Week 11—Wednesday 1 Corinthians 13:8-13
1 Corinthians 13:8-13
IS SCIENCE COMING OUT
TO THE SUPREMACY OF LOVE?
We have seen that love is the supreme value in the Christian faith—consistently so. So if we work from Revelation down, we come to love as the supreme thing in God and humans. That is the verdict of Revelation. What is the verdict as we work up the other way—from the facts up and out to conclusions? Is some other value turning out to be the supreme value as we apply the scientific method of experimentation leading to verified knowledge? Or is scientific investigation leading to the same conclusion that love is the supreme value in human nature?
In one of my books, Christian Maturity, I took the position that the human personality is as mature as it is mature in love, and no more. One may be mature in culture and knowledge and in ability, but if one is immature in love, that person is an immature personality. And the psychologists are increasingly agreeing. Dr. Carl Menninger, head of perhaps the most outstanding psychiatric center of America, in Topeka, Kansas, wrote a book on Love Against Hate. He took the position that love is the constructive element—love builds up and hate tears down. When he came to the conclusion that people are in his institution because they had not loved or been loved, it was an epoch in his thinking. For psychiatry had been founded on the idea that insight is the cure-all for human personality problems. Give patients insight as to their troubles, and they are automatically cured. But mental institutions are filled with people who have insight as to what is the matter with them, but they are still there. Insight is not necessarily curative. When the diagnosis shifted, the technique had to shift. These people were there because they hadn’t loved or been loved. They must love them into loving.
O Jesus, Lover of my Soul, let me to your bosom fly. Love me into loving. If I can’t love with my love, let me love with your love. Then I will love the unlovely. For you loved the unlovely. Help me to catch your spirit. Amen.
AFFIRMATION FOR THE DAY: As Christ is loving me into loving so I will love others into loving.