Love, Marriage and Truth - First Corinthians 13

I was just reviewing what love is. The best definition, the one so often used at weddings is First Corinthians 13.  I reflect that I don't read my bible enough. I've read it cover to cover about 4 times and studied it in church and at various universities. Still nothing beats daily reading for improving ones self awareness.  It was the strongest recommendation of Dr. Bob, cofounder of AA, and his wife.  My much admired friend. Dr. Willie Gutowski strongly recommended this to me as well. In his family they had a daily reading at meals.  My greatest biblical teacher, Dr. James Houston strongly recommended daily bible reading too.  He once recommended I read a psalm a day and when I did that I was uplifted as he said I'd be. The Bible is inspiration. I truly admire Dr. Phillip Ney, the great advocate for women and children's rights knowledge of the Bible.  My mother encouraged me from childhood.  She and her sisters were never far from their Bibles but I can be so forgetful and distractible.

I Corinthians 13 says:
Love is patient - Now I can truthfully say that I would argue till the cows come home that I am patient and was patient but when I truthfully reflect on my marriage, I was very impatient.  I am a man who is in fact impatient alot with women in general.  I think that Winston Churchhill beat Adolf Hitler and women after that war let Eva Brawn beat Mrs. Churchill.  I've been terrribly impatient for women to become more sophisticated politically and recognise the divide and conquer of the powerful left. I am frustrated by their naivity in the workplace and the reduction in doctors income directly associated with the increase in the percentage of women. I've been horrified by the sexist female judges who have found hundreds of cases consecutively against me. Mostly I hate abortion and the women who advocate the mass murder of Canadian children. I feel sorry for the mothers who are victimized by the likes of Morgetaller's wife, who has 3 children herself but let her husband kill thousands of Canadian babies.  That said I admire so many women, women like my mother, my aunts, my cousins, my teachers.  I admire women who stand up against the sexual abuse of men.  I admired my wife in so many ways. But I've been an impatient man. And yet I'd falsely think of myself as 'loving' despite the obvious truth that to be loving one must be patient.
Love is kind - I'm mostly kind but I remember with shame some of the things I did and said to those women I would have said I loved. I 'm not saying they were saints.  Several times they almost got me killed and us killed. They were only human but I said unkind things. I used to congratulate myself that I never hit my wife but I 'struck them with words'.  I called them 'unloving' and yet here I was the kettle calling the pot black. If I could take so much back that I said I would. I loved asking Dr. Gutowski how he ensures his marriage is so successful, and admiring his response.  "I never argue with my wife,Bill".  It was true of what I saw to.  Arguments are about "who" is right whereas discussions are about 'what" is right.
I guess the Christmas season is so sad for me because it is a time of family and I realize  each Christmas that I'm alone and that it was my inadequacy in loving that is the reason for this.  I think of myself as a loving person. I even feel I'm loving. But I couldn't last more than 7-10 years living with another despite trying it several times.  After a half dozen years I'd become disappointed with giving and working and no children and all the financial cost of wives and feeling I was ever compromising and blaming. I don't think you can be a lover and a blamer as well. I tell everyone to beware of people who tell you how bad their ex was because they're soon be telling everyone how bad you were.  Young people love to blame and deny responsibility.  As we get older we can see our own faults and begin to accept responsibility for 'our part'. It takes 'two to tango', 'two to love' and 'two to war'.  The legal profession makes a fortune off of blaming and shaming and naming. It's good business but is isn't love.
It does not envy - I don't envy so much now. Well maybe I do. I 'd like a lear jet and I'd like to jet set about the world with someone else paying and go to these insane climate change meetings and talk nonsense and swagger and hob nob. I like a party as much as the next guy if someone else is picking up the tab. I compare too much.  I remember in my 20's I'd look at my wife and she was blond and suddenly I liked the black haired girls and the red heads and wonder if the guys with those girls were having a better time. I remember seeing movies of lots of sex and thinking that I was getting short changed because my wife wasn't 'creative' in bed.  I used to suggest things and get shot down all the time.  I could joke and say most women would draw the line at barnyard animals but I never did suggeest that and what I did suggest would be called lame by todays standards.  So I did compare and I did envy others and that's simply not loving. I also envied my wives.  I'd work two jobs and support them better than I could imagine but they always expected me to pay and I did. I envied pimps who were paid for by women and felt victimized all the time by women demanding and expecting me to pay two fold.  I envied.  I'd  think it was worse because I was married to rich girls but their money went to their stuff whereas my money went to 'us'.  So in the end I was paying all the time and they'd complain if I wanted to anything for myself.  They always wanted me to give them more money while t hey kept their money to themselves.  I envied her for her self centeredness and selfishness. I envied her for being such a princess.  But that's not loving. Yet I thought I was loving.
Love does not boast....I dont think I was a boaster. I've been open and shared about things but I haven't 'boasted' but when I've been put down I've retaliated and that's not loving.  Most of my life I've heard women boasting. Every day on news and tv and in the world around me women are going on ad infinitum about things women are doing.  It doesn't matter any more if a man goes up in a space ship or sails around the world. It 's generally ignored . But if a woman does anything it's like the end of the world. Fireworks and alarms. And always it's said that 'in the past' men were celebrated so today men are not going to be. But I wasn't a man 'in the past'. In my world to day I've just worked and if I get anything it's given to me without fan fare. Men are supposed to work and shut up and mostly that's what I've done. I threw parties and did all manner of celebrating the activities of women. I've been a cheerleader for lots of folk but the fact is I wasn't as sexist as the women are.  They seem to boast these days and my wife certainly would go on and on and on about her achievements.  So I don't think this applies to me.
It is not proud. I have had pride. I know that God works through me but I used to think I was special in ways. I took things for granted and was glad of my achievements. I didn't compete with others but I competed with myself and enjoyed the progress. today I'm jsut holding on and surviving so I know I was proud when I was younger.  That's not loving.
Love does not dishonor others. I was very disagreeable to my mother in law. She was psychotic and viscious and insane and so verbally abusive my ex and verbally and physically abusive of her husbands and a lying. I didn't need to tell my wife about the short comings of her family. The drunkeness and drug addiction and perversion in the family was well known to her. If I wanted to honor her I'd celebrate the positives rather than hitting home the negatives. I was a real shit when I think back on that.  I was callous and judgemental and wish I could take it back. I wished I'd read the bible and been a better more forgiving person.
Love is not self seeking.  Well I was self seeking.  I can think about blow jobs and how I was wanting those and how it didn't matter how un fair her behaviour was given how much I pleasured her in the end I was completely self seekign sexually and while I thought I was doing what she wanted I really didn't discuss it or ask for honest feed back.  We didn't talk much and the last year or so there just wasn't any sex and later I was angry about the abortion.  That's the way I was and I look back and feel how poorly and unloving I was while I blamed her for being unloving. I actually thought I was loving when I really wasn't.  Not in the detail , not daily, lots of times but I was mostly focused on my work, worried for ever about this case or that case, trying desperately to keep somebody alive and not put nearly the time or energy into keeping my marriage alive.  I was a good doctor but a lousy husband.

I've got to go now but this is my Christmas season. Pretty sad and lots of self recrimination. It's the darkest time of the year and I seem to remember fondly the loveliest of women, those I left behind.  I'm no Rockwell portrait.  I wish that I read the Bible daily. I'm trying. I think if I was married I'd make it a must to read the whole list of First Corinthians 13 and keep it like a 'to do' list.
When I asked my father why he thought my marriage failed, he said he didn't know. He atttributed t he success of his marriage to what a good woman my mother was. When I pressed him though he said he'd noticed that I often got good things, but that I was not very good at doing the maintenance. It was a metaphor .  Oiling the car, cleaning my room. My father was always fixing things.  He was from an older more mature world. I'm from the consumer generation. We get something new and when it gets old we throw it away.
I threw away perfectly good women.
Mother Mary comes to me.  

The Apparent Prosperity of Evil

Psalm 73 speaks to the apparent prosperity of Evil.  If God is good and just, then there should be no favouritism. Yet we look about and it seems clearly that there are those who prosper yet do 'evil' things.  Rather than loving their 'neighbour', they are cruel.  They hoard while others go without.  They kill for profit and without consideration of spiritual laws.
Then there are those who are so righteous and loving and caring of others but are poor and unhealthy.  The "health and wealth' spiritual movement would have us believe that the outward manifestation of wealth and health speak to the inner well being. Health and wealth can coexist with spiritual advancement  but obviously tyrants and criminals can have apparent health and wealth without any spiritual advancement whatsoever.
If a person "believes" he too can have wealth and health, this pretty pleasant shallow promise claims without consideration of Jesus's death on the cross and the high cost paid by the early disciples for the depth of their belief.  Apparently no one gets to heaven without scars, because  come from believing in something and standing up for it. When one stands up for good, one makes themselves a target.
There are those with wealth and health who do not believe in God and do not hold God as central in their lives. Instead they're actually against God and have ungodly lives.  Some in organized crime as depicted in the media come to mind.  Some corrupt politicians and beaurocrats also come to mind.  Certainly CEO's and Boards of Directors of companies that have dumped dangerous drugs in third world countries or covered up the dangers of products for profits are at the top of the list.  Those whose sins are 'sins of commission' like Hitler are no different from those whose sins are 'sins of omission" like Eva Braun.  Cigarette producers and their families, and the lawyers and judges who work for them, come to mind.   Abortionists for hire and profit are also in the list.  They put 'money' and the God of Mammon before the God of Love.  They seem at times to have greater wealth.  Also the rich by any means can buy heart transplants, kidney transplants and medications that the poor cannot afford thereby having a standard of health that surpasses others.  Gordon Lightfoot's song Don Quixote does a good job of pointing the finger at those who that great Spanish knight would find unworthy of the company of his Dulcinea.
The psalmist is equally and more eloquently angered.  He cries, "For I envied the arrogant when I saw the prosperity of the wicked."
But then he says that he saw also that in time those who do evil get their own according to the law of 'karma' and retribution.  Almost all religions teach 'do unto others as you would have them do unto you.'  Clearly, murderers are missing the mark on this one and thieves profit only in the short run by their trade.  The idea of 'hell' and 'afterlife' has served to address this apparent 'disparity'.  But Marx said "religion was the opiate of the masses' because as a Jewish aetheist he rejected the God of Abraham and Jacob.  The communist product of his philosophy is apparent today with massive failures of those systems founded on the reactionary division of the world into beaugeosie and proletariat only to be followed by the revolutionary 'necessity' of 'dictatorship of the proletariat.'
Yet this is not the only argument that the psalmist puts forward.  Indeed, he goes on to say "How suddenly they are destroyed, completely swept away by terrors."  Faith and trust in God and seeking the Holy brings immediately benefit in this life, peace of mind.  My own experience with the powerful, rich, arrogant criminals is at variance with my experience of the powerful, rich, and humble servants of God.  One is snake like in their behaviour, eyes darting, rapacious while the other has 'peace of mind'.
The key is love and fear.  The more I love God the more I am at one with Love.  Jesus spoke of God the Father, as Abba, papa, daddy.  The more of a musician I am the more music I can appreciate. The better a marksmen the better I can appreciate shooting.  In all cultures there is an appreciation of the refinements of skills yet to what end is that skill used is the issue of morality.  Nuclear energy can be used to light the world or destroy it.  The same truth is heard in the statement,  'guns don't kill people, people kill people'.  The problem isn't in the 'tools', but rather how they are used.
Evil isn't intrinsic but a product of choices we make. I am a child of God, hence I have the capacity to make Godly choices, however if I choose wrongly and selfishly then I increase my distance from God and my eventual alienation.  There are spiritual laws of right and wrong.  Those laws go to the essence of Love God and Love your neighbour as yourself.  The 'relationships' one has with self and others and this world are either loving or fearful.  Fear is the basis of hate.  Alienation is the sense of being alone and persecuted. From that place comes the idea that "offence is the best defence".  It's the 'separation' from others, the tribalism of the soul. It is a really sad and lonely state of darkness.
Movement towards God is movement towards love and peace and laughter.  The psalmist writes "When my heart was grieved and my spirit embittered I was senseless, and ignorant. I was a brute beast before you".
The psalmist recognises that the state of Godliness is a distinctively different state than that of the devolved brute.  Darwin is entertaining in some aspects but the worship of Darwin leads to the appreciation of what the psalmist is saying, the monkey can be dressed in fine clothes, live in a fine house and eat fine food but he will just be a monkey. He will be a dressed up pig, a 'rude beast'.
The psychopath is likened to a 'lizard' having the capacity to acquire (consume),  protect (fear), reproduce (like a pac man).  The CEO's of tobacco companies are such simple programs as are those who profit from drug pushing, selling war, and slavery.
The quality of a psychopath and lizard is that they can 'chameleon'. They can 'act' like they 'appreciate art' . They can 'fit in' . They are Phillistines. They are able to be toilet trained and to actually present to their own children their husbands and wives as 'people'.  Yet in the delightful movie 'Little Big Man', these are not 'people' because they waste and are infantile in their seeking of their own desires at whatever cost to others.  They lack kindness.
The psalmist concludes "Whom have I in heaven but you, and earth has nothing I desire besides you."  The realization of God and the coming into the possibility of kindness and humanity, the reaching for the true humanity of 'loving my enemy', 'doing unto all others as I would have them do until me', having trust and faith in the rightness of God, all of this comes with greater appreciation and insight and understanding. It's likened sensually to gaining 'sight' when before I was blind.  "I was blind, but now I see," the famous hymn is sung.  All the senses of the angry, fearful, covetous, ard murderous are muted senses. Indeed the psalmist describes them as 'senseless'.  They don't have 'colours' in their black and white world and indeed like the drug addicted or alcoholic live in their own fantasies rather than reality.  They can't appreciate a sunset because they're looking over their backs at who of their friends will 'do unto them as they have done unto others'.  When you 'steal' you enter a world of thieves and what you have is no longer 'safe' even with your friends. Murderers fear murder daily.
Hell isn't then a place we go to but a place here and now we can be in.  This is the experience of psychiatrists who treat  psychopaths and sociopaths.  Psychopaths and sociopaths can lack empathy and compassion and all that is so much more.  Scott Peck has written of this "evil" in his remarkable book, People of the Lie.  Robert Hare has written about the same in his book, "Snakes in Suits".
In the end the psalmist writes, "as for me, it is good to be near God".