Love won't be held hostage.
Love takes no prisoners.
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Apple's new bags when you buy something in an Apple Store are biodegradable. The old bags were thick plastic and threaded with a rope dr...
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Love won't be held hostage. Love takes no prisoners.
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Did you ever know anyone who seemed to have no trouble making choices? The thing I'm thinking about now is that we all make choices ever...
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I was sitting in a child psych class and listening to this professor talk about love in the mind of a child. She postulated that love and need can not co-exist. You can not love your parents really, until you don't need them anymore. When you need them, they are there to fulfill needs.
You know, I have thought about that for some years. Can love and need co-exist? I know that I love people the best when I don't need them...and often I think our life here is to transcend relational "need". But, I don't know, if you boiled it down,it's kind of impossible to not need anything from anyone...that's a very isolative way of living and we are community creatures. I don't know...What do you think about love and need?
C.S. Lewis wrote about two classes of love: need love and gift love. To him, a child's love of a parent, including my love for God, are need loves, and they are true loves. When you think about it a parent is much like a god to a child. A parent creates (we use words like procreate and progenitor), bestows identity, tells them the way things really are, asserts authority, feeds, clothes, nurtures, etc.)
My natural tendency is to go with need and love being mutually exclusive, like you asked. But I have rethought that after reading Lewis.
Nonetheless, it changes the relationship when you need someone. And when you have convinced yourself that you need someone. Because I have seen in myself and others how ugly "love" can be when it's desperate.
But what I think is an excellent and pure mutual exclusion is need vs. desire. You can't desire something if you need it. Air, for example. I don't desire air. I need it. And I'll do just about anything to get it or to keep someone from depriving me of it. Nor can you desire something if you have a deep-rooted conviction that you need it. Alcohol, for example. Alcoholics don't want alcohol. They need it. Ask any recovering alcoholic, and they will tell you they drank to be normal. Or you could look at coffee, high speed internet, indoor plumbing, sex, affection, an attentive spouse, medical insurance, cable tv, a new car, or any other addiction (including these). But you can actually survive for long periods of time without any of these. They are not needs.
I think one thing we need to do is rescue the word need. Poor guy. He gets thrown at everything. I need a new car? I need a drink? I need a tax deduction? I need you? And we CERTAINLY need to rescue the word desire. It's not a dirty word. But it becomes soiled when it is taken too far, against its will I might add. I desire intimacy, adventure, purpose, vindication. But I don't have to have them. I don't have to have them NOW. I long for them. And it is in the longing that I find God. I need God.
And that takes me back to the original post. In my relationships with others, I desire soooooo much. But I can't demand it. Often others desire sooooo much of me. But they can't demand it. Well, we can, but then it ceases to be a loving relationship. Because love won't be held hostage. Love offers something and love accepts something. Anything that goes beyond what is freely offered and freely received is not love. Love won't be held hostage. It will wither and become phantasmic.
On the flip side, love takes no prisoners. But I'll circle back to that later.
Can we desire God?
can you desire your husband?
I don't need my husband like air, water, or God...So yeah, according to Steve's logic other people fall into the desire category...I love my husband, but I can live without him if I needed to...But, what are we without God? I am not saying I don't think we can desire God... I am more trying on Steve's need/desire logic as it concerns God....I thought of the Apostles when Jesus asks them "are you going to leave me too?" and they respond "but where would we go? You have the words of life?" Is that desire or need that they are expressing?
Follow.
I am not fond of Steve's paragraph which speaks of mutual exclusion, speaking of need & desire as "either or".
My experience with intimate relationships (God and very few others) is need & desire are "both and", not "either or".
I can desire someone I need, and need someone I desire. But again, these are only the ultimately closest of relationships. (Other rshps don't meet this.)
But the closest ones are like a continuum. When I need them the needle is down toward the need end the continuum but desire is still on the board, still part of the continuum. And vice versa, of course. Neither need nor desire no longer exist, it's just the needle ebbs.
Need has to do with consumption. It gives birth to demanding and justifying.
Desire has to do with acceptance. It gives birth to hoping and grieving.
Desire is good.
But not all desire is good yet. There is a journey of desire. Desire, like love, must be perfected in what it suffers. And since I am a romantic, I talk about the perfects.
John the Baptist was needed. Jesus is the Desire of Nations. Need must say to desire, He must increase, I must decrease.
I'm not sure I follow your logic, Steve...could you clarify a little more what you mean? What's tripping me up in what you are saying is trying to determine whether you think we need or desire God. It seems by your last statement that you are implying we desire God. I like what JTT said about a continuum of need/desire. When I thought about it...most human experiences are so much more complex than "This is what I do out of need" and "This is what I do out of desire" Where does need end and desire begin?
No logic here.
Meditate on the word take for a while, and then come back to thinking about the difference in need and desire in your own heart.
I am a very strange person, I swear...When I meditated on the word "take" the image I got is this...Remember when you were a kid and you would go out for Halloween and there would be these houses with a basket and a little sign that says "take two pieces of please" and you know by kid three there was almost always nothing left...that is what I think of when I meditate on the word take. Now I have to unravel what that means in reference to need and desire in my heart...any thoughts?
Do you like coffee?
Love coffee
Have you ever been awakened by the smell of fresh brewed coffee on a cold morning, and just laid there in bed with the covers up around your head?
Me, too. And it is in this moment—when I am lying there, wondering what joy awaits me if I wander into the cold unknown, wondering who and what have preceded me, anticipating the coffee engaging my tongue and warming my throat, anticipating the bond of sharing this ritual with other lovers—it is in this moment that I am living in desire.
Which is not to be confused with the moment that comes later, after lunch, when I’ve indulged a bit too much, and I can feel the refined sugar pounding in my veins, making my limbs and lids heavier and heavier, turning me to stone from the inside out—the moment I actually need need that cuppa to survive the rest of the day. I don't desire that joe. I need it.
The life of desire is in the desiring itself. The life of need is in the taking.
Yeah, that makes sense. Now onto second mice.
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