Rob Field, CSW Director
“Please, lock me away,” declare the first words of an old song. “And don’t allow the day.” If we keep listening, we learn why the singer feels so forlorn: “I don’t care what they say, I won’t stay in a world without love.”
At age 16, Paul McCartney wrote “A World Without Love” before he formed The Beatles with John Lennon. The song became an international hit for the duo Peter & Gordon in the 1960s. The idea behind the song is undeniably an emotional and intellectual provocation: a world without love? It’s hard to fathom.
These thoughts came recently when I was getting ready for a wedding I was asked to conduct. The bride and groom, a young couple in their late 20s, chose a beautiful passage from the Gospel of John. In it, Jesus issues what some people call the Eleventh Commandment: This is my commandment, that you love one another as I have loved you (John 15:12). My brief message during the ceremony recommended that Diana and Noah make self-giving, sacrificial love the foundation of their life together. No matter what else happened, I said, they have a decent chance for long-term contentment if they can find a way to keep self-giving love at the center of their life.
I considered presenting a longer version of my remarks, but decided against it to honor the couple’s desire for a brief ceremony. The longer homily went something like this: marriage and other committed partnerships may be the world’s last, best hope for love. With the ongoing threat to liberal values, including the moral/ethical imperative to love, I’m beginning to wonder how else self-giving love will be upheld and brought forward.
Even though I’m a religious professional of sorts, I don’t count on religion — even the best of it — to preserve and promote love. I recognize that plenty of religiously-minded people agree on love as a spiritual value. But I don’t think the most popular religious groups and their leaders are getting this message across to the wider culture. In the public square, compassion (love in action) is getting crowded out by countervailing priorities like power, wealth, competition, rugged individualism, and survival.
What, then, will become of love? As the moral and ethical implications of love are set aside in the halls of government and large corporations, we might have no option other than hoping that couples, families and courageous individuals will carry the torch for the rest of society. Let’s face it: Tina Turner’s “What’s Love Got to Do With It?” isn’t anyone’s idea of a worthy theme song!
Come to think of it, the inverse is not a bad way to measure the potential of any religion, philosophy or spiritual tradition. If you’re looking for one to adopt as your own, you might want to ask: “What do you profess and teach about love and compassion?” If you’re not impressed with the answer, I strongly encourage you to keep looking.
I’m with Paul McCartney. I don’t want to stay in a world without love.