As an adolescent I thought that I would gladly take less free will if people would be more kind to one another. Surely, I thought, we could do without man’s inhumanity to man and still be roughly ourselves. Why would God allow all this freedom to get in the way of people being decent?
Fast forward 45 years or so, and I am completely clear about this. If I had less free will, I would not be able to love or not love as I do. To love deeply and steadfastly is a tremendous gift not to be taken lightly. It is important that those we love know how much we love them, in what ways we love them, and that our love pushes us and them to be our best selves.
Having also experienced the devastation of not being loved by one I loved deeply; I know that there is nothing in the world I would do to enslave that person to love me. Love must be freely given, or it is not love. This truth can be painful. The fullness of the truth of genuine love, though, is everything. After all, Aquinas gave up writing the Summa when he received a taste of God’s divine love.
Our culture is quite fuzzy headed when it comes to discussing love. One might get the idea that arousal, mirth, and enjoyable food are all “love”. How frivolous. There are probably thousands of songs about falling in love against one’s better judgement/willpower. I am not totally disrespectful of the idea that we experience the world through emotions. If I say that I “love” golden raspberries fresh from my garden, that is obviously hyperbole. But the grain of truth it contains is that God gave us the sensual experience of a delicious fruit that also nourishes us. He could have set up the world in any way he chose, yet he chose to have us experience nourishment through the delightful work of our hands that produces amazingly pleasurable edibles.
It is the same with experiencing people. I am blessed to have loved ones who make me laugh. I am surrounded by people who are intellectually, emotionally, and spiritually beautiful. They delight those around them with their witty repartee, patient listening, and consistent prayers. Most of the time I am not aware of the “love is a choice” doctrine by which I live because most people in my life are quite easy to love and enjoy. Yet as fallen human beings on the mortal coil we occasionally and inevitably rub one another the wrong way. I’m the queen of this, but it seems to happen in all relationships of which I am aware. At that point love must be a choice, and truth must be the prime consideration. Loving someone means wanting heaven for them. Yes, I want to enjoy my husband, children, grandchildren, and friends, but we can only fully enjoy one another if we are living in the truths of Christ and His Church. We certainly have friends who are outside the Church, and we can love and enjoy them. But we cannot tell them things that are not true or be silent in the face of things they want to believe as true if they want us to agree to them.
This can sever relationships. Everyone in my family has lost loved ones to the current insanity. We have also continued more tenuously in relationships that will likely break if strained further. My children and I all grew up in the arts. It is impossible to grow up in the arts and not have friends who are sexually confused. This is true of heterosexual libertines as well as other kinds of confusion. We can love them without condoning their behavior. We must love them despite their behavior and give a Christian example of a joy-filled life. It can be a difficult task to balance not approving behavior or beliefs while loving the human person made in God’s image.
I understand why people are attracted to voodoo and love potions. When my children used to play the game of “what superpower would you want”, I would always say that I wanted the power to control other people. It got to be a running gag that they’d regularly tease me about. It was important to my growth in holiness to laugh about my desire to be a petty tyrant. The current iteration of this is that I would like to have Magneto’s power so that I could fix how people park in Saint Louis.
I have always found people fascinating and mysterious. Lovable, in a word, but opaque in many ways. Public school did nothing to assist me in understanding others. Pretending that the most important thing children have in common is their date of manufacture is quite silly. As I went through college and entered the workforce, it became easier to develop relationships with those older and younger than myself, which assisted me to find a peer group. My children’s friends regularly become family members.
But we do have those who judge us and stomp away. We have those who “fall out of love” with us. I still think back occasionally to those I have loved who did not love me. I try to understand my own behavior in those relationships to see if I was being manipulative, judgmental, immature, or aggressive about my beliefs. Anyone can be part of my family. If they choose to leave, we will let them and not chase after them. I consider that part of our freewill choice to love and be loved and choose the good of others.God gave us freewill not just to love those who are lovable, but to love those who are our enemies by an act of the will. When someone hurts one of my children, I find it challenging to love them. I find it difficult to forgive them and pray for them. But love requires sacrifice, and no one will ever sacrifice as much as Jesus did. God provides us the graces to save our souls and the free will to choose to cooperate with those graces. So, I must at least try to be like Him and remember that when any of us sin we will stand before Him and answer for it. I want all the prayers I can get when that happens. I think everybody does.