Week 12—Tuesday Revelation 2:2-5
Revelation 2:2-5
“TO GAIN OR REGAIN THE CAPACITY FOR LOVE”
We continue to look at the centrality of love—look at it as the facts of life slowly emerging are pointing to the thing that is central in God and central to the Christian faith and is proving to be central in human beings. Albert Outler in Psychotherapy and the Christian Message, says: “Analytic therapy is essentially an attempt to help the patient gain or regain the capacity for love.” Again: “The psychotherapists have come to wide agreement that love is the only force that can cope with libido.” “Love is the sovereign specific for human ills; yet love cannot be legislated or evoked at will.” “Man can no more generate love by his own powers than he can generate his own true being.” “Human love which is not in response to divine love is, therefore, self-erring, self-interested love which enlightenment can direct but cannot reform.”
This is interesting and important: “To help the patient gain or regain the capacity for love”—“love is the only force that can cope with the libido”—“Love . . . cannot be legislated or evoked at will”—“Human love which is not in response to divine love is self-erring, self-interested love which enlightenment can direct but cannot reform.” So enlightenment, or insight, which has been and is the working hypothesis and power of analytic psychotherapy, is powerless to reform the self-centered libido. That can come only in response to Divine Love. And so we are driven straight into the arms of the Word became flesh—the Divine Love reaching down. But what Divine Love doesn’t merely reform—it regenerates! A woman who was having trouble with sex—the libido—went to a pagan psychiatrist who said: “Your sex urge is too heavily loaded—distribute the load, take up smoking and drinking and that will lighten the load of sex.” She did and was more frustrated than ever. She saw the utter and complete bankruptcy of this suggestion, surrendered herself to Christ and was delivered from all three bondages: cigarettes, liquor, and sex!
O Jesus, my Lord, you are the sovereign remedy for all our ills, for you are love and only Love. You can expel the drive of the libido toward the lower and convert it into the higher, into Love itself. Then we are free—free indeed. I thank you. Amen.
AFFIRMATION FOR THE DAY: Where there is no love there is no life—only death.