernatural, postmodernism welcomes spiritual experience but denies the authority of God Almighty and absolute truth. (To be precise—and Postmodernists are sticklers on this—absolute truth exists, perhaps, but cannot be apprehended cognitively because of the limits imposed by language and cultural backgrounds.)
Morality is dependent on the question of truth. It’s impossible to know what is wrong or right without knowing what is true or false. “Unholy” describes postmodern ethical confusion. Postmodernism is a phenomena unique to our era. No culture has ever before embraced moral ambiguity as a principle. When Paul wrote about it, such an amoral philosophy would be scandalous.
Postmodernists are absolutely dogmatic that no absolutes can be known absolutely. Yes, it is confusing, and it is irrational and novel, but surprisingly it somehow became a universal dogma within a few decades. Most of its believers have no idea where this philosophy came from or how it got there. Postmodern zealots resort to anger to avoid explaining their shallow beliefs, and so “haters of good” describes the unreasonable reactions inflicted against Christian ethics.
The near-universal spread of Postmodernism without conquering armies is unparalleled for any historical world view. The unique conditions of the modern era make this possible. These same conditions make it difficult for people to love.
Cold Hearts
Paul is not the only one to prophesy about a culture of moral uncertainty. Jesus Christ also described it 2,000 years ago:
“Because lawlessness is increased, most people’s love will grow cold.” - Matthew 24:12
The movie “Pleasantville” was a Hollywood lecture on the folly of morality. The lecture said that everyone who embraces morality is trapped in a black-and-white, simple and naive world called Pleasantville. Those who pursue sexual conquest without marriage can escape the chains of Pleasantville and enter a world bursting alive with color! The clear message: morality is not only restrictive, it is unloving. But actually, the opposite is true: we never see the pain inflicted by Pleasantville sex affairs 20 years later!
Real love is impossible without morality, according to Jesus. The equation is simple: increased lawlessness equals colder love. Pleasantville actually becomes a cold, cold place, not the colorful world the writers made up. Immorality leaves deep scars on our hearts, it sears the deepest part of our humanity and makes it more difficult to love again:
Flee from sexual immorality. All other sins a man commits are outside his body, but he who sins sexually sins against his own body. - 1 Corinthians 6:18
For all its purported sophistication, Postmodern morality has certainly produced a culture where relationships lacks permanence. If the movie were longer, we would see how relationships ended up in the new and colorful Pleasantville: temporary cohabitation and broken homes replacing permanent marriages. Children growing up in such places where love has grown cold will themselves become more pessimistic about love. What happens when people lose faith in morality and love? They fight.
Eager-to-Fight
“Irreconcilable, malicious gossips, brutal, revilers, ungrateful, unloving” all describe people too willing to fight and divide. It’s love-grown-cold with attitude: enter the era of disposable relationships. Always changing, moving on relationships means love without a home, love without deep roots.
The concept of a village or community always anchored relationships, but modern community is a heartless system built around City Hall—and nobody can fight City Hall! Today’s village is described in Hillary Clinton’s famous book “It Takes a Village” as a national entity. Politics aside, it’s a remote and cold village, and it means diffuse relationships.
Substitutes for Love
“Lovers of self, lovers of money, without self-control, reckless, lovers of pleasure” all describe a culture obsessed with “the pursuit of happiness” like the West. Wealth, technology and entertainment industries provide unparalleled stimulation to keep us distracted from facing the intolerable loneliness aching inside.
More significant is the opportunity to pursue personal wealth. Materialism is a lifestyle never available for the masses before the appearance of consumerism. The availability of cheap consumer goods means a lifestyle of acquisition. The educational system mass-produces consumer-oriented thinkers too, and kids are trained for 12 years to think profession as their destiny. Choosing the right profession promises fulfillment and purpose, kids are taught, but adults stuck in the professional world usually know better.
Taken together, these symptoms describe a deeply confused and narcissistic culture. Relationships will not work in this world—at least, not for long. Americans live fractured emotional lives as they bounce from relationship to relationship. It’s a diffuse lifestyle energized with superficial stimulations like consumerism, professional pursuits or passing pleasures, but it’s an empty lifestyle because love relationships don’t work and don’t last.
Still there remains one more great damage incurred in the modern era.
The Parent Trap
“Disobedient to parents” has the greatest impact on relationships. It isn’t being “naughty” like it sounds to our jaded modern minds, but it’s a breakdown of the parent-child relationship. It’s a casting-aside by children of their parent’s role in their lives.
For thousands of years in agrarian (farming) societies it would be reprehensible and impossible for children to cast aside their parents. Parents carried an almost autocratic authority, as they do still in Third World countries. Not so in modern western culture.
“The Simpsons” was controversial when it first aired because the cartoon format might attract smaller kids to Bart’s delinquencies and to the ridicule of brain-dead parents. Fox network dismissed the concerns because the show aired after kids were in bed, and soon the controversy settled down. But who noticed when it crept into prime time viewing a few years later? “The Family Guy” cartoon depicts a father more foolish than Homer, which is an achievement. Dense parents and savvy kids are now commonplace, from the cartoon “Jimmy Neutron” to “That 70s Show”. Gone forever are the days of “Father Knows Best” from the simpler, more naive era of the 1950s.
We can argue about the impact of TV programs on kids, but who can dispute how they reflect a modern culture where “disobedient to parents” is not so absurd? In Third World cultures where parents are respected and still carry authority, such characters like Bart Simpson make little sense.
Love Foundations
This is where Dr. Ankenman found the greatest disparity between Bangladesh and his experience working in the American ghetto. The family unit was intact among the Bangladese, and the people he worked with carried a tremendous ability to endure greater levels of suffering than the American ghetto sees. Even though these people knew nothing about the Bible, they were often more emotionally mature and stable than many Christians he treated in America.
The vital role parents play in the emotional development of children is well-established by scientific research. Emotional problems are first developed in the home. These formative relationships run deep and impact a lifetime because it is impossible to simply walk away from our emotional inheritance. We carry it wherever we go, even into adulthood and marriage. Movies and poetry cast a fairy-tale aura around love, turning it into a mysterious force which magically appears and works perfectly if the right person appears.
But love is not so mysterious. It’s old, weather-worn and deeply embedded in our past—especially in our parental relationships.
The First Commandment
The Bible is clear how vital it is for a child to establish a successful and honorable relationship with parents:
Children, obey your parents in the Lord, for this is right. “Honor your father and mother” — which is the first commandment with a promise—”that it may go well with you and that you may enjoy long life on the earth.” - Ephesians 6:1–3
The point is simple: your problems with home will impact the rest of your life. American novelist Thomas Wolfe wrote a book titled, “You can’t go home again.” God wrote a book that said, “You really can’t leave home.” Wolfe’s novel appropriately captures the transience of our modern lifestyles. God’s book reminds us that transience will never bring escape.
At the heart of a biblical Love Ethic is the importance of establishing a healthy, honorable, loving relationship with parents: they are the foundation of an emotional life. This is true even after the child becomes an adult. It’s “the first commandment with a promise,” the Bible says, and it always pays emotional dividends to go back and heal that primary relationship. For most Americans, home life was highly dysfunctional, and its requires serious work and deliberate effort to go back and turn it around.
How is it possible to change a relationship with parents unwilling to change it?
Next up: how to convert failure into victory.
“How is it possible to change a relationship with parents unwilling to change it?”
Wow, this is an issue I’ve personally been wrestling with for years. I actually “restored”my maternal broken relationship 15 years ago. Or so I thought. You see, I lived in Columbus and she lived in the Akron area. It is amazing how distance can hide or camouflage the elephants in your relationships.
Steve and I moved back to Akron because we wanted to be near my mother who I believed wanted a closer relationship with me and my children. Proximity brought out the ugly truth of our “restored” relationship.
I desired an open dialogue about our feelings and realtionship. I also believed she wanted to be actively involved in our daily lives. I pursued loving her and meeting her needs as she was going through yet another divorce. I even chose to forgive her for misleading me and for lying to me so that I would make a decision to move nearer to her.
Of course my “restored relationship”, blew up in my face. Since October 2006, my mother and I have barely had a relationship. She made it clear that she could not be around me as I am so hurtful to her both mentally and physically. I found out from her that I was not being who she expected me to be.
Wow-talk about a blow to the heart! I responded initially with hurt and sorrow, even confusion. She had never told me any of these “wrongs” and the list was quite numerous and far reaching into our past.
Next, came the outrage and indignation. Hate soon followed! “How can a mother hurl such hateful words to her own child?” I was terrified of becoming bitter and sick and foul. I talked with Christian friends and I finally confessed my rage and hate before the Lord. This wrestling process took weeks - maybe months.
Slowly my heart began to soften again; Romans 5:8-11 came to mind:
But God demonstrates His own love toward us, in that while we were yet sinners, Christ died for us.
Much more then, having now been justified by His blood, we shall be saved from the wrath of God through Him.
For if while we were enemies we were reconciled to God through the death of His Son, much more, having been reconciled, we shall be saved by His life.
And not only this, but we also exult in God through our Lord Jesus Christ, through whom we have now received the reconciliation.
I have been actively pursuing my mother - gently with phone calls, weekly cards of encouragement and sharing my hope of a renewed relationship with her. She did not respond for months. I still persisted.
Last week I called her again and for once she answered the phone; I asked if I and the kids could drop off a gift for her. She loves hyacinths and I had knitted a lavendar scarf for her. I wanted to encourage her as her brother had died in early February. She said she’d stop by. The day came and went without a visit. I prayed and went on with my life. The following Monday my mother called and asked if she could see the kids. I agreed and brought them to her home for a visit. I stayed for a brief time and left my boys to spend the day with their Grandma.
I don’t know if it is possible to change my relationship with my mother who seems unwilling to change it. I do know that my children are watching how I act and how I handle this conflict. I also know that God is calling me to love her no matter what.
There are days I just want to throw in the towel and say “Screw You, you old bitter *itch!” But then I am reminded that sacrificial love requires giving up all my personal rights. I do not want to stand before my Risen Lord as a hypocrite and point my finger at my mother saying “You owe me for what you have done.” Sure I yearn for her to acknowledge that she too has hurt me. This may never happen. But I can rest and rejoice in the knowledge that I am loved and righteous in the eyes of God.
So, where do I go from here?
I desire a hopeful future with my mother. I will love her and I will serve her and I will lovingly discipline her. This is going to be quite tricky as she is quite unstable and bent to severe bouts of depression even hospitalization. So for now I pray & seek opportunities to interact with her.
I must raise my brow to some of the statements presented in this article.
“‘Disobedient to parents’ has the greatest impact on relationships. … It’s a casting-aside by children of their parent’s role in their lives.”
Children casting-aside the role of the parents in their lives! Really? If this is so, then explain all the grandparents who raise their grandchildren as the parents have cast these children aside and away! Not to mention what divorce does to children. From a purely secular perspective, it is any wonder that children have “cast-away” this role.
Do not these “parents” reap what they have sown? Have not the parents first cast away the relationship? Children watch and learn what they live. Right?
Ok Lisa, we’ll answer your excellent questions. But it’s very significant that first, it’s God’s insight, not mine. Secondly, making parents “reap what they have sown”, consider a few passages:
“Never pay back evil for evil to anyone. Respect what is right in the sight of all men…Never take your own revenge, beloved, but leave room for the wrath of God, for it is written, “VENGEANCE IS MINE, I WILL REPAY,” says the Lord.
“BUT IF YOUR ENEMY IS HUNGRY, FEED HIM, AND IF HE IS THIRSTY, GIVE HIM A DRINK; FOR IN SO DOING YOU WILL HEAP BURNING COALS ON HIS HEAD.”
Do not be overcome by evil, but overcome evil with good. Romans 12:17-21
The point is this: there’s power in the Romans 12 response, whereas trying to make people “reap what they have sown” is working from an inherently weak position. You simply don’t have that kind of power or authority. But, you do have the power and authority to “heap burning coals…” as it were.
“Parents” might be a more fluid term today, I don’t know. Obviously it encompasses whoever played that role in your life. The point is that these “parents” have played a vital role in shaping your emotions.
In the next installment we discuss how to turn it around from being at the mercy of your parenting background into taking ownership of your background and most important, having the power to reshaped and change your background through this combination: a) healing, and b) offensive love (as opposed to defensive). However, it’s vital that healing comes first, else the strength and emotional energy for offensive love isn’t great enough.
I loved your testimony, and I believe there are many experiencing precisely your struggles and feeling as you do highly frustrated. Thanks for your vulnerability. It’s helpful, too, just to make sure the love ethics we study will apply to your situation and will help.
Thanks for the biblical insight and discernment. I have been applying much of this in my relationship with my mom although I realize I still have a journey before me. My first entry shared that on-going passage.
My second reply addressed the worldly perspective found in the article as it was discussing the secular world and contrasting America with agrarian cultures:
“From a purely secular perspective, it is any wonder that children have “cast-away” this role.
Do not these “parents” (non-Chrsitian) reap what they have sown? Have not the parents first cast away the relationship? Children watch and learn what they live. Right?”
In the aforementioned, I was not saying that a Christian should make their “parent reap what they have sown”; I was stating that in our America - is it any wonder that children do not value the parent when the parent seems to distain the child. Thus, the parent has taught the child to “cast-away” the relationship.
This is an increasing problem in our society. I recently read Micah 6:7 in reference to the “Day of the Lord.”
For a son dishonors his father,
a daughter rises up against her mother,
a daughter-in-law against her mother-in-law—
a man’s enemies are the members of his own household.
This prophecy seems more true each day. I am so thankful that as a Christian I have the way out of a life of slavery to my hate or anger. I do not have to “rise up against my mother.”
My problem is no longer that I desire to repay my mother for hurt or that I desire to repay evil with evil. My conundrum is that my mother does not wish to talk to me and she will not return my calls. If she does, (this has occured once) it is superficial and she will ignore anything personal I say. She is unwilling to make any movement toward depth. I am left with what I have been doing all along-since I moved back from Columbus-inviting her to my kids activities or mowing her lawn. This can be quite frustrating. What kind of sick thing is that!
This is how she has treated me until I literally fall before her weeping and begging for her forgiveness and do all that she demands. This I will not do; I have moved beyond needing her approval for my life choices. I love her and desire a relationship, but what else can a daughter do? I have already apologized for harsh words I used(10 months earlier). This I did do. I’ve lived being her slave and now I am free to love her without being her slave.
I look forward to the next installment. I hope that sharing this struggle has actually been for some good and also that I haven’t bored anyone too much with these tedious details.
No, Lisa, not tedious at all. Making me think a little….not getting anywhere yet, though! I just appreciate your post & Keith writing the articles. I’m hoping the Lord uses all this practically in my life as well as many others’ in our church.
I’ve been pondering some OT prophecy concerning the breakdown of the family. Here is yet another biblical prophecy that parents hearts are turning away from their children and that children have turned their hearts away from their parents.
Malachi 4:5-6
“See, I will send you the prophet Elijah before that great and dreadful day of the LORD comes. 6 He will turn the hearts of the fathers to their children, and the hearts of the children to their fathers; or else I will come and strike the land with a curse.”
My take on this is that before Elijah comes back even the members of close knit Jewish families will be against one another. As a result of this hardness heart the land will be struck with a curse. In light of Deut. 5:16, it seems that God is confirming that he will not allow people to “live well” so long as they are not obeying this law.
Deuteronomy 5:16
“Honor your father and your mother, as the LORD your God has commanded you, so that you may live long and that it may go well with you in the land the LORD your God is giving you.
I’m not sure but the prophecy in Malachi also appears to place responsibility for the break down of the relationship not only upon the heads of the children, but also upon the heads of the parents-more specifically the father.
Am I understanding this passage correctly or am I reading into it from a biased perspective?
Well, the Malachi prophecy is of course talking about the Millenial Kingdom. On the one hand, it will be a far greater, more wonderous time when God does restore the unity of the family; on the other hand, there’s the potential for rebellion still, because MK residents are mortal and living under the Messiah’s government.
As for your earlier comment Lisa, “is it any wonder that children do not value the parent when the parent seems to distain the child..” here’s the rub: it’s the child who pays the price, and it’s the child which needs to reverse the direction paved by the parents. Yes, the potential is great for the kid to inherit and pass along the “sins of the fathers,” but also, for a Christian the potential is great to reverse the damage and trend, especially under a New Testament economy in which the indwelling of the Holy Spirit promises to “write my law upon their hearts…”
I’m sorry I’m delayed on the next installment…I have it done, and I’m just adding a couple things…
[…] I was reading “Building a Love Ethic”, one of Keiths articles from the Love Ethics class. This was of course an assignment from […]
[…] Of course, Martin looks back on all this as older and wiser now, an elder statesman of comedy and film. Accept for the implications of his broken relationship with his family and father, little outside of his career in stand up comedy is mentioned. But, Martin’s story is a clear lesson for boys and girls attempting to pack their suitcases and run to a life of their own while thumbing their noses at Mom and Dad: your problems with home will impact the rest of your life. […]
[…] Building a Love Ethic, which identifies the unique pressures today Christians must face with intelligence. [↩]Love […]
If you’re struggling with the parent/child relationship from the parent perspective, and still have the child at home but he/she has rebelled against you and God, how can parents encourage the child to “Obey your parents in the Lord…”? We’re trying to love a very unloveable kid, provide consistent discipline and invest in the relationship, but he/she still spews hate and anger. Is it just a matter of perseverance and relying on God, since I can’t be the Holy Spirit and this issue sounds like an issue of the heart to me?
Hello Ann,
I am just about to post an article about this precise issue and phenomena. But let me just ask a simple question: which is better, that the kid honors you and obeys you, or that the kid learns to love others?