The Two Voices of God

My first blog entry. I've never really understood the idea of blogging. It seemed to me to be a cry for significance; a way to alleviate our deepest fears of mediocrity. Or the alternative, it seemed presumptuous; thinking that naturally people will want to read my deepest thoughts and all of cyberspace will be abuzz with my profound observations of the human condition.

Recently, however, I had a meaningful conversation with a meaningful person in my life. I knew exactly what I wanted to say, but lacked the words to say it. The moment now long gone, to revisit the conversation would be difficult and far less meaningful. However, after finding the words in a book, I felt the need to share them. And thus begins my first blog entry.

"A few years ago, I wrote a book entitled How Good Do We Have to Be? Its basic message was that God does not expect perfection from us, so we should not demand perfection of ourselves or those around us, for God knows what a complicated story a human life is and loves us despite our inevitable lapses. As I traveled around the country talking about my book, something interesting kept happening. Although most people in my audience welcomed the message that God loved them despite their mistakes and failings, in every audience there would be a significant number of people who were uncomortable with it. They wanted to believe that god loved them, and other people loved them, because they deserved it, not because God and the other people in their lives were gracious enough to put up wiht them. They wanted to believe that God cared abotu the choices they made every day, choosing between selfishness and generosity, between honesty and deceitfulness, and that the world became a better place when they made the right choices. They were like the college student who hands in a paper and wants the professor to read it carefully and critically, because he or she has worked so hard to make it good. The people in my audience felt that they had worked hard to lead moral lives. They might hope that God would make allowances for human frailty, but, like the college student, the ywould be sorely disappointed by the response, That's allright, I really didn't expect much from you anyway.

My answer to them when they challenged me was that I believe God speaks to us in two voices.

One is stern, commanding voice issuing from the mountaintop, thundering "Thou shalt not!," summoning us to be more, to reach higher, to demand greater things of oneselves, forbidding us to use the excuse "I'm only human," because to be human is a wondrous thing.

God's other voice is the voice of compassion and forgiveness, an embracing, cleansing voice, assuring us that when we have aimed high and fallen short we are still loved. God understands that when we give in to temptation it is a temporary lapse and does not reflect our true character.

Some years ago, Erich Fromm wrote a little book entitled The Art of Loving, in which he distinguished between what he called "mother love" and father love" )emphasizing that people of either gender are capable of both kinds of love). Mother love says: You are bone of my bone and flesh of my flesh, and I will always love you no matter what. Nothing you ever do or fail to do will make me stop loving you. Father love says: I will love you if you earn my love and respect, if you get good grades, if you make the team, if you get into a good college, earn a good salary.

Fromm insists that every one of us needs to experience both kinds of loving. It may seem at first glance that mother love is good, warm and freely given, father love harsh and conditional (I will only love you if...). But as my audiences taught me, and as a moment's reflection might teach us all, sometimes we want to hear the father's message that we are loved because we deserve it, not only because the other person is so generous and tolerant.

People need to hear the same message from God that children need to hear from their earthly parents. Just as it is an unforgettable comforting and necessary experience for a child caught doing something wrong to be forgiven and to learn that parental love is a gift that will not be arbitrarily withdrawn, a lesson no child should grow up wihtout absorbing, so is it a vital part of everyone's religious upbringing to learn that God's love is not tentative, that our failures do not alienate us from God. That is why Roman Catholic churches offer the sacrament of confession and penance, why Protestant liturgy emphasizes that the church is a home for imperfect people, and why Yom Kippur, the Day of Atonement for our sins, is the holiest day of the Jewish calendar.

When we are feeling burdened by guilt, when we know that we have done wrong and hate ourselves for it, we need to hear the voice of God-as-mother, assuring us that nothing can alienate us from God's love. But when we have worked hard to be good, honest, generous people, there is something lacking in the message, I love you despite yourself because I am so loving and lenient. What is missing is the voice of God-as-father: You're good, you have earned My love.

I can't tell you how many men and women I have counseled who spent their entire adult lives feeling somehow incomplete and unsure of their worth because they never heard their father tell them, You're good and I love you for it. I once paid a condolence call on a man in my congregation whose father had just died. The funeral and memorial week had taken place in another city, where his parents had lived, and I was the only visitor on his first night home. After several minutes of asking about the funeral and how his mother was coping, I found myself saying, "It sounds like your father was a man who kept to himself."

The congregant broke down and started to cry. "He never said anything good about me. All my life, I wanted to hear him say he was proud of me for who I was and what I was doing, and all I ever got from him was this sense that he showed his love by putting up with me." He wiped his eyes, apologized for the tears, and went on. "In my head, I know that he had a problem talking about his feelings. In my head, I know he thought his way was the righ tway to make me do better. But in my heart, I feel so cheated. I always got good grades in shcool, never got into trouble, went to a good college. I make a good living, live ina nice home, have a wonderful family. Would if have been so hard for him just once to tell me that he was proud of me? And now he's dead and I'll never hear it.""

-Harold S. Kushner

My first thought when I read Kushner was that he was dead on. Then, I reflected on a journal entry I stumbled across from four years ago, reading a similar book, and it caused me to think.

“Judgment does not only take the form of criticism. Approval is also a form of judgment. When we approve of people, we sit in judgment of them as surely as when we criticize them. Positive judgment hurts less acutely than criticism, but it is judgment all the same and we are harmed by it in far more subtle ways. To seek approval is to have no resting place, no sanctuary. Like all judgment, approval encourages a constant striving. It makes us uncertain of who we are and of our true value. This is as true of the approval we give ourselves as it is of the approval we offer others. Approval can’t be trusted. It can be withdrawn at any time no matter what our track record has been. It is as nourishing of real growth as cotton candy. Yet many of us spend our lives pursuing it.”

“Perfectionism can break your heart and all the hearts around you. Perfectionism is the belief that life is broken….Children can learn early that they are loved for what they do and not simply for who they are….Of course love is never earned. It is a grace we give one another. Anything we need to earn is only approval.”

-Dr. Rachel Naomi Remen

On the surface, Kushner and Remen seem to diverge on this point. Is "earned love" really just a misnomer for an unhealthy sense of approval, or is it true that children need to feel both conditional and unconditional love?

My belief and understanding is that we all crave recognition and validation for our successes and our triumphs, but these things are not love. The concept of "father love" is not genuine love at all. Nonetheless, it is still a necessary part of our emotional development. If we are expected to make a sincere effort at striving, seeking, and "not to yeild"-ing then we need to feel validated and recognized for our efforts: but these things ARE NOT LOVE. Love in my mind is by definition unconditional. The congregant described by Kushner sounds a lot like the person that Remen describes searching constantly for the nourishment of cotton candy that is approval.

I also believe that love is a conscious decision. Naturally, there is a fatalistic attraction, the hackneyed "spark" that simply is there or isn't, but the decision to truly love someone is a choice, and while we can apply reason and attempt to find the best possible mate available, hedging our bets on someone who is stable emotionally, or financially, or has a great deal of compatibility, that choice is an act of faith. There is inherently a degree of uncertainty; of risk. What if this person doesn't choose to love me back? What if they fall ill? What if they fail in their career? Or in some cases, what if they succeed? What if they fall in love with someone else? What if they get fat? What if the romance fades? What if one or both of you changes dramatically?

But once that choice is made, once your lot is cast and all you can do is hope and pray and work for the best; then, despite your best calculations, invariably at some point they will get fat, or sick, or laid off, or depressed, or bored, or frustrated, and the depth of your love will be tested, and any conditions on which your love was predicated will come crashing down, and you will be forced to ask yourself if you really do love that person unconditionally. And that person that truly will love you in your darkest moments, the one that sticks with you when the chips are down, that's the person that you want to end up with. But the beauty is that the one who ran out on you when you needed them most has already cut themselves out of your life, and as they slowly fade into obscurity, it is them and not you who will stomach the regret.