Doug Van Pelt

Soul Cravings.1

The book is broken up into three headings:
INTIMACY
DESTINY
MEANING
Each chapter is called an "entry."

The first one is called: "Love is like stepping on broken glass."
Wow. That's an attention-getting headline.
The entry starts off with a story about a late-night outing for some college students escaping the walls of the dorm at the University of North Carolina. On the way back a very attractive young lady began walking barefoot and stepped on a piece of glass. "Fate" stepped in and allowed the author to be the guy that got to carry her back to safety. He describes the mile-long journey as feeling like "it was all downhill." He was highly motivated and the load probably seemed lighter than it was.

A "romance was born," he writes. "...true love, an epic romance, classic Shakespeare." The next paragraph bookends the experience, though: "It lasted a couple of months."

The author uses this entire first entry, pretty much, to just throw the "problem" out there. He describes truthfully how so much is written and talked about in our culture about "love." Songs, books, talk shows. We are driven, it seems, by love. Love is magic. It is happy. It is tragic. It is sad. He uses a great metaphor here:

"How is it that the same thing that can make your life a rhapsody can also leave you gutted,
like a dead fish wrapped in day-old newspaper?"

We will read on, I am sure, about how this "version" or understanding or definition of love is not real love. This kind of love -- the popular definition -- is "feeling love," or the emotional kind. The problem with feelings and emotions is that they change. They rise and fall like a roller coaster, sometimes like a unexpected hole in the ground.

I have a friend in Nashville named Shane. He was glad to tell anybody who asked about his late night trip down an open manhole. One detail of his story that gets repeated every time is the phrase "the city of Nashville," who were the guilty culprits, apparently, of leaving a manhole in a dimly (or completely non-lit) lit downtown street uncovered. I can only imagine the pain of having a fairly exposed (not much meat or fat there) shinbone meeting the metal edge of a manhole at walking speed. Ouch! He broke his leg and was on crutches much later, if I remember correctly. That reminds me about the pain of love. We will have the experience of heartache etched into our memory. We'll remember names and details, because the emotional intensity of a breakup is so high. Sometimes it takes great power, forgiveness, and time to heal over a wound like that.

When we really open up our hearts, the unprotected and vulnerable parts can get damaged. That hurts. One fairly natural by-product, I think, are the "trap doors" that we will sometimes construct around our hearts to prevent future pain. This is sad, because it prevents us from loving -- which is what we were meant to do. God surely created us to love. He gave us the capacity to love unconditionally, which also leaves us vulnerable to disappointment, heartache, and pain.

I can imagine that God really risked a lot when he made mankind with a free will. He gave us the choice to love Him or not love Him. I won't say "hate," even though I should, because most of us would deny that we've ever hated God. If we were honest, though, we'd equate apathy and non-choice with hate ... or at least acknowledge that apathy and ignoring is very, very bad. Forcing us to love Him would be like an entire planet of Stepford Wives. That would not be fulfilling. What a dangerous, risky, and adventurous God! He gave us the ability to reject Him ... or love Him! How it must excite Him when we choose Him.

(10% of those reading, who would call themselves "Calvinists" or "pre-destined" people have possibly just checked out of this discussion. Too bad.)

Posted by Doug Van Pelt at July 31, 2007 10:51 AM