Love’s Great Blessing

Speaking of Gen Z… I’ve referred to the work of Freya India here before. She is a Gen Z voice worth paying attention to for so many reasons. She seems unusually insightful for someone so young, on matters ranging from the dangers of therapeutic culture to living perpetually online to the risk aversion of so many in her generation. She recently interviewed Rusty Reno on this last one in a post called “Training Ourselves to Be Loveless,” a sad and sobering title if ever there was one.

Her main topic is, ostensibly, why young people seem more afraid to give themselves to love, to commit to relationships, to wait until they’ve got themselves “figured out,” to hold back until they find the right person, etc. But there is much in this interview that goes far beyond romantic love. At one point, India asks Reno a question the limits of introspection and self-scrutiny and how it relates to a fear of love.

Reno’s response is, simply, brilliant:

The risk is not in deciding whether to love, which in any event is a foolish way of thinking about love. As I have noted, love desires rather than reasons and deliberates. Rather, the risk of love rests in becoming something other than who you now are… I think people fear love, because they fear becoming someone whom they do not yet know. To repeat, love commands, which means that love will make me into someone other than the person I would be if my life were solely under my command. For some, that’s a very frightening thought, a loss of control. I count it as love’s great blessing. As St. Augustine queried, “What am I but a guide to my own self-destruction?”

Again, love can be misguided, neglected, and abused. It, too, can wreak destruction, so by all means examine your loves. But remember, only love can make us anew. It is the engine of self-transcendence.

Again, this goes so far beyond romantic love (although it certainly includes this, as I recently reflected upon). Think of any love that matters. Love of a parent for a child or a child for a parent. Love for a dear friend. Love for a sibling. Love for God. It is easy to shrink back from fully giving ourselves to any of these loves because we are afraid of becoming someone we don’t yet know, “someone other than the person I would be if my life were solely under my command,” to use Reno’s language. Gosh, what an arresting way to put it. And that Augustine quote at the end? Sheesh. Who are we, if we shrink self-protectively away from love, but guides to our own self-destruction?

Love is how we will in the end be made new. This, we believe, for God is love and God will have his way. And in the meantime, it is how we become more than we might otherwise have been. Not perfect or complete, certainly. But also, not what we might have been had we held back.

Love commands. If we are wise and if we are paying attention to our heart’s deepest and truest cry, we will follow.

Image source.