"Sooner or later, all the peoples of the world will have to discover a way to live together in peace, and thereby transform this pending cosmic elegy into a creative psalm of brotherhood. If this is to be achieved, man must evolve for all human conflict a method which rejects revenge, aggression, and retaliation. The foundation of such a method is love." -- Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.
Unlimited Love is a mysterious point of convergence between all worthwhile religions and is deemed the essential aspect of a presence in the universe that is infinitely higher than our own. While some view this unselfish love for all humanity as merely a human moral ideal, I view it in metaphysical or "Big Picture" terms as the ultimate reality that underlies all that is, and which can transform our limited and broken lives into journeys of remarkably generous service. If Unlimited Love really does describe ultimate reality, then we need not be so surprised by people who do so much to serve humanity while claiming that they are inspired by a loving energy in the universe.
Human love sometimes shines brightly and is enhanced by the pure brilliance of Unlimited Love, but it is usually a dim reflection of love at its heights. And yet we encounter astounding examples of unselfish human love and sacrifice, suggesting either that our capacity for love is much greater than we might imagine, or that we can be lifted up into the ultimate reality of Unlimited Love. We marvel at those who achieve higher degrees of unlimited love and derive from their example a hope for something much grander in the human future. [1] By analogy, when we hear a composition by Bach or Mozart, we are astounded that any human being could be capable of such musical creativity. We wonder if they reached such heights on their own, or if God reached into their lives with divine creativity. Were they harbingers of a human future in which we will all be able to discover such astounding creative genius within?
What amazing creative and loving capacities exist untapped in the human being? Moreover, is there an untapped synergy between human and divine love? Charles Wesley (1707 - 1788), one of the founders of Methodism, wrote these hopeful words about a divine love dwelling gracefully in the humble: "Love divine, all loves excelling, joy of heaven, to earth come down, fix in us thy humble dwelling..."
Did Wesley capture a perennial spiritual dynamic? In every age, people ask if unlimited love is ultimately real, and if it can touch us. Many people devote their entire lives to a spiritual quest, as if they were "born to run" until they can find some answer to the dominant question of the human journey: Is this ineffable love, described by mystical poets and by many of those "called" to lives of compassionate service and kindness, a reality? Can it enable us to break through our evolutionary limits to excel in love just as an Einstein did in physics or Shakespeare in writing? Our complex brains, unique imaginations, communicative abilities, reasoning powers, moral sense and spiritual promptings can give rise to that which is extraordinary in human life, and to degrees we resonate with, or even participate in, divine love.
Most of us have encountered memorably unselfish, genuinely kind, and deeply generous individuals, some of whom may even have put themselves at considerable risk in the service of others. We are struck by the emotional tone, intensity, and helping behavior of such good neighbors. On an existential level, they pose a question: Is generative love for others the main purpose of our life, the only enduring source of meaning and dignity, and the basis for lasting self-esteem? Many psychologists, religious thinkers, and philosophers have answered this question in the affirmative. Moreover, in any honest and profound struggle for meaning in life, most everyday people understand this to be true.
We limited human creatures live somewhere "betwixt and between" egoism and unlimited love. Some of us live entirely for self, using others for our own selfish agendas, but ultimately we find no final fulfillment in this; some live astoundingly generous lives toward friends or kin, but are intolerant of others and perhaps overindulge these loved ones or encourage insularity; many of us, however, are able to deeply affirm and serve all humanity while also nurturing the near and dear who are by human nature benevolently structured into our lives as part of that humanity. It is this last ideal image of human fulfillment that is most legitimate ethically and spiritually, although the special calling of certain individuals who are impassioned to serve all humanity in ways that preclude them from forming families or having friends is also to be esteemed.
Love for all humanity without exception is not innate. It was not a visible ideal among the Greeks, who could not see beyond the city state (polis), and even within the city state friendship (philia) was king. While there was in antiquity a weak notion of philanthropia or "love for humanity," this did not enjoy any fuller development until the late Stoics and it did not apply to humanity as a whole. Judaism too was insular in its beginnings, but of great historical significance it introduced the notion of hospitality to aliens (non-Jews) as well as of moral obligations to humanity as a whole. These ideals are also significant in Islam. Buddhism and Christianity would introduce the remarkable ideal of even loving enemies. Love for all humanity in this intensive form of love for enemies is especially challenging to any human being. Mahatma Gandhi, a Hindu, wrote that "It is no non-violence if we merely love those that love us. It is non-violence only when we love those that hate us. I know how difficult it is to follow this grand Law of Love. But are not all good and great things difficult to do?"[2]
We are not "hard wired" to love all humanity, and this form of love has sometimes been reduced to a thin veneer covering a seething cauldron of human hatred and group conflict. With the power of weapons of mass destruction, we must now learn the lesson of love for all humanity or perhaps suffer enormously. Every age can be defined ethically and spiritually by how well it teaches and implements the ideal of love - and love implies justice - for every human being without exception.
Unlimited Love is an uncreated and perfect energy; human love is created and imperfect. The purpose of every human life is a movement toward greater love, no matter what the circumstances. Throughout the course of life we are all equally called to continual growth in love, even as we suffer setbacks along the path. The goal was eloquently defined long ago by the Hebrew prophet Micah: "... what does the Lord require of you but to do justice, and to love kindness, and to walk humbly with your God" (Micah 6:8)?
By now, some readers are prepared to close this book, for it is not about the romantic phenomenon of "falling in love," in which every hormonal and aesthetic human propensity powerfully drives the self to an overwhelmingly positive assessment of another. The beloved becomes perfection incarnate. This deeply evolved and "hard wired" infatuation is reproductively necessary and therefore, in the succinct words of one philosopher, it is a "trick of the species." Not all romantic infatuation lasts for only a few months or years, although it tends to be fleeting. Some people may "fall in love" for a lifetime, although one suspects that the reason such relationships last has to do with the underlying support of other forms of love, such as compassion and friendship based on common interests like children. Regrettably, our culture too often reduces the meaning of love to romantic infatuation and nothing deeper. What we focus on here is not a "fall" into love of the perfect, which is altogether natural, easy, and delusional. Our focus is instead on a difficult learned ascent that begins with insight into the need for tolerance of ubiquitous human imperfection, and matures into unselfish concern, gratitude, and compassion.
Others will read no further because it we proceed on the interface of religion, ethics and science. Religion, they will rightly assert, is the cause of at least as much evil as good in the world. Religious arrogance underlies much conflict in our contemporary world, and there are even some extremists who would rather see those with differing beliefs dead than alive. Religion is an ambivalent force that can tap both the love and the hate that lies within us. Those for whom religion spurs love report perceptions of a source of unlimited love that can quicken the spirit of beneficence in human events; they appear, anyway, to have a deep emotional attunement of gratitude for each and every life; they seem, at least, to affirm that every person without exception can be loved; they are ostensibly forgiving and patient; and they purportedly possess great energy in the service of others. Are such people gifted by God? Or have their imaginations, desperate for a sense of purpose, triumphed over reason? Is it our human destiny to emerge from our human origins in "selfish genes" and inter-group conflict to a world of greater and greater love? Is Unlimited Love up ahead luring humanity into a future of loving kindness for everyone, as well as for nonhuman species both lower and higher? Is there some unfolding purpose to the evolution of our species that is related to love? In the words of Paramahansa Yogananda, best known for his Autobiography of a Yogi, "As a mortal being you are limited, but as a child of God you are unlimited..." [3] He asks if we might eventually transcend our "mortal consciousness of limitation" and achieve unlimited love, for such "divine love is without condition, without boundary, without change." [4]
Too many of us make wrong assumptions that create obstacles to lives that approach high degrees of unlimited love. We make wrong assumptions about human nature and motivations, about what it means to "live well," about how fulfillment is achieved, and even about God and the ultimate grain of the universe. I wish to argue for the plausibility of the thesis that the giving of self in generous other-regarding affirmation and service is the only true way to live well.
Even the most abiding human love for others cannot ignore the strategic necessity of imposing limits on recalcitrant hateful behavior. Reinhold Niebuhr asserted that those "children of light" who wish to bring egoism under the control of love must have the wisdom and cunning of those who would assert selfishness, but none of their malice. [5] Given the reality of a human nature open to narcissism and hatred, love does not disparage strategic limits that are required in response to malice. We deem it acceptable to limit violent and abusive behavior, and to defend the innocent against assault. This is why fortitude, courage, and endurance are important aspects of the expression of love under some circumstances. Whenever possible, conflict must be transformed into reconciliation. Nonviolent means are always to be exhausted before alternatives are considered. [6] Whether resistance to evil is nonviolent or not, our actions can be motivated by a love that remains open to forgiveness and reconciliation. [7]
The realities of blind ambition and egoism do not so much undermine the possibilities for love as highlight the extent to which "tough love" is an absolutely essential aspect of Unlimited Love. We should not naively forget the strategic necessity of love in its tough form in response to sinful self-assertion. [8] Human evil is as real as human love, and love is called upon to contain the fury of rudeness, greed, and hatred until a time comes, if ever it does, when human nature becomes something much better than it is. Remarkably, the young Lutheran pastor Dietrich Bonhoeffer decided that the only loving thing to do in Nazi Germany was to participate in the failed "officer's plot" to assassinate Hitler. Bonhoeffer was executed by the Nazis in 1945 for his part in the plot. He appears, from his writings, to have maintained his grounding in agape love throughout these years of difficulty. [9] Conclusions like Bonhoeffer's should be reached only under extraordinary circumstances, and with great reluctance.
1. Is It Real?
The discontinuities between pure Unlimited Love and human love are obvious, but there are hints of continuity as well. Parents can feel utterly absorbed by love for their children, seeming to naturally feel that the lives of their young are at least as important as their own, and probably much more so. Hence, parents routinely sacrifice their interests for the prosperity of offspring, and cannot imagine this order of nature being different than it is. This love does appear to be innate to human nature, however much it can afford to be tutored in wisdom and efficacy. The significance and purity of such love is not compromised by a substratum of genetic continuity. Indeed, all human compassion and generous love for others has its earthly root in this powerful evolutionary axis of parental love, or so I will later argue. Does the unlikely presence of such compassionate and caring love on earth point to divine origins?
We see a hint of continuity with divine love in persons like Millard Fuller, founder of Habitat for Humanity, who reliably devotes his adult life to building houses for the poor after giving up his own wealth. [10] We see continuity as well in the lives of everyday good neighbors who respond to the needs of those in proximity. Human beings have limits, but they often act as if they did not.
I do think that Unlimited Love is real, and that it inspires us in varying degrees that are unpredictable and often highly inspiring. All of us feel at times that our emotional and inner lives are confused and murky. We go through times of despair, of the "dark night of the soul." We frail humans suffer from depression, personality disorders, demeaning temptations, loss of purpose, and alike. We see violence and hatred at its worst on a regular basis. While sometimes at least understandable as a desperate response to injustice in the world, hatred and violence are now often completely irrational. The frenzy of hatred includes continuing attempts at genocide and terrorism replete with adolescent suicide bombers. Before there was a 9/11/ 2002 there was and the equally troubling date of April 20, 1999, where 13 students were gunned down in Columbine. In Erfurt, Germany, a 19-year-old killed 14 teachers, two students, one officer, and then himself in response to his having been expelled from school. We know that radical evil is very real. Unlimited Love? How real could it be?
A few weeks after 9/11, the lovable Mr. Rogers, a Presbyterian minister who has devoted his life to the ideal of agape love and who is known now through television re-runs of Mr. Roger's Neighborhood, was widely quoted in the media for his response to a reporter's question: "Mr. Rogers, what should parents tell their children?" Mr. Rogers was pensive, and then he answered what I believe we must all answer, "Tell them to keep their eyes on the helpers." More than ever now we as an entire species must look to Unlimited Love to give form to our hearts in an unlimited creative power. In our chaotic and deeply troubled world there still lies the promise of love, which is eternal. We need to better understand how Unlimited Love can penetrate and transform us from emptiness to fullness so that with absolutely every person who enters my life I have the sense that their life is a precious gift. We need to be molded by Unlimited Love despite the turbulence of our times and of every time, and we need to emerge into a world where we do not merely only respect but even cherish one another. We need to bring every scientific, pedagogical, spiritual, ethical, and religious insight to this emergence.
Acquainted with hatred and violence, we are equally acquainted with neighborly acts of compassion and care within our families, and between friends and colleagues. We see humanitarian groups all over the world rushing in to help those who have been in the way of natural disaster or human harmfulness. The gift of personal time and sacrifice is often heroic, and the loving kindness of strangers is a marvel to behold. Even in the worst times, such as the Columbine or the World Trade Center tragedies, we are impressed by the helpers and we are reassured the entire world is, on some level that has not yet completely broken through the surface, a Beloved Community. We see those who, in addition to organizing voluntary associations of helpers in response to every conceivable needful group, also recognize that love must do justice. No matter how much we live by the law of love, there are often limits to what we can accomplish single-handedly or in associations, and therefore we must strive to correct social and distributive injustices that create the conditions of destitution. [11]
The essence of all true spirituality, religion, and virtue is continual growth in the direction of Unlimited Love. [12] Such enduring affection can be distinguished from fleeting emotional experiences, no matter how intense these might be, or how much they result in limited periods of enthusiasm. However one wishes to define the human "soul," it serves metaphorically to focus attention on whatever is ultimate and essential in being human. The "soul" is a complex place where our loving emotions struggle for ascendance. Fear, terror, anxiety, hatred, bitterness, violence, envy, resentment, greed, and perhaps pessimism try to roam unchecked, strangling the life out of our lives. Spirituality refers to the ascendancy and dominance of another set of emotions associated with love. The fruits of such love include peace, joy, gratitude, kindness, care, forgiveness, and concern. All true spirituality is a form of love, and is a matter less of creed than of affection. [13] All true positive spiritual transformation involves a shifting of the emotional balance towards Unlimited Love. In the words of William James, all genuine religious experience involves "an assurance of safety and a temper of peace, and, in relation to others, a preponderance of loving affections." [14] The ultimate expression of love is love for all humanity, and for all that is. Any spirituality or religiosity that betrays the ideal of growth toward Unlimited Love is simply negative. A statement such as this requires some closer attention to definition.
2. "Unlimited Love" Defined: Initial Thoughts
By now the reader may be looking for a clearer definition of love than any = I have yet provided. "Love" is a confusing term, so much so that it is often replaced by the word "care." If common use of language is revealing, some seem to assume that love must involve sexual expression. This is incorrect because friendship is a form of love, as is volunteerism or the care that parents give to children. We erroneously use the word "love" to describe a caprice of a few days' duration or a sentiment devoid of esteem. The Greeks were more careful to make linguistic distinctions. They had a myriad of words for love: eunoia refers to good will or benevolence, physike to kindness toward people of one's own race, xenike to kindness toward guests and strangers, erotike to sexual desire, eros to impassioned attraction, philia to friendship, storge to tenderness, and agape to a disinterested affection. Agape, divine limitless love, would be taken up by emergent Christianity and identified as the essential nature of God. This affectionate love for all humanity seems to have at least some place in all major religious traditions of the world.
Unlimited Love is a way to speak of agape love in a contemporary world where most people cannot be expected to be versed in Greek or in the history of ideas, but who sense that there is an abiding energy of love underlying the universe, and that this love affirms them despite their failures and imperfections. The expression "unlimited love" seems to capture the essence of agape, with the added benefit of appealing to those who want plain everyday language as a means of expression, rather than a technical theological term from the ancient Greek. Furthermore, "unlimited love" is free of a narrow association with any one faith tradition, and should appeal more broadly across cultures and academic disciplines or fields.
John M. Templeton coined the term in a remarkable essay entitled “Pure Unlimited Love: An Eternal Creative Force and Blessing Taught by All Religions.” [15] Agape love has been described as "limitless" or "without limits" in the theological literature. [16] Templeton is correct in suggesting that unlimited is the best word to describe agape love. It suggests a form of love that rises above every conceivable limit to embrace all of humanity in joy, creativity, compassion, care, and generativity; it lies at the heart of all valid and worthwhile spiritual, religious, and derivative philosophical traditions; it is often associated with a divine presence that underlies the cosmos and makes life a meaningful gift. One purpose of religion is to provide a larger theological construction for such love, to translate this ideal into some sacred narrative, and to encourage its uncoerced and gratuitous expression. Anyone who senses the limits of living in anger, hatred, egoism, unkindness, sensate hedonism, rudeness, greed, grudge, insular tribalism, and violence at least perceives some hint of the ideal of Unlimited Love.
Unlimited Love does not require a response. It can be entirely unwarranted and undeserved, as well as dismissive of the purported imperative of reciprocation. While it "seeketh not its own," it accepts and delights in gratitude and other responses, however much it does not require or expect them. Unlimited Love lets all these responses take care of themselves. It involves a daring, free, compassionate, and urgent dream that explodes through all the requirements of benefit to self.
It is easy to think of love as an energy, the sum total of which defines the goodness of any society. The total love energy of a society is, for the most part, a measure of the everyday compassion and helping behaviors of ordinary people, who are good neighbors and have an abiding concern for those around them and for the very neediest. These people are quite plentiful, especially in times of catastrophic events in which our common vulnerabilities are magnified. Everyday altruists hold "perceptions of a common humanity." [17] As Pitirim A. Sorokin pointed out in his a classic 1950 study of good neighbors and saints, the great apostles of the most creative levels of altruism are relatively few and cannot provide anything like the sum total of love energy that a society requires to thrive. [18] What, then, of the word "Unlimited"? The word "limit" derives from the Latin limis, which means "boundary." By dictionary definition (Oxford), a limit is "a point, line, or level beyond which something does not or may not extend or pass. "Unlimited" means without limit, or with no restriction whatsoever. Unlimited Love is love for all humanity and, on a lesser ontological level, for all living creatures. "Unlimited Love" means that there will be no insulating boundaries drawn to separate "them" from "us," that love for the neediest stranger must deeply and honestly challenge any over-indulgence of the near and dear, that even the vilest enemy must be forgiven at some level.
To quote Templeton: "Unlimited love was called agape by the ancient Greeks to distinguish the divine love from earthly emotions. Unlimited love means total constant love for every person with no exception." [19] Such love, argues Templeton, is productive of health and peace in the world.
Unlimited Love echoes the Jewish notion of hesed ("steadfast love") and the Buddhist ideal of karuna ("compassion"). It had rough equivalents in Islam, Hinduism, Taoism, Confucianism, and Native American spirituality. Such love was the centerpiece of works by Carl Rogers, Rollo May, and Erich Fromm. Teilhard de Chardin commented that the scientific understanding of the power of this love would be as significant in human history as the discovery of fire.
The question, of course, is how to harness the creative energy of Unlimited Love. We need to better understand the obstacles to Unlimited Love, and how to overcome them. Delving into the history of ideas and practice of love may be helpful, but the frank reality is that Unlimited Love has not been fully realized even in those traditions that most eloquently extol it. Thus, there is a need for immense new knowledge of love that is based on the best scientific methods and that can, therefore, move our understanding forward, allowing for more effective pedagogy of the young and the old, and the transformation of culture and society.
What, then, do we mean by Unlimited Love?
The essence of love is to affectively affirm and to gratefully delight in the well-being of others; the essence of Unlimited Love is to extend this form of love to all others in an enduring, intense, effective, and pure manner. In addition to being understood as the highest form of virtue, Unlimited Love is often deemed a Creative Presence underlying and integral to all reality. Participation in Unlimited Love is considered the fullest experience of spirituality, giving rise to inner peace and kindness, as well as to active works of love toward all humanity. Depending on the circumstances of others, love is to degrees expressed in a number of ways, including empathy and understanding, generosity and kindness, compassion and care, altruism and self-sacrifice, celebration and joy, and forgiveness and justice. In all these manifestations, Unlimited Love acknowledges for all others the absolutely full significance that, because of egoism or hatred, we otherwise acknowledge only for ourselves.
One definition in the theological literature that I think captures the root of the experience of love and points in the direction of Unlimited Love is this: By love we mean at least these attitudes and actions: rejoicing in the presence of the beloved, gratitude, reverence and loyalty toward him.
Love is rejoicing over the existence of the beloved one; it is the desire that he be rather than not be; it is longing for his presence when he is absent; it is happiness in the thought of him; it is profound satisfaction over everything that makes him great and glorious. [20]
Rejoicing, gratitude, reverence, and loyalty are all constituent elements of unlimited or agape love. Love is gratitude or thankfulness for the existence of the other; it is a reverence that seeks not to absorb the other or refashion her as an image of the self; it is a loyalty that would rather allow the self to be destroyed than have the other cease to exist.
The obvious opposites of Unlimited Love are hatred and destructiveness. The more subtle opposites are intolerance, snobbery, and a general solipsism that is blind to human equality. Thus Gene Outka defines agape in terms of "equal regard." [21] Love means overlooking all of the perceived aspects of another that one finds simply intolerable and cause for an attitude of disdain. It means seeing through to the immense worth of each and every person as a living human being and affirming them equally as such with one's full heart.
If we look to the New Testament, we find that agape or Unlimited Love is first and foremost God's love, or God who is identified as love (I John 4:16). Unlimited Love is deemed the primordial energy in God's eternity, and the prime force underlying both creation and redemption. This love is a gift that desires to be mirrored in us though the synergy of our naturally evolved propensity for compassion and the effects of divine grace working directly on the individual. To be created in God's image means that we are created for love by love. We know that we are loved by Unlimited Love, and therefore we are able to love. How much of divine love is reflected within human affect and nature, and how can we better understand the experience of Unlimited Love as a divine energy that makes the substrate of human nature into something even better?
3. Three Clarifying Examples
Thus far, this chapter suffers from a rather abstract quality, and calls out for some concrete examples of proximate Unlimited Love in human lives by way of fitting conclusion. The story can start almost anywhere, e.g., with the many average people who stepped up to the call of service in helping at Ground Zero after the 9/11 attacks. In visiting St. Paul's Chapel, which rests on the very edge of the Ground Zero chasm, and which housed many of these helpers, I was told of an elderly African-American woman who had come down to the Chapel from the Bronx by train just to give her cane to anyone who might have an injured leg. Equally important, the story could begin inside the World Trade Towers, where ordinary people of every race and nationality worked together in peace and concord, thereby repudiating the hate-filled distortions of their attackers. Three stories are introduced here to clarify just what love it is that we are talking about. The first two are contemporary.
Most of the unselfish love energy in society is found in all of the small opportunities that average folks have to be good neighbors. We do not have to do great things, but small things such as visiting the sick, helping a neighbor, or offering to take step in for a caregiver. These small things, done in the spirit of love, mount up and shape the world. One of my favorite examples is the inspiring story of Patty Anglin and her family. [22] The Anglins have fifteen children, seven of whom are biological and eight of whom are adopted. All of the latter have "special needs"- i.e., serious medical problems, ranging from cognitive deficits to the absence of limbs. While there have been many challenges, the couple writes that these have been overcome by their experience of answered prayers and miracles of coincidence. They describe their family as "a sort of mini-United Nations," with children from a myriad of ethnic and racial backgrounds. The daughter of a physician and a mother who was "the most unselfish person I have ever known,” Patty Anglin grew up in the missionary fields of Africa. She and her husband now live on a farm in Wisconsin that is named "Acres of Hope", spreading what they perceive as God's love one child at a time.
A second story is that of a poor and abused Irish girl from the Dublin slums by the name of Christina Noble. The following is a brief summary of the contents of her book, entitled "Bridge Across My Sorrows". [23] It begins with a vision:
"I came to Vietnam because of a dream I had almost twenty years ago. The dream told me to work with the street children of this poor, jangled, disease-ridden country. You might laugh at that. You might say it was nothing but a dream and that only someone who was Irish would act on a dream as if it were a message from God. And you could be right. After all, my coming here was not anything I could explain then or anything I can explain today. I had a dream - a vision, if you will - that ordered me to Vietnam. That is all." [p. 13]
Christina's dream was to work with street children, for in it she had seen "a little girl reaching towards me for help" [p. 16]. She arrived in Vietnam in 1989, almost twenty years after her dream, "a middle-age woman with no education, no money, and no real idea of what I was going to do in Vietnam" [p. 13]. She left behind a life she considered unaccomplished, except for the birth of her three children. Now she would discover if the dream was only a dream, or a vision to direct her life. In the dream, Christina knew that the girl reaching out was hungry, frightened, and without family:
"Behind her were many other children, all rushing towards me and all crying for me to help. But I couldn't reach her. Then she was gone and all that was left was grey smoke that twirled and twirled as the wind moaned. Through the smoke appeared a light, a great white light, and within seconds the light evolved into letters. Then the word "Vietnam" was burning across the sky in brilliant, almost blinding lights." [p. 17]
Now in a filthy hotel in Ho Chi Ming City, Christina saw two little girls dressed in rags playing in the dirt across the street. Only they were actually "grubbing for ants" and eating them. The girls called out to her, "Give me. Give me." [p. 21] Christina pulled back, for the sight evoked for her memories of her own childhood in the Irish gutters.
But one of the little girls reached out to her, wanting the "touch of another human being." [p. 21] Remarkably, "Her hands and her expression were those of the girl in my dream." [p. 21] Christina reached out and embraced her, and her life would forever be changed with that momentous decision, for she would work with these children who live as she had lived in Dublin: "This poor and crippled country would be the place of my salvation, the place where I would regain hope and rebuild my life. Here I would stay. Here I would find happiness. I knew that I would never leave." [p. 22]
Christina's is an example of a person who overcame horrible personal circumstances through love. Born in Dublin in 1944, her father was a violent alcoholic, and her mother, whom she loved, died when Christina was a little girl. She grew up in a cruel orphanage and escaped to become destitute on the streets of the city. At sixteen she was gang raped by four men. She learned to work hard at tough jobs, started a small catering business, and was married to a violent and abusive husband with whom she had three children. Overworked and in despair, she had her dream of the children of Vietnam, and she found all hope in a determination to someday work with them. Her work as "Mama Tine" in Ho Chi Minh City is remarkable for its success. She felt throughout that she was doing exactly what God wanted her to do, and this gave her confidence. "Mama Tina" succeeded in creating a major center for the care of street children that is both a hospital and a social center. Children, most of them malnourished, are treated medically, and then moved to a residential care facility. At any given time an estimated seventy-five children are under in-patient residential care, and a thousand are treated each month on an out-patient basis.
One of my favorite historical stories of love is that of the American Quaker John Woolman (1720-1772), who wins my prize as one of the most courageous and effective "tough" lovers in world history. An undistinguished colonist, he traveled to Quaker meetings across the colonies, witnessing to people one by one about the evils of slavery. "My heart was tender and often contrite," he wrote, "and universal love to my fellow creatures increased in me." [24] The modern anti-slavery movement began precisely at the moment when, as matter of conscience, Woolman could no longer assist his employer in the sale of a slave. After convincing his fellow colonial Quakers to give up slavery, Woolman went on to spread his message in England, where he died after a short period of intense endeavor. Many Quakers both in the colonies and in England had been slave owners. Woolman set about the task of creating change through the art of tough love. He was confronting evil in the spirit of love, defying a convention that we found intolerable, and succeeding in quiet one-on-one conversations. He visited his fellow Quakers individually, farm after farm, for most of the two decades of his adult life. As Robert E. Quinn, a leading scholar on contemporary leadership skills, writes in his study of visionaries and "deep change," Woolman did not criticize people or anger them, but "by 1770, a century before the Civil War, not one Quaker owned a slave." [25] Due to the efforts of one man who seems to have approached the ideal of unlimited love as nearly as anyone, the Quakers were the first religious group to denounce slavery. If there had been a John Woolman in every religious denomination, perhaps the institution of slavery could have been abolished without the need for civil war. A single visionary individual committed to change under the power of unlimited love can make a difference in the world.
These three stories are about ordinary people with no special training, education, or social background who achieved remarkable outcomes simply by determining to live by faith in Unlimited Love. None of them would wish to claim that they understand or manifest the mystery of Unlimited Love, although it does seem that each discovered some resonance or synergy with this higher love that elevated them to noble purposes. Whether through a sense that every child is equally God's own, or through a vivid dream that was firmly ensconced in memory, or through a moral dictate that slavery is beneath the God-given dignity of a human soul, each achieved miraculously. With these exemplary lives, our chapter concludes.
Have I convinced those who reject the possibility of genuine unselfish love for anyone at all, let alone for all humanity? As the saying goes, "Scratch an altruist and watch and egoist bleed." The skeptic asserts that those who serve humanity are really pursuing reputational gain within the constraints of universal egoism and duplicity. [26] Or perhaps such good neighbors are motivated by the hedonic satisfaction felt after a task well done. The world needs skeptics, although I will present enough scientific evidence in the next section of this book to suggest that such skepticism is not empirically supportable. But for more immediate purposes, we turn now to the pioneering work of Pitirim Sorokin, who is significant for suggesting a five-dimensional measure of the quality of love. Sorokin's science of love will provide more clarification of the meaning of love as it is considered in this book, as well as indicate how empirical method might apply.
References
[1] See Teilhard de Chardin, The Phenomenon of Man, with an "Introduction" by Sir Julian Huxley (New York: Harper & Row, 1959).
[2] M.K. Ghandi, The Law of Love , Anand T. Hingorani, ed. (Bombay: Bharatiya Vidya Bhavan, 1970); see also Louis Fischer, ed., The Essential Gandhi: An Antrhology of his Writings on his Life, Work, and Ideas (New York: Vintage Books), 1962.
[3] Paramahansa Yogananda, Where There is Light (Los Angeles, Ca.: Self-Realization Fellowship, 1988), p. 57.
[4] Ibid., p. 137.
[5] Reinhold Niebuhr, The Children of Light and the Children of Darkness (New York: Scribner's, 1944).
[6] See Rufus M. Jones, Spiritual Reformers in the 16th and 17th Centuries (Boston: Beacon Press, 1914); Leo Tolstoy, The Kingdom of God is Within You, trans. by C. Garnett (Lincoln, Nebraska: The University of Nebraska Press, 1984 [original 1894]; Lawrence Edward Carter, Sr., ed., Walking Integrity: Benjamin Elijah Mays, Mentor to Martin Luther King, Jr. Macon, Georgia: Mercer University Press, 1998).
[7] See Everett L. Worthington, ed., Dimensions of Forgiveness: Psychological Research & Theological Perspectives (Philadelphia, Pa.: Templeton Foundation Press, 1998).
[8] See Thomas Molnar, Utopia: The Perennial Heresy (New York: Sheed and Ward, 1967).
[9] See Dietrich Bonhoeffer, Letters & Papers From Prison (New York: Macmillan, 1953).
[10] See Millard Fuller, with Diane Scott, No More Shacks: The Daring Vision of Habitat for Humanity (Waco, Tx.: Word Books, 1986).
[11] See Robert Wuthnow, Acts of Compassion: Caring for Others and Helping Ourselves (Princeton, New Jersey: Princeton University Press, 1991).
[12] For a Buddhist perspective, see Richard J. Davidson and Anne Harrington, eds., Visions of Compassion: Western Scientists and Tibetan Buddhists Examine Human Nature (New York: Oxford University Press, 2002); for a Christian Perspective, see M. Simone Roach, CSM, Caring, The Human Mode of Being: A Blueprint for the Health Professions, 2nd edition (Ottawa, Canada: CHA Press, 2002).
[13] See Jonathan Edwards, Religious Affections, ed. John E. Smith (New Haven, Ct.: Yale University Press, 1959 [original 1746]).
[14] William James, The Varieties of Religious Experience (New York: Penguin Books, 1982 [original 1902]), p. 486.
[15] John M. Templeton, Pure Unlimited Love: An Eternal Creative Force and Blessing Taught by All Religions (Philadelphia, Pa.: Templeton Foundation Press, 2000).
[16] Sir John Templeton, Pure Unlimited Love: An Eternal Creative Force and Blessing Taught by All Religions (Philadelphia, Pa.: Templeton Foundation Press, 2000).
[17] Kristen Renwick Monroe, The Heart of Altruism: Perceptions of a Common Humanity (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1996.
[18] Pitirim A. Sokokin, Altruistic Love: A Study of American Good Neighbors and Christian Saints (Boston: Beacon Press, 1950).
[19] Sir John Templeton, Pure Unlimited Love: An Eternal Creative Force and Blessing Taught by All Religions (Philadelphia: Templeton Foundation Press, 2000), p. 3.
[20] H. Richard Niebuhr, The Purpose of the Church and Its Ministry (New York: Harper & Row, 1977), p. 35.
[21] Gene Outka, Agape: An Ethical Analysis (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1972).
[22] Patty Anglin (with Joe Musser), Acres of Hope: The Miraculous Story of One Family's Gift of Love to Children Without Hope (Uhrichsville, Ohio: Promise Press, 1999).
[23] Christina Noble, with Robert Coram, Bridge Across My Sorrows (London: Corgi Books, 1995).
[24] John Woolman, The Journal of John Woolman, in The Harvard Classics: Franklin, Woolman, Penn , Charles W. Elliot, ed. (New York: P.F. Collier & Son, 1937), pp. 169-314, p. 174.
[25] Robert E. Quinn, Deep Change: Discovering the Leader Within (San Francisco: Jossey-Bass, 1996), p. 218.
[26] See Friedrich Nietzsche, On the Geneology of Morals, trans. By Walter Kaufmann (New York: Vintage Books, 1989 [original 1887]).