What kind of Love?

As I go back over the parts of Bonhoeffer’s Life Together that I highlighted, I continue to be challenged.

One of the themes of the book is the difference between being self centered and Christ centred.

I find this following passage very confronting. If you replace the word community with relationship, I think these few paragraphs are relevant to everyone.

I find myself challenged and can see where I need to face the fact I am being self centred in some of my relationships.

Don’t read it if you don’t want to be disturbed.

Self centered love loves the other for the sake of itself; spiritual love loves the other for the sake of Christ. That is why self-centered love seeks direct contact with other persons. It loves them not as free persons, but as those whom it binds to itself. It wants to do everything it can to win and conquer; it puts pressure on the other person. It desires to be irresistible, to dominate.

Self-centered love does not think much of truth. It makes truth relative, since nothing, not even the truth, must come between it and the person loved.

Emotional, self centered love desires other persons, their company. it wants them to return its love, but does not serve them. On the contrary, it continues to desire even when it seems to be serving.

Two factors, which are really one and the same thing, reveal the difference between spiritual and self-centered love.

Emotional, self centered love cannot tolerate the dissolution of a community that has become false, even for the sake of genuine community. And such self-centered love cannot love an enemy, that is to say, one who seriously and stubbornly resists it.

Both spring from the same source: emotional love is by its very nature desire, desire for self centered community. As long as it can possibly satisfy that desire, it will not give it up, even for the sake of truth, even for the sake of genuine love for others.

But emotional, self-centered love is at an end when it can no longer expect its desire to be fulfilled, namely, in the face of an enemy. There it turns into hatred, contempt, and slander.

Spiritual love, however, begins right at this point. This is why emotional, self centered love turns into personal hatred when it encounters genuine spiritual love that does not desire but serves.

Do you relate to this at all?