A Review of Love as a Way of Life

I’m not sure that there is a greater marketing gimmick in the world than romantic love. Music, films, books, paintings, all depict love in various forms and glorify, if not deify, the concept of romantic love. As a consequence of this ongoing glorification, I’ve tended to view books on love with a certain amount of suspicion. And so it was when I was contacted to put together a blog review on Gary Chapman’s newest book, Love as a Way of Life: Seven Keys to Transforming Every Aspect of your Life (Waterbrook Press, 2008). I'm also notoriously skeptical of subtitles like this one.

I knew of Chapman’s The Five Love Languages, and he has written his first study of love since that famous work. Love as a Way of Life is his attempt to reframe the reader’s view of love from romantic concepts to realistic ones. He breaks down the concept of love into seven constituent parts, and provides a definition of each one.

Kindness: The joy of meeting someone else’s needs before your own simply for the sake of the relationship

Patience: Allowing someone to be imperfect

Forgiveness: Using honesty, compassion, and self awareness to reconcile with someone who hurt you

Courtesy: The act of treating everyone as a personal friend

Humility: a peacefulness of heart that allows you to stand aside in order to affirm the value of someone else

Generosity: giving your attention, time, abilities, money, and compassion freely to others

Honesty: a loving consistency in speech thought and action

In each chapter he defines that aspect of love. He usually relates a narrative from his counseling experience that illustrates how the individual was either practicing or not practicing that particular trait.

Take his definition of courtesy. It eschews the common concept of the word (saying Thank you and Yes Ma'am) and provides it with a much greater depth. It only takes a minute to see how our lives might be transformed by characteristic of love. How might your day be changed if you treated everyone you encountered as a personal friend? Would it affect the way you interact with the cashier at Wal-Mart? Would it affect the hostile student complaining about a grade? How would it affect the long-suffering secretary in the doctor’s office who is trying to work your sick child into an unscheduled appointment? Would it affect your response to your wife at the end of a busy week when you are both exhausted and the kids are fighting?

Chapman defines the terms and then offers practical suggestions for implementing them. He includes the competitor of each of these characteristics of love (e.g. busyness is the competitor of courtesy) and offers specific suggestions for cultivating these selfless acts.

Chapman rejects the common view that one falls into and out of love as though it were a disease alternately caught and overcome. He argues that anyone who claims to love must translate those words into concrete actions. As he writes, “Love is an attitude that leads to a change in behavior.” Specifically, love bears scant resemblance to popular conditions of romantic love that fades over time in the face of the demands of work, kids, relatives, and even due to high school reunions.

For Chapman, authentic love is not an ethereal feeling, but a concrete series of specific tasks and this book is about equipping the reader for these tasks.

As a joke, sometimes I steal the line from As Good as it Gets and say to Kadie (with appropriate Nicholson inflection) “You make me wanna be a better man!”

Chapman reminds me that wanting to do something is not the same thing as equipping me to do so. This work equips the reader for a life-transforming task. It is probably the best book on personal development I’ve read in the 20 years since I read since Scott Peck’s A Road Less Travelled.

In closing, I told Kadie about the book and she had noticed me trying to work on some of the traits he discusses. Stealing one of Chapman's questions from his section on marriage, I asked her “Kadie, how can I be a better husband to you?” Without missing a beat she replied “Keep reading books like that one.”

High praise indeed!

Now for a little contest. I also received two extra copies of this book! The first two readers to email me the languages of love (all five) from Capman's previous book will get a free copy of Love as a Way of Life.

Lessons From Mrs. Mozelle

As the months at Susan song have moved along, I began to hear about Mrs. Mozelle’s life experiences. I’ve always been touched by her great affection for Squealer. She always cackled loudest during the tales (especially the two cheese tales) about his energetic little life. It was only later that I learned her own son was killed in a car accident at the age of eighteen. When prompted, she speaks of him with powerful, maternal tones. She loved him dearly and his death marks her life to this day, when he would likely have had several children of his own.

In an almost unbelievable occurrence, Mozelle’s first husband died the following week of a heart attack. They were married twenty-two years. She found him in their bedroom shortly after his heart quit. On one occasion she shared with me how shocking an experience that was, to walk in and see the love of your life lying on the floor. I do not see how a soul could handle that shock. But she did. Her faith in God and in His ultimate goodness wavered, but never receded.

In fact, a few years later the Lord brought a wonderful man into her life and she married once again. Harold was a deacon at Susan Song and they had a wonderful time together. They had no children, but spent time traveling and working their little farm. After twelve years of marriage, Harold developed Alzheimers and began his long, slow decline. Life got very hard for Mozelle as she cared for someone who had been so strong and energetic. After three long years Harold passed away.

So after losing two husbands and one son, I am amazed at her faithfulness to God. I haven’t walked that road of pain and loss and find myself wondering how faithful I would be. I pray I never find out.

Two months ago, in her mid-seventies, Mozelle made the brave decision to marry again. After Harold’s death, she has spent over a decade single and happy. But she met Sonny last year and he pursued her with a suitor’s passion that is no respecter of age. Sonny refused to take no for an answer and wooed her for months. He fought across Europe during the second World War and loves a challenge. They were married last month and Brother Jones came back and did the service. Susan Song was packed and all in attendance agreed that they had never seen a finer wedding.

Mozelle expresses a childlike faith, but not a naïve one. She has not led a sheltered life, hidden away from the pains of this world. Rather her faith is the faith of one who has plumbed the depths of suffering and despair and has found God faithful even there. More than anyone else I know, Mozelle is aware of the pain that always accompanies love. And yet she decides to love and to commit once again.

And so at the send of each Sunday School lesson I hold up my finger and pledge to “let my little light shine” while completely aware that my light is all too often the size of a small Bic lighter running low on fuel.

But Mozelle’s light is like that of a city on a hill that cannot be hidden.

Mrs. Mozelle

Mozelle was the first person from Susan Song that I spoke with last summer. She has a delightful laugh and conveys an energy level beyond her seventy-five years. After we met, I learned that she teaches the Adult (which is to say only) Sunday School class. Since I want the church to continue to do as much as it has during the interim time, I declined the invitation to teach Sunday school and instead sit on the back row where I can observe and (very occasionally) comment.

Her classes are fairly predictable. They are full of bubblyness, shrill cackles of laughter and frequent Hallelujahs offered up with the constant refrain “Isn’t God so good?!” She reminds me at times of a Muppet, constantly smiling and throwing her head back in a boisterous laugh. She follows a rote teaching pattern, drawn from a careful study of the SBC adult Sunday School literature. (Last quarter, the wrong series of literature was ordered and she expressed such concern that we quickly ordered the traditional kind). Mozelle ends every Sunday School the same way. Each class member holds their index fingers aloft while she says “Let your…” and the class shouts back “little light shine.”

It is, at times, more than I can stand.

“There’s the Preacherman!!!!” she shouts whenever I arrive at Susan Song. Her outlook is soooo rosy and sooo saccharine, that I thought I could never relate to her. Surely someone who has only led a sheltered life could be that overly joyful all the time, right?

But I was wrong. Tomorrow, what I learned from Mrs. Mozelle.

Doug Dickens

Bruce sent me the following link. Doug was the long time professor of pastoral ministry at Southwestern Baptist while I was a student there. On Friday, his wife of three decades died from ovarian cancer. They kept a journal of their experiences through this difficult period of their lives.

It is both a joy and a sorrow to read. See here.

Update: Link now fixed. Thanks Bobby.

Congratulations Blacks!!!!

On your seventh anniversary. I trust that you look better today than you did several years ago!

Thank you so much for serving the Lord up in Minot, ND.

A finer couple I've never met.

For more on the Blacks, see Vince's blogs

http://potcallingkettle.blogspot.com/

and the delightful (and slightly subversive)

http://www.christiancheese.blogspot.com/

Seinfeld, Taran, and Uri

Kadie says that I am strange and have several idiosyncracies of almost Seinfeldian proportions. This is particularly true of silverware that must go in my mouth. All in all, I need for things to be smooth and even. Specifically, fork tines must be equal. Although Kadie insists it is yet one more sign of my impending institutionalization, I have sent forks at restaurants back because the tines were uneven. The lack of symmetry is horrific and makes for an unpleasant feeling in my mouth. I want to leave bent forks to Uri Geller.* I even coined the phrase "Lips that touch tines will never touch mine".

What brought on this particular post was a discussion (as opposed to a fight) that Kadie and I had the other day over a spoon dropped down the disposal. After the (self installed by the way) In-Sink-Erator chewed up the bowl of the spoon, I told her that we should throw it away.

"But it is still useable." she said.

I recoiled. "That spoon has no further use in our family and I pronounce it unclean!" I declared.

She ignored me and put it back in the drawer, taking great care to mix it up with the other, normal spoons. She doth vex me so.

Nevertheless, I remain convinced that there is something deeply unholy about cutlery that bites you back.

* I am intrigued that Uri Geller's homepage includes his views on such world critical issues as his favorite sports teams and a link to his own line of jewelry. BTW, Uri Geller makes a brief appearance in the lines of one of my very favorite Contemporary Christian bands.