Similarly, because of his relationship to his mother, the child may experience her trustworthiness long before he knows the word "trust," but he needs a word for this experience. Then, as he begins to acquire the ability to convey these meanings with words, he learns the word "trust" and immediately the door opens so that his experience becomes related to the much larger experience of the people that have lived before him. If a child is being brought up in the Christian fellowship, the minute he begins to have a word to describe the trustworthiness of his relationship with his mother, he also begins to understand the meaning of trust as Christians have experienced it in relation to God.

On the other hand, it is difficult to convey the meaning of Christ's death to a child. Here the words are crucial to the understanding of the meaning, but he cannot bring out of his own life sufficient experiences to make the meaning of the concept available to him. But it is important to introduce him to these concepts by means of words against the time when the words will carry meaning. As we live with our children we help them interpret the meaning of their experiences. Some day they will be able to move from the little meanings that they have accumulated about life and death to the great meanings of the life and death and resurrection of Christ by means of the little word "cross" and other associated words. Education requires the use of both the language of words and the language of relationships. We teach children the words of our faith, but at the same time we try to live with them in ways that will provide the meanings that will prepare them for understanding the meanings of the faith. And this is what I mean when I suggest that what happens between us is an indispensable part of the curriculum.

The Curriculum of Relationship

This emphasis upon the relationship between parent and child, between teacher and pupil, between person and person, as a part of the learning situation, seems to put a heavy burden upon the teacher. After all, it was difficult enough when the teacher had to be responsible for the correct words for the transmission of the truth, and for the understandings that must go with them. Now, in addition, we have to pay attention to what is going on between teacher and pupil. The work of teaching is much bigger than mere verbal transmission, and nothing less is worthy of being called Christian teaching.

This kind of teaching requires that the truth being taught be incarnate in the relationship between men, which was what God did in Christ. The teaching of Christ is contained not only in His words, but also in His life. His life gave meaning to His words and made them uniquely different from any other words that had ever been spoken. Actually, many of the things that our Lord taught were not new, but His life was, and this made His teaching unique. The same principle must apply to us. Some instruction given in the name of Christian education is dull, monotonous, and irrelevant. There is nothing untrue about it, but it is taught without the conviction born of experience, and it is not expressed in what goes on between man and man. On the other hand, a recognition of the responsibilities of this kind of teaching should be coupled with the joys and satisfactions of it. It is the kind of teaching that can relieve us of some of the anxieties of accomplishment.

A Word of Encouragement

Many parents and teachers are concerned about the quality of the care and teaching which they give children, and they are particularly worried about their failures and sins in relation to them. Present in many of us is the fear that we may have permanently impaired the future welfare of those for whom we are responsible. This leads us to try to be perfect in the discharge of our duties and thus prevent serious injury to our children. In other words, we would like to love them perfectly, which, if we were able to do, would ill prepare them for their life in this world.

Furthermore, and more importantly, implicit in this anxiety is a grave misconception of what it means to be a Christian. The test of our love and faith is not the absence of failure and sin and problems, but lies in what we are able to do about them. Of course, Christian parents get angry with their children and say and do things that hurt them. We are haunted by the signs in our children that we have failed them, by the evidences of their anxiety, by the problems they sometimes have in relation to other people, by their lying and stealing, by their hostility and quarrelsomeness, and by their excessive competitiveness and jealousy. Sometimes the scenes around the family table are far different from our image of what Christian family life and fellowship should be. We wonder where we have failed, grow discouraged, and fail again. We are embarrassed by the contradiction that our children see between the things that we say and the things that we do.

Parents and teachers who, like Mrs. Strait, live by the law, either have to blind themselves to what's going on in their relationships or else become profoundly discouraged. And if we are like Mr. Churchill, our decision will be to ignore human problems and to turn ourselves to a devotion of God, as if that were possible! Dr. Manby would wait for time to take care of the matter, and Mr. Knowles would frantically cram more knowledge about the Bible into the minds of parents and children in the hope that, somehow or other, knowing about God and Christian teaching would produce the necessary changes. Mr. Clarke, of course, would turn the whole "mess" over to the clergy.

Implicit in the situations we have been discussing is a concept of success, the assumption being that if we love God and our neighbor everything we do will turn out all right. My grandfather always maintained that his business prospered because he kept the laws of God. When we stop to think about it, we realize what a faulty concept this is. After all, it was not easy for Christ to accomplish the purposes of love in this world, and there is no reason why it should be any easier for us. It is not easy to maintain the dialogue of life; it is not easy to call forth the being of others; it is not easy to regain the freedom to love even when we respond to the spirit of love. We recognize the credibility and promise of all these principles, but wonder at the difficulty of their application.

The Work of Love

We need to remember that even God, with all of His power and wisdom, does not give His love to us in ways that take away our freedom of response. He leaves us free to say Yes or No to Him, to love, to our families, and to all the responsibilities of life. This means, as we saw earlier, that we are to speak the word of love and leave the other person free to make his response. We cannot expect a guaranteed response from him. We cannot prevent him from making a wrong response any more than we can make him give the right response. Our children are free, and we must respect that freedom. This is why the achievement of a love relationship is so exceedingly difficult. In the achievement of any relationship we are involved in a life-and-death struggle. Our children, for instance, want our love, care, and protection. At the same time, they want to be their own selves and to assume responsibility for their own lives. They can and do resent, with devastating hostility, action on our part that looks to them like interference with their lives. On the other hand, we love them and feel that we cannot do enough for them. The effect of our zeal often is to overwhelm them with our care and deprive them of the freedom in which to achieve their power of being.

Inevitably, then, the living dialogue between the parent and the child is both a happy and a troubled one in which the powers of love and resentment are exerted on both sides. The struggle between freedom and tyranny in human relations is understood in the struggle of the cross, which takes place in every individual and in every relationship. The actualization of ourselves in relation to one another is both difficult and painful. It is hard to understand how anybody could ever think it was easy. The struggle calls for a love that is prepared to lay down its life for its friends. The entrance of love into life brings, sometimes, not peace but a sword. Tension and conflict may accompany the work of love. The conflict between the love of God and the self-centeredness of man produces an ugly, rugged, and bloody struggle, which the crucifixion summarized.

The Power of Love

The good news of the gospel is not that a way has been given us by which to avoid conflict, but that the power of love has been given us for the conflict. With it we can enter into the shambles of life with assurance, courage, and a belief that, even though we cannot always understand what is going on, the purpose of love is to reunite man and man, and that in Christ God's love won the initial victory in this process. We may, therefore, participate in the life of the world with all of its conflicts, including our own personal conflicts, with faith in the power of reuniting love. We should not be surprised when we find ourselves embroiled in conflict and involved in complex situations. Our faith is not in our ability to do right, but in the power of God to help us re-enter the difficult and unpleasant situations we have created with new hope and with healing love. We may be thankful that God revealed Himself through a cross and, therefore, made clear how realistic He is in relation to the characteristics and conditions of human existence.

The power of love is liberating. It frees us so that we can use what happens between us as a part of the curriculum of Christian living and learning. Instead of wasting our time worrying about why things happen, we can use our energies and our understandings to deal with them constructively. The purpose of Christianity is not alone the prevention of crime, but the redemption of criminals; not alone the prevention of sin, but the saving of sinners. The great Christian word is redemption, which means transforming a destructive relationship into one in which the conditions and purposes of love are realized. Let us remember that fine linen paper is made out of old dirty rags. Similarly, a wonderful Christian relationship can be formed out of one that seems tragic. As we have seen, the test of a man is not in what happens to him, but in what he does about what happens to him. The transformation of what happens in human relations is the work of the Holy Spirit, continuing the work that was begun in Christ. The Spirit gives the gift of reconciling love with which we may participate in the continuing work of Christ, which is the redemption and transformation of life. So in the context of this love we can relax while we also exercise our care.

Love and Sin

The power of love over sin is widely recognized. In the first place, there is no judgment like the judgment implicit in love. The face of love is compassionate, but it gives a light that reveals the darkness of our hearts. We know that we are judged, but we know also that we are not condemned. The judgment and the forgiveness come to us as a part of the communication of love. Have we not felt this as we stood in the presence of someone whose love was true? We wished to be rid of everything in us that was unworthy of that love. In that same instant there may have welled up within us a repentance and a determination to live in response to that purifying, reuniting love. Such is our experience when the Spirit of Christ brings us face to face with Him and His love. To be loved is to be illumined, purified, and transformed, because love has the power of re-creation.

Parents and others who are conscious of their failures and sins in relation to their loved ones should remember that human beings are fundamentally resilient and resourceful. Children's springs of life and vitality are powerful. Their need to affirm themselves as persons is undeniable, and any experience of love that they have is reinforcing. Experiences of unlove are to them unbelievable and point, fundamentally and finally, to the necessity and believability of love. While our children are dependent upon us for their personal environment in which to grow up, they bring powers and resources to their growing up which are independent of us. They bring something to the dialogue in which self-actualization occurs. Their part of the dialogue is just as important and indispensable as ours. We cannot live their lives for them. They have to live their own lives, and our part is to live in relation to them and contribute our assistance to their powers of becoming.

Parents and teachers are not the only ones who influence their children. We live in a society in which different people have different roles to play in relation to everyone else. We should not measure the progress of a child only by how we see him or by what we think he is receiving from us. Our impression of the child's progress may be mistaken. We may not be able to know him as he is, nor know what others are contributing. And, least of all, can we know the total effect of all his relationships on what he is becoming as a person. Our anxieties about a particular incident may exist because we fail to see it in its total context. Much happens in the development of a person's life that we do not see, and much of the transformation occurs secretly at levels so deep that we cannot observe it. Although we may not see what is happening, we may be sure that something is. In the sphere of the personal we need to trust both God and man, and if we trust God we can trust man. We then may take a long view of our task, and teach and work and live by faith.

This is what it should mean to be a Christian and a member of the church of Christ. What a wonderful thing it is to belong to a fellowship that is made up of people who may be united by the Spirit of God and through whom we believe that God works! What a comfort it is to know that we do not have to do and believe everything ourselves! Not only do we not have to live and believe and love for ourselves, but others live and believe and love for us at times when we cannot. But let us also remember that we have to live and believe and love for them when weakness or doubt or hostility seems to overwhelm them. This is the meaning of Christian fellowship; namely, that we are not an aggregation of individuals, but instead are members of one body, with every member having his own function, and the function of every member standing in a complementary relation to that of the others, of which body Christ is the head. Here is the source of the love about which we have been speaking and the process through which love is lived in the life of the world that God loves.

[11] Luke 10:27. [12] From Love, Power and Justice, by Paul Tillich, Oxford University Press, Copyright, 1954. Used by permission. [13] 1 John 4:10. The title of this book was suggested by the familiar opening words of this verse in the King James Version, "Herein is love...." [14] Matt. 10:8. [15] See Luke 19:2 ff. [16] See Luke 7:37 ff.



IV

SOME OBJECTIVES OF LOVE

"Little children, let us not love in word or speech but in deed and in truth."—1 John 3:18

The objective of love, as we have seen, is to "move everything to everything else that is," especially to reunite person to person. This is an identifying characteristic of the love of God, and it is to some degree the characteristic of all love. We believe that this love was incarnate in Jesus Christ. We believe that His Spirit, active in the world in which we live, seeks to incarnate this love in us here and now. Furthermore, we have identified some more general characteristics of love. Now we turn to look at some of the ways in which love accomplishes its purpose, a purpose which is the responsibility of the church in its dispersion in the life of the world.

Love's Sphere Is Personal

The sphere of love's action is in the realm of the personal; it acts in and through relationships. The process by which the person emerges is both wonderful and fearful, and one for which we should have reverence, the zeal to understand, and the willingness to be responsible for. Certain specific things need to be accomplished which are the work of love, which we have already identified as the calling forth of persons. In this work of love we participate in the reconciling work of God in Christ today. Let us remember also that children first experience the love of God through their experience of their parents' love, and that parents in loving their children are loving God, since we love God by loving one another. How else can we love God than by loving one another? With this understanding of the context in which we live and work and serve one another, let us turn our attention to how love's task is accomplished.

First, however, a word about what that task is not. The objective of love is not to create or nurture a so-called normal human being. In the first place, there is no universal concept of the normal, and the criterion of normality varies from age to age and from culture to culture. All men have problems and always will have them. The pursuit of perfection is a perilous project that may cause all kinds of imperfections and will inevitably produce disillusionment.

Adjustment cannot be the goal of Christian living and the objective of love. The clam is adjusted about as well as any of God's creatures, but has very little to offer beyond a passive role in a bowl of soup. Instead of striving to mold a person completely adjusted to his surroundings, love seeks to nurture a person who is capable of maintaining a creative tension between his need and his responsibility, between the vitality of spirit and the form of being. And, according to tests, such creative people often are classified as not normal and not well adjusted.

Nor is the pursuit of happiness the objective of love. Happiness for human beings is a forlorn hope. Because of conflicts within himself and between himself and others, man is doomed to be unhappy most of the time. He is always having to deal with the inevitable conflicts and accidents of life that give him a sense of vulnerability, both as an individual and as a member of his tribe, nation, or race. Instead, the objective of love is to provide the human being with resources, by means of which he may face his human existence with courage and with a sense of peace that passes understanding. It now remains for us to spell this out in human terms.

Dialogue Between Individual and Environment

When the human being is born, he leaves the biological exchange of the womb for the social exchange system of his society, where his gradually increasing capacities meet the opportunities and limitations of his culture. The appearance of the person, therefore, results from the dialogue between himself and his environment, between his growing, autonomous self and the directing community upon which he is dependent. This dialogue between the individual and his environment often has, as we have seen, the characteristics of a conflict. The individual challenges and makes demands of his family, and the family challenges and makes demands of the child. Each wrestles with the problems of trust in relation to the other, each wrestles for autonomy that is equal to the domination of the other, each strives for the initiative and industriously competes with the other, and each seeks an identity that may either exclude or include the other. The quality of the life of the individual and of the social order depends upon the results of the dialogue between them.

I am thinking of two families. In one, the parents helped their children work through their difficulties with each other, thus assuming dialogical responsibility for what happened between them. In late teenhood, each child in turn became a person in his own right who had achieved a relatively mature, congenial, and loving relation with every other member of the family. In the second family, the parents could not face the conflicts inevitable to human nature in a growing family, and pretended a quality of relationship that did not exist between them. When their children became late teen-agers and older, a smoldering antagonism existed between them which occasionally broke out in venomous quarrels. The parents of this second family had not assumed dialogical responsibility for the content of their family life, with the result that the interaction between the growing person and his environment was not creative.

The process of unfolding patterns, of decisions made in response to crises, of frustrations and achievements in living, are also the human content for religious development, and provide opportunities for both conversion and nurture. The development of a person is religiously significant, and the events in his life have ultimate meaning. We may think of them in only psychological and sociological dimensions, but their meaning also is theological and religious. As we weave our intricate way through the years of our lives, approaching and withdrawing, attacking and retreating, victorious and beaten, decisive and uncertain, being loved and being resented, loving and hating, and sometimes gladly and sometimes reluctantly participating in the dialogue between ourselves and our environment of influential persons, we may ask ourselves this question: What contributes to our emergence as responsible, resourceful persons? As participants in the dialogue between our children and ourselves, for example, we should like to know the kind of address and response we should make that would call them forth as persons who will be responsible and helpful in relation to their dependents, peers, and superiors; and enable us, through them, to love and serve God. How can we so participate with them in living that there will be called forth in them a courage that will dare the risks of creativity and acquire the freedom to love?

The dialogue between the individual and life is initiated by the basic question that is implicit in our being, and becomes explicit as our capacities as persons increase. The basic question is: Who am I?, and associated with it is its partner question: Who are you? These two questions have to be asked together almost as if they were one question, because there is no answer to the question: Who am I?, except as there is an answer to the question: Who are you? And this twofold question is not only asked implicitly by the newborn baby, but explicitly by his parents, whose own dialogue with the baby involves asking and receiving answers to Who are you? and Who am I? because the relationship is one in which the child also may call forth the parent as a person.

This basic twofold question is one which we all continue to ask all through our lives in many different ways. We must not associate question-asking exclusively with verbalization. Obviously, the baby cannot ask his mother in words who she is. He does it by his actions, by his random movements, by his crying, by his protests, by his exploring hands and eyes, by his mouth. And the mother does not give reply to his question by word only, but by her actions; by her feeding and care of him, by her neglect, by her joy in him and her irritation because of him, by her coming to him and by her unexplained departures from him. All her actions are a language by which she tells her child who she is in response to the questions implicit in his actions. And her answer to him as to who she is gives him the beginning of an answer to his question as to who he is.

Thus, the dialogue between mother and child, which is largely nonverbal, tells him that his mother is one who in some ways loves him and in others does not, and tells him also that he is one who in some ways is loved and in other ways is not. Out of this interchange emerges his manner of response which may become his style of living and loving. But we need to remember that his characteristics as a person are not wholly determined by the action of his environment, because they also are determined by who he is within himself as a unique being. His inheritance provides him a given quality and capacity. Therefore, the dialogue is to be understood also as a dialogue between heredity and environment in which his experience of love releases his power of being.

Sense of Trust

The first objective of love to be accomplished out of the dialogue between the individual and the world is the awakening in him of a sense of basic trust. Trust toward oneself and toward others is acquired to some degree during the first year. I have discussed this at some length in an earlier book, Man's Need and God's Action,[17] and here, as well as there, I acknowledge my indebtedness to the work of Erik Erikson.[18] In this chapter I shall discuss the other senses that he identifies as necessary acquisitions of the growing personality.

Perhaps the greatest contribution to the achievement of basic trust is through the experience of being fed. The experience of being fed regularly and responsibly causes the child to respond with trust, and he learns to have faith long before he knows the word for it. Later, at the appropriate time he acquires the word "faith" to point to the meaning of his trust experiences. If, still later, he allows the words to take the place of the substance of his faith, they will become empty words. Responsible parents and teachers seek to combine the right word with their action so that the meaning of the child's experiences is correlated with the words for them. A mature correlation between word and experience is one in which the child has the experience of finding people both trustworthy and untrustworthy, and has been helped to deal with the untrustworthiness in the context of trust. His first experience, therefore, is a realistic one in which he is strengthened by his experiences of trust, and is not made too anxious by his experiences of the inevitable failures of his loved ones to take care of him perfectly.

The child's experience of trust and mistrust contains the first meanings for his Christian education. The care of the Divine Father is expressed in and through the care of his earthly parents. His response to the care of his earthly parents is his response to his Divine Father. This needs to be interpreted to the child as he grows up, so that he will accept and believe in the participating presence of God in human life. An obstacle in the way of this achievement occurs when people separate God from life and make Him a kind of absentee operator of the machine called the world. It then is necessary for the child to make a huge leap from his trust of his parents to faith in God. While we cannot equate parental action with divine action, nevertheless we can affirm that divine action takes place through human action. When such an affirmation is made and accepted as a part of the parents' faith and is interpreted to the child as he is able to receive it, he is helped to grow up with a religious understanding of life itself, rather than conceiving of religion as being merely a part of life. He will grow up with the idea that being trustworthy and trusting others has not only psychological and sociological meaning, but also theological meaning.

A sense of trust is basic, because without it the further development of the individual would not be possible. Its foundations are laid in the very first year of an individual's life. The act of taking from his mother not just food, but her ministrations, her companionship and friendliness, is the beginning of his emergence as an individual apart from his parents. As he becomes an individual person, he immediately begins to be a giver as well as a taker. Giving, as well as receiving, must become a part of the dialogical relation between two individuals, whether between a child and the parent, or between two adults. As soon as a child begins to become a giver, the parent must consent to be a receiver of that which the child has to give, and thus, again, is a relationship of basic trust established.

Without parental reception the child would not be affirmed as a giver, and would, out of his mistrust, become a compulsive taker, a result that is tragic not only psychologically and sociologically, but religiously as well. He will not be able to trust God; but because he needs to trust God, he will begin to create images of God in the context of which he will try to handle his existential problems. Thus, the foundations of a false religion may be laid in early childhood, and this false religion, as it matures, closes the person off from the truth of the gospel and keeps him from becoming an instrument of the gospel in relation to the whole world. The church is filled with people who do not really trust God, even though they publicly profess their faith in Him. These people, like Mr. Clarke, Mrs. Strait, and the others, live timidly.

We must not conclude that the establishment of basic trust concerns only infants. The balance between trust and mistrust is something that concerns us all our days, and the question is raised acutely again every time we face a danger in the circumstances of our lives. I have observed that when people come together in a new group relationship, their basic questions, Who am I? and Who are you?, are reactivated. Significant communication between them does not take place until some relationship of trust is established on the basis of satisfactory answers. Our initial asking of these questions in infancy is, to some degree, repeated at subsequent times in our lives. They are repeated in times of marriage, bereavement, retirement, death, or in my personal crisis; and also when we face the threat of war or the possibility of interplanetary existence, or in any economic, social, or political crisis. Needed at these times of threat are relationships with sufficient power to enable us to participate in the dialogue out of which will come the answers to our questions. The objective of love is to provide the relationship of love for a world that, again and again, and in an infinite variety of ways, asks the basic questions: Who am I? and Who are you?

How wonderful it is to participate in the answer to the basic questions! Mothers, for instance, who tend to lose the sense of purpose in the minutiae of their responsibilities, could be helped to realize how profoundly important is the care they give their children. The way in which they feed and care for their families may be, if they opened themselves to the presence and action of God in human life, the means of their child's union with man and God.

As we try to meet the physical and emotional needs of children, and travel with them through the various crises of life in which we both participate, we may have the reassurance that we are doing a great work, the full meaning of which we may not be able to see at the moment. Furthermore, we may be reassured that we are participating in the work of God in the world and engaged in the true ministry of the church in the world. When there is this living that awakens and renews trust, the formal teaching and religious observances of the church both receive and give additional meaning.

Sense of Autonomy

The second objective of love is the achievement of a sense of autonomy. We said earlier that as the child begins to take that which is given to him, he begins to distinguish between himself and others, and thereby to become a separate person. In so doing, he begins to achieve some degree of autonomy as an independent person. This second task is made easier for him, if he is able to approach it with a sense of trust. The need for a sense of trust in the achievement of autonomy becomes apparent once we recognize what this second task involves. It introduces the child into a conflict of interests. On the one hand, he needs the constant care, supervision, and love of his parents; and on the other hand, he needs to assert his own will and stand over against his parents as a separate person. He both needs to be a part of the mother and distinct from her. The conflict between these needs increases as the individual becomes a person.

This process, however, often results in a warfare of unequal wills between the child and the parent. The child himself is capable of violent drives which frighten him and which he is unable to control; and the parent can be provoked to emotional responses that escape his control and are frightening. The relationship between them, therefore, may become one in which each is seeking to dominate and control the other. This pattern occurs in all relationships and is often observed in marriage, where, by various kinds of behavior, each partner seeks to control the other.

The muscular mechanism basic to the achievement of autonomy is the mechanism of holding on and letting go. By the employment of it, the individual begins to be aware of his powers as a separate person. Awareness of these powers and of the possibilities inherent in them precipitates the struggle between him and others. A child can be very pliable or very stubborn in his holding on or letting go, and it is not long before parents discover that they cannot make a child do something that he will not do. At this point, the parent's own maturity in the employment of the same mechanisms will determine how he will respond to the child's stubborn and often hostile efforts to achieve autonomy.

As people mature, the holding-on and letting-go tension is transferred from the muscular to the emotional and psychological. If adults have achieved a relaxed attitude, they will be able to provide the child with firmness, and at the same time allow him some freedom in determining his own action. An environment of freedom and authority will help him achieve a balance between love and hate, co-operation and willfulness. An early sense of trust, we see, is necessary for the development of autonomy. Without trust the child will not feel free to struggle, as he must, for its achievement. He will not feel free, because he does not have faith either in himself or in his world, in relation to which he must struggle.

The objective of love, therefore, is to provide a relationship of firmness and tolerance within which a child may become autonomous and acquire a sense of self-control, self-esteem, and relationship with others. Otherwise he may suffer loss of confidence in himself and become skeptical of others, a result which can be the fruit of either restrictive discipline or unstructured freedom.

The achievement of a sense of autonomy must always remain relative, and will vary from individual to individual. As we have seen, there is no fixed norm for human behavior, and the best sense of autonomy that anyone can possibly achieve is one in which there is a mixture of co-operation and willfulness, of love and hostility. We can only hope and pray that as we all mature our autonomy will be employed with creative good will, and that it will be capable of dealing with the results of our hostility and stubbornness.

Although our sense of autonomy appears during our second and third year of life, its further development depends upon our relationship with others. Furthermore, its employment has other arenas than that of family life. The dialogue from which autonomy grows moves out of family and into the neighborhood. It is quickened and disciplined by entrance into school, is heated and tempered by the development of social life, especially by the dialogue between the sexes when the need to surrender oneself to the other meets the needs of each to be oneself.

Finally, the autonomy of the individual is sure to be challenged by the complexities and organization of modern industrial society. More and more the individual is being caught in the intricacies of a process in which his sense of autonomy and initiative is violated. The problems of the social order are so massive that the interests of the individual often are sacrificed. Increasingly, people are unable to endure the frustrations caused by their social, political, and industrial environment, and develop neurotic responses in which their aggressions are turned in on themselves. The autonomy and initiative that once belonged to the individual have been transferred to the social order, with the result that instead of individuals receiving their direction from within, they now receive it from without, with the inevitable demand for conformity, in which the integrity of the individual is apt to be sacrificed. Every time he turns on his radio or television set, his autonomy is assaulted by all kinds of pressures.

This condition presents education and religion with peculiar challenges. In order to minister to the world, it is necessary that one participate in the life of the world and share its problems as did our Lord. But if we are to be the instrument of God's purpose in the work of the world, it will be necessary for us to have a sense of autonomy and a power of independence. This is what it means to be in the world but not of the world.

One of the objectives of love, therefore, is so to live with one another, especially with our children, that out of that relationship we may emerge with such a power of being as a person that we shall be able to face the complexities, pressures, deprivations, and dangers of modern life. Our aim is to help the child become a responsible participant in the crucial issues of life, and to preserve his integrity as a deciding person. The answer to his questions, Who am I? and Who are you?, will then be: I am what I will, and you are what you will; and our relationship is one of mutuality in which each will call forth the other. If the awakening of a sense of autonomy is an objective of love, it is also the objective of the church's life, its teaching, and its evangelistic endeavor. Without power of autonomy and independence, Christians will be mere conformists and maintainers of the status quo.

Sense of Initiative

The third objective of love is to help the individual achieve a sense of initiative. At the age of four or five, a child is faced with his next crisis and must take his next big step. He must find out what kind of person he is going to be. His search will be strengthened by his experience of trust, and by whatever power of autonomy he has. Dr. Erikson points out that he wants to be like his parents who seem very wonderful to him, but who, at the same time, present him with very real threats. During this age he plays at being his parents. According to Dr. Erikson, there are three strong developments which help him, but which also contribute to his crisis. "First, he learns to move around more freely and more violently, and therefore establishes a wider, and so it seems to him, an unlimited radius of goals. Two, his sense of language becomes perfected to the point where he understands and can ask about many things just enough to misunderstand them thoroughly; and three, both language and locomotion permit him to expand his imagination over so many things that he cannot avoid frightening himself with what he himself has dreamed and thought up. Nevertheless, out of all this he must emerge with a sense of unbroken initiative as a basis for a high, and yet realistic, sense of ambition and independence."[19]

Initiative is the power that moves the individual to take over the role of others; the boy, his father; the girl, her mother; later as the driver of the car, and later still, leadership roles of various kinds. The struggles in the process are accompanied by feelings of anxiety, of inadequacy, and of guilt. Feelings of inadequacy in relation to the size and powers of the adult can be considerable; and the feelings of guilt, in response to the daydreams about replacing Daddy, for instance, are crucial, and too often are unrecognized by many parents and teachers. They need to recognize and accept the developmental reasons for the child's preoccupations and fantasies about himself in relation to them and their roles and functions. Furthermore, it is entirely appropriate for him to be physically aggressive toward others, to overwhelm them with his incessant chattering, his aggressive getting into things, and his insatiable curiosity about everything. The objective of love at this time is to provide the child with a reasonable freedom within which to develop his initiative with a minimum sense of guilt in relation to its exercise, and with the hope that by so doing he will become a person whose creativity will not be frustrated by an overdeveloped sense of guilt.

In contrast, many people are embarrassed by recognition of their achievements, and are prevented from achievement because of guilt feelings that block their creative efforts. Unfortunately, too much religious teaching has made people feel guilty about initiative and aggressiveness, both of which can be expressed creatively. From childhood on, lives are hedged about by prohibitions in relation to persons bearing authority, by belittling attitudes toward themselves and toward their drives to compete and to get ahead, so that people become self-restricted and are kept from living up to their inner capacities or from using their powers of imagination and feeling. While some withdraw into a dull kind of existence, others overcompensate in a great show of tireless initiative and a quality of "go-at-it-iveness" at all costs. These people often overdo to a point where they can never relax, and they feel that their worth as people consists entirely in what they are doing rather than in what they are.

The objective of love is to help the child accept the necessary structures, authorities, and personal roles in relation to which he must live, so that he may grow in his capacity to love persons and to use things. During this stage of life, children often turn to other adults for companionship and guidance. They do so because the conflicts between themselves and these new adults do not seem to be as great as with their own parents. They need these "fresh" relationships where they can exercise initiative without too much conflict and guilt. Here the school and church, with its trained teachers and workers, have an opportunity to supplement, and even to correct, the experiences that children are having at home. We should remember, however, that the identifications with the parent are important, and that the experiences the youngsters are having with others should be of a complementary nature, even if they also are corrective.

Another and supplementary objective of love is the provision of a relationship by parents or others in which a spirit of equality makes possible an experience of doing things together, instead of a relationship in which the child has to compete unequally with the adult. Fathers, for instance, may be of great help to their sons. Boys are apt to feel that their fathers are too big, too powerful, and too skillful; but if the father will base the relationship on some interest or experience common to them both, the boy has an opportunity to grow in initiative and to develop his capacities without a sense of unequal competition.

The answer to the child's questions. Who am I? and Who are you?, will then be: I am what I conceive myself to be, and you are what I conceive you to be according to my understanding of how you have revealed yourself. At this particular time in the development of the individual, there begin to be formed the powerful images of ourselves and others that aid or hinder our relationship with one another.

Sense of Industry

A fourth objective of love is to help the individual to a sense of industry, for the child has now become a busy little person who needs to learn how to be busy with things and persons. A child's "busyness" begins with his play. Children play separately at first. In their youngest years, they may sit apart in the same room, each playing with his own things, and each oblivious of the other except when one may discover that the other has something he wants. Later, as they grow and mature, there begins what we call parallel play. They play along side of each other. Now they are aware of each other, and each keeps an eye on his playmate. Their separate playing seems to have an influence on the other in that they imitate each other. Then, at a still later stage, they begin to play together. The high point of this achievement, still later, is team play, which begins in adolescence or even earlier.

Now begins the capacity for directed fellowship. The fellowship of a team is to be respected. Membership on the team may mean more to the boy than membership in his church, and this may cause ministers, parents, and teachers considerable anxiety. Instead, they should relax and be glad for the youngster's experience, because team play is providing him with an experience of relationship that later will become the basis for his understanding of the ultimate meaning of all relationships. They should accept the youngster's experience and use it creatively, to help him understand the nature of the church, our relationship as brothers, and the "captaincy" of Christ.

In team play, also, we see the occurrence of something that is very much a part of Christian character. In order for there to be team play, it is necessary for every member of the team to die to the desire in him to be the whole show. A mature team member has learned that his strength and skills depend on the strength and skills of others. This is the theology of the playground. What has been learned in play may be translated into work. Then, since a man's work is one of the great spheres in which he may exercise his ministry as a representative of Christ, the learning of this profound lesson in the process of play is an important part of his religious education. And it can be religious, even though it may not be learned in the formal church.

The transition from play to work takes place gradually. Children become dissatisfied with play and make-believe, and have a growing need to be useful, to make things well, and, therefore, to acquire a sense of industry. They also learn to win recognition by producing things. Through play they advance to new stages of real mastery in the use of toys and things, and learn to master experience by meditation, experimenting, and planning. The home, the school, and the church should try to help them to make this transition easily in order that they may develop this sense of industry without a sense of inadequacy. If they are pushed too strenuously to produce, a sense of inadequacy may result, especially when they still want to be cuddled and cared for. Family life has the responsibility of preparing the youngsters for school, where, in the context of their play experiences, they accept the disciplines of work. Relaxed teachers are needed who understand the process by which children learn to move from play to work, and who can encourage them to make this transition without either sparing them the needed disciplines or imposing them too strenuously. Here we see an area in which the role of the family and the role of the school are complementary.

The acquisition of a sense of industry is a decisive step in learning to do things with others and alongside others. This will become a major source of satisfaction and the area of his greatest service.

Sense of Identity

A fifth objective of love is to nurture in the human being a sense of identity which is acquired and consolidated in a new way during adolescence. Dr. Erikson describes identity as the "accrued confidence that one's ability to maintain inner sameness and continuity is matched by the sameness and continuity of one's meaning for others."[20]

As an individual develops and acquires skills, he thinks of himself as one who can do things, and his important people may hold a variety of expectations of him: "He's clumsy," "He never can do anything right"; or, "I can always count on him," "He's got the right stuff in him." Out of his achievements and the attitudes of others toward him, his sense of self-esteem and prestige is built, little by little. As crisis after crisis is passed and the individual meets each of them with reasonable resourcefulness and receives the encouragement and recognition of others, he begins to believe in himself, to have a consistent expectation of what he will do in the face of various circumstances and relationships. In this way he begins to acquire a style of living which is his own and which contributes to his sense of identity and to others' identification of him.

In the achievement of a sense of self-identity, the child needs models with which to identify himself. Especially is this true during his adolescence. He needs association with men who are clear about being men, and women who are clear about being women, and who are capable of and practice a reasonably wholesome relationship with each other. He needs men and women who have convictions, who can distinguish between right and wrong, who hold these convictions firmly, and yet not rigidly. He needs guides and counselors who can help him bring together and concentrate his various and fluctuating drives and interests, and who are not dismayed or misled by the inconsistencies and fluctuations that may accompany his development. He needs help in choosing a job, because self-identification is dependent upon some kind of occupational identity. Finally, he needs help in acquiring, as a part of his sense of self-identity, a sense of vocation, of being called to something that is greater than himself, which will draw him forth as a participant in the deepest meaning of life. The providing of this kind of relationship to help the individual acquire an indispensable sense of identity is another of love's objectives.

Unfortunately, however, in our complex and technical society, the models after which the youngsters may now pattern themselves are not as clear as they might be. People are having to undergo tremendous adjustments in a time of rapid technical growth, as a result of which their image of the world in which they live is changing; producing, therefore, uncertainties in themselves, and making it more difficult for adolescents. Our changing age creates many difficulties for changing adolescents. Cultural conditions often force young people to band together in groups or movements that provide them with a point of focus by means of which they stereotype themselves and their ideals. This is one way in which they acquire stability and a sense of direction. We need, however, to be tolerant of this and to recognize its purpose; we need to realize also that if we provide them with alternatives, their need for these stereotypes may disappear.

The church has a special role here. Most of the committee whose discussion we read in Chapter I, gave no evidence of being able to provide young people with the kind of models they need, for there was nothing heroic, clear-cut, or creative about them. Their faith was defensive, and it did not deal with the realities of life. Young people turn away from that kind of "religion." And quite rightly. They need men and women whose religion, instead of being a defense against life, provides them with the courage to move into life and become a part of it, to accept its problems and wrestle honestly for its meanings; whose style of Christian living is not compulsive, but liberated; not pretentious, but honest; whose reverence for God is not confined to the sanctuary, but is exhibited in responsible relations with people. They need models who, because of their religious faith, are able to admit when they are wrong and can ask for forgiveness without feeling a loss of personal dignity. They need religious teachers who can portray, both by word and by example, the great personalities of the tradition, the heroes and saints; teachers who are clear about what their contribution really is, who can make clear to youth the heroism of a man of faith and let it stand forth without all the confusions of superstitious veneration. They need a church and religious teachers and members that have a sense of mission, a reason and purpose for living that is related to all the exciting meanings of human life, instead of being concerned with such irrelevancies as churchism, parochialism, institutionalism, and other modern idols. In the context of this kind of example, adolescents, even in complex, modern, industrial America with all its confused values, will have the aid they need in order to move through the intricacies of their development and emerge with a sense of personal identity and a capacity for relationship.

Sense of Integrity

A final objective of love is to help the individual, who by now has become an adolescent and is fast approaching the threshold of adult life, to achieve a sense of integrity. The acquisition of the senses of trust, autonomy, initiative, industry, and identity through the years of his development should prepare him for responsible living with himself and others. Much depends, as we have seen, on the ability and willingness of those in his environment to accept, respond to, and guide him. But there is still unfinished business with which we must help him; namely, the achievement of a sense of integrity.

A sense of integrity includes a capacity for intimacy with others. More than sexual intimacy is meant, although that is of more importance than many religious people want to admit. For the moment, however, we are thinking of intimacy in a general sense, of our capacity to participate in the meanings of one another's lives, to fuse into relationships without losing our respective identities. We see young people striving to achieve this kind of relation with each other through their talking things over endlessly, by confessing what one feels like and what the other seems like, and by sharing dreams, ideals, and ambitions. Where this is not achieved by early adulthood, the individual may find himself separated from others except for formal and stereotyped interpersonal relations.

Only the person who is capable of intimacy can become a partner in any relationship. People who marry with the hope of achieving the power of intimacy are often disappointed, because mutually fulfilling sexual intimacy requires a capacity for personal intimacy. What we are trying to say here is that before one can become a partner, one must first be a person. With this we have reached a kind of summary in the development of our thesis which might be stated as follows: A person is called into being out of relationship, but the person in his separateness is necessary to the achievement of a new relationship.

Intimacy is not only platonic, but sexual as well. The growing person needs help in acquiring a potential capacity for mutual, satisfying intimacy with a partner of the opposite sex. Heterosexual mutuality has religious significance, since sexual intimacy is supposed to be an outward and visible sign of personal intimacy. Yet religion is often strangely silent in this area, and our young people are often misled. A teen-ager recently said, "I don't go much for this platonic stuff." When asked why, he said, "I guess I'm too much of a wolf." When asked what he meant by being a wolf, he said that he was interested only in making love to a girl. His view of intimacy, which is similar to that of many other young people, reveals at least two misunderstandings: first, the separation in his mind between the platonic kind of relationship and the sexual, and secondly, his association of the sexual with "wolf," which is a symbol of the subhuman. Religious teaching needs to affirm sexual intimacy as a part of people's lives, and nurture them so that their sexual relationships may be a means of grace rather than a source of guilt.

The achievement of intimacy, general and specific, leads to the development of another capacity essential to integrity; namely, the capacity for generation, whether of offspring or creativity of some other kind. Generative capacity is basic to an individual's assumption of responsibility, and to his ability to initiate and bring to fulfillment new life or new expressions of life. The power of origination is open to anyone, and we can either affirm the power or deny it. If we deny it, we shall have to find substitutes which usually are subpersonal and which involve us in a kind of superficial but unfulfilling intimacy. On the other hand, the person with integrity is one who can initiate creativity of his own, or consent to and participate in the creativity of others. As Dr. Erikson has pointed out, he can be both a leader and a follower. These are qualities and values needed by all men, and the cultivation of them is the task of the church and the purpose of its teaching.

The objectives of love, we see, are not abstract, but specific and concrete. Love calls forth persons and reunites life with life by providing the relationships in which the created needs of men are met. The environment of saving love is needed to produce out of our biological nature and the physical world in which we live the image of God in each of us and the Kingdom of God for all of us.

[17] Man's Need and God's Action, Reuel L. Howe, The Seabury Press, Greenwich, Connecticut, 1953, Chapter V. [18] Growth and Crises of the Healthy Personality, Erik H. Erikson. Pamphlet from Problems of Infancy and Childhood, Josiah Macy, Jr. Foundation, New York, 1950. Used by permission. [19] Ibid. [20] Ibid.



V

THOSE WHO WOULD LOVE

"We know that we have passed out of death into life, because we love the brethren."—1 John 3:14

Thus far in our discussion we have considered the nature of love, the development of the needs of the individual, and the objectives of love in calling persons into being. Now we turn to a discussion of the lover, or of the person or persons who are the instruments of that love, such as parents, teachers, ministers, and every man of whatever function. We shall also consider the nature of the relationship in which healing and reconciliation take place, and consider some of its resources.

The Power of the Personal

The doctrine of the Incarnation, which underlies the whole Christian life, is really the doctrine of the personalization of love. By it is meant the embodiment in man of the life of God Who is love. The Incarnation makes this life personal, and persons, therefore, are of primary importance to its existence and its meaning. In each generation the Christian is called upon to reaffirm his faith in the power of persons living in relation to God and man.

Our own generation has a special need for a reaffirmation of the personal because of our preoccupation with science and technology, and with vast space and enormous power. One wonders, and hears others wondering, what good is a person in the face of all these masses, spaces, and complexities. But it was revealed in Christ, and every now and then it is revealed to us afresh, that the whole vast structure of life is dependent upon the power of persons and upon our exercise of the power of the personal. The character of man, expressed in his relations with his fellow man, will finally determine whether we will use our vast powers creatively or for our destruction.

The primary vocation of the Christian in this time is to respond to the call of the person to be personal. The church members with whose conversation we began this book, seemed oblivious to the personal nature of the church's purpose. They were concerned about substitutes for the personal, about institutions and professional groups, about a legalistic morality, and about knowledge for its own sake. Any one of their concerns, if caught up in the vitality of the personal, could have valuable meaning. Law, as we have seen, has its role, if it is a part of love. Human effort is important as personal response to what God has done for us. Dependence upon the clergy is a part of the life of the church, but the work of the clergy, as we have seen, cannot be a substitute for the ministry of the whole church. The church is important, but it does not find its meaning in its isolation from the world. And knowledge about God, His creation, and redemption is necessary to the Christian life, but such knowledge must find its meaning in our living relation with God.

The recent emphasis on the interpersonal and group process has contributed much to our understandings of the human relationships of Christian fellowship. As a result of the emphasis, a new polarity operates in the life and teaching of the church: one pole is the content of the Good News; the other pole is the encounter between men in which the Good News is realized. Unfortunately, the image of the relationship between the encounter and the content of the Christian faith has been and still is that of opponents in a battle. This concept is erroneous, for any dialogue must have content. The conversation between two people that is not informed by learning produces nonsense. Discussion groups have revealed their poverty when they have not been informed by responsible knowledge; fellowship for the sake of fellowship becomes tiresome; and relationship without good discipline, whether in the home or elsewhere, becomes chaos and anarchy. So, there are some disciplines that we need to observe as persons in whom the Spirit of God seeks to incarnate His love.

We Need Informed Christians

First, if we are to embody and express the love of Christ in our generation, we must keep our minds alert and our interests alive. At this point, church people fail in several ways. Instead of having minds that search for the meaning of life in Christian terms, they sometimes have minds filled with musty opinions and prejudices. An otherwise alert lawyer, for example, said that he did not want his church to take a stand on any of the great social issues, but stick to its subject, namely, religion. This preoccupation with the subject matter of religion apart from its relevance to life is a characteristic failure of many church people.

As Christian churchmen, we do not need to be scholars in religion, but we should be interested in the issues of life, open to new understandings, and engaged in some kind of reading or study that will keep us informed and intellectually awake. Only in this way can we keep ourselves from falling into narrow little ruts and pulling the world in after us. A part of our ministry is to participate in and help to keep alive the dialogue between man and man, between the church and the world, between Christian thought and the problems of existence. Emotional and opinionated thinking about religion, values, and social issues is appallingly prevalent among "religious" people. The conversations of church members often are pitiful in their concern for the trivial affairs of the local church and institution, about its building and organizations, its suppers and bazaars. What a pathetic and inconsequential way of serving Christ! He needs, instead, men and women who are out on the frontiers of modern life, representing His message to the world.

The accomplishment of an intellectually and socially responsible ministry calls for some effort on the part of the local church. In the first place, the minister will have to preach, and teach out of, the gospel in its relation to life. Instead of talking so much about religion as an end in itself, he ought to talk about life in the context of the teaching of religion. The content of his sermons and instructions should be the affairs of men, for these raise the questions for which the gospel was given. The discussion of religion apart from life produces a laity who, in their life in the world, are unable to represent the message of the gospel, because they do not know that the message of the gospel has any relation to the affairs of life. Then we hear such laymen say to any minister who might try to speak relevantly to human questions: "Stick to your subject; I don't think these things are the business of the church."

Church members, as a part of their devotion to Christ who had love for the world, should try to understand the life of the world in terms of its deepest meanings, and not be content with merely its superficial values. They will read articles and books and editorials, and listen to speeches and forums on television and radio, not only that they may be informed, but also that they may be informed for God and may serve Him better in the world. Religion that seeks escape from the world, and similarly the person who will not assume responsibility for God in the world, is sinful and idolatrous. Protection against this sin and idolatry is partly secured by serving God with our minds and our interests.

Prayer and the Life of Devotion

A second discipline of the responsible Christian is the discipline of prayer and devotion. We cannot live in relation to God and serve Him if we do not communicate with Him. Prayer is one of the indispensable forms of the dialogue between man and man, man and God, and God and the world. Unfortunately, however, many people, including some clergymen, have given up prayer, because it seems unrealistic and unfruitful in this scientific age. A part of our trouble may be that we tend to separate our acts of prayer from our life of devotion. Or, to use a concept we have employed earlier, we separate the forms of prayers from the vitality which provides the life of devotion. Both public and private prayer lose their vitality by this separation of form from life, and by the separation of God from the world, so that we make Him the monarch of religion instead of the creator and redeemer of life. Because of our belief in love as God's chosen relation to the world and in the incarnation of love in the personal, it becomes possible for our prayers and worship to be quickened through our devotion to the purposes of God in the world.

An analogy may help us here. Every relationship has its devotional rituals and observances which are important to it. Husband and wife, for instance, because of their love and devotion to each other, develop little rituals and ways of doing that are designed to express their devotion to each other. They come together for this purpose. There is the kiss, the touch of the hand, the gifts on special occasions and those which come as surprises; their physical union is the symbol and instrument of their spiritual union and becomes the sacrament of their relationship as persons. But these acts of love presuppose and depend upon their over-all and lifelong devotion to each other in everything that they do. Their life of devotion to each other provides the content and drive for their acts of devotion, and their acts of devotion are a means of expressing their life of devotion. Their life of devotion needs these acts of devotion, and without the life of devotion their acts of devotion will dry up and become meaningless.

So it is in our relation to God. We cannot fall on our knees and cry with any meaning: "O God, O Father, O Judge, O Savior," if our whole lives are not lived in the context of the meaning of these exclamations. Then our words become empty and cannot rise above our lips, and we are overcome by the despair and futility of our prayers. Prayer may not be recovered by going to a school of prayer to learn various techniques and kinds of prayer, but by rekindling our devotion to the people and the world for whom Christ died. Then, by practicing our acts of devotion in the context of such a life of devotion, we may rediscover the meaning of prayer. Our acts of devotion cannot be quickened by the intensification of our prayer activity alone. Many people who are frantically trying to whip up their prayer life would do better to get up off their knees and go out and do something about their loveless, purposeless, and undevoted lives. The devotion of the so-called "children of darkness" to the pursuit of their scientific or industrial purposes may be more impressive than the vain babblings of the so-called "children of God" about their souls. The trivial concerns of some religious people stand in uncomplimentary contrast to the heroism of the researcher's devotion to his project and to the scientist's devotion to his experiment. Perhaps the purposes of God are more served by them than by us, although by them His purposes may not be served consciously.

How can the life of devotion and the acts of devotion be brought together? When employer and labor leader meet to work out the problems of fair employment, they may do so either as a necessary part of their business, which of course it is, or as a way of expressing their devotion to God. God's love is concerned with justice between employer and employee, and the employer and the labor leader participate in the work of God in the world by their devotion to these problems. This is both their way of being responsible businessmen and citizens, and their way of loving God and assuming responsibility for Him. To whatever degree they recognize this as being true, they will find satisfaction and meaning in the offering of their effort as an act of reverence to God, together with a private prayer for His guidance that each may be open not only to what God is trying to do through him, but open also to what He is trying to do through the other.

In our acts of devotion, therefore, we pray for a life of devotion in which we may be the instruments of God's purposes in the incarnations of His Spirit. We pray also for others, for our children, for our pupils, for our associates, whether they be employees, peers or superiors, that they too may be incarnations of God's Spirit and instruments for the accomplishment of His purpose.

Acts of devotion, in the context of this kind of life of devotion, change the whole focus of human relations and get them off their self-centered, competitive, and alienating basis. Acts of devotion are revitalized by being restored to a relation to the life of devotion, and the life of devotion is given an opportunity in acts of devotion to articulate its meaning, and to be guided and renewed in the dialogue between God and man as expressed in worship. And the union of the acts of devotion with the life of devotion will illumine anew for us the meaning of daily life, and our relationship with one another. It will improve our dialogue with one another and with God.

The Practice of Creativity

A third discipline to be practiced by the person through whom the Spirit would work is the cultivation of creative activity. By the discipline of creativity, I mean the discipline of learning and perfecting some skill in art or music or handicraft or sport in which there is opportunity to co-ordinate motor and mental powers and to gain therefrom some sense of achievement. A creative approach to life, of course, is a part of a life of devotion. Creative activity is indispensable to the health of the human soul, especially in this day when there is an increasing gap between our efforts and their result.

Mothers are often frustrated and unhappy because they do not see immediately in their children the good results of their long and painful efforts in their behalf. Teachers can work with a pupil for months and years and still not have a clear-cut sense of achievement. The man in his office may be but a part of a huge organization, and the results of his labors are neither conclusive nor a source of immediate satisfaction to him. The researcher may have to work for years before he achieves the results for which he is looking. Indeed, he may never gain them for himself, because the work that he does may only lead to the work of others, and still others will reap the harvest. Then there are many engaged in work from which little sense of achievement can be gained, and yet it is necessary work and provides them with a living. Lack of response or delayed response to human effort can be profoundly frustrating to the human spirit, and frustrated people do not make good instruments for the expression of love. It is imperative, therefore, that those who would be lovers of man and God should find substitute ways in which to close the gap between their effort and their achievement.

The person who has a sense of creative outlets is one, therefore, who has greater powers of endurance, patience, and courage with which to face the challenges and threats of life. He is apt to be more free to love, and he will grow old more gracefully.

The discipline of creative action needs to be planned, time needs to be allowed for it, and those activities chosen which are feasible and appropriate to the person and his circumstances. We can learn to plan ahead so that from time to time we are prepared to undertake new projects. An elderly person of the writer's acquaintance began, during his sixties, to learn something new each year. The result was that his spirit remained youthful and his interest in life was kept alive. Not only is this kind of activity fun, but also it is a way by which to keep oneself open to the possibilities of life. It becomes a way in which one can live devotionally and realize within himself and in his relations with others the image of the creative God by Whom he was created.

Relationship as Resource

We come now to a consideration of the quality of relationship that nurtures persons. We discussed this earlier from the point of view of the child's need to be loved, his need to love, and his need to have his efforts to love welcomed. But now we turn to a discussion of relationship as a resource from the point of view of the one who is giving the love. We are thinking of the parent, the teacher, the pastor, or any other person who makes himself responsible for others.

It is curious how little we think of our relationship with one another as a resource. When someone comes to us who is in trouble, we often say, "I wish I could think of something to do or say that would help him," not realizing that the greatest thing we can do is to be a person in relation to him. Here again we realize the meaning of the incarnation. Everyone who hopes to participate in the life of Christ in the world today is called to be a person in relation to others, and whatever he thinks to do or say should be an expression of what he is.

If we say or do something that is helpful to others, it is because we are really present to them, really hear what they are trying to say, and they know that we are with them. On the other hand, we all have had the experience, when we were in trouble and needed help, of having would-be advisers and comforters make all kinds of suggestions and verbalize all kinds of would-be comforting thoughts, but have lacked the feeling that they were really with us. I sometimes have the impression that we like the idea of being helpful persons, but dislike the demand and disturbance that goes with it. It is easier to be depersonalized and professional, but professionalism is the enemy of relationship.

Professionalism is the conduct of a relationship for its own sake or for the sake of the "helping" person who is conducting it, rather than for the one for whom it was intended. Physicians, for instance, exhibit professionalism when they practice medicine without concern for the patient. Teachers exhibit professionalism when they teach their subject as an end in itself or for their own satisfaction. Ministers can be professional in relation to their parishioners. Parents can be professional in relation to their children. Any relationship can deteriorate into mere professionalism.

What are some of the marks of professionalism? In the first place, professionalism is marked by condescension in which an attitude of superiority is evident. Parents are heard to say: "Children are just children, you know. They don't know what they want; they don't know what they're talking about." Attitudes of condescension are contradictory to the concept of incarnation, which means to be a part of and identified with another. Condescension, therefore, closes us to the possibility of being indwelt by the Spirit and from being the instruments of love.

Another mark of professionalism is its manipulative tendency. We push people around and get them to do what we want them to do, because it is easier that way. "Mother knows best," "You do it because I tell you." Obviously, the professional attitude is alienating, because people do not like to be pushed around, and they will not be, if they can help it; and if they are, they resent it. Professionalism impoverishes relationship because, for instance, neither the parent nor the child gives or receives. The effect of professionalism does not need to be spelled out in any greater detail, because we all have experienced and participated in it. We may more usefully turn our attention to a study of the character of relationship that is the source of life.

The Values of Mutuality

Personal growth is nurtured best in relationships in which the quality of mutuality makes growth a possibility for both the child and the parent, the pupil and the teacher. If growth occurs on one side, it must take place also on the other. If parent or teacher does not grow, then we must conclude that the relationship is not mutual and that the child will not prosper either. Mutuality means that the teacher and pupil, or parent and child, are open to each other. When one speaks, he expects to be heard by the other.

Communication inevitably takes place in a relationship of mutual expectancy. Communication produces a personal encounter in which one addresses and the other responds, and a real meeting occurs. We cannot make this kind of personal meeting take place. We can only prepare ourselves for it, which is one way of thinking of prayer. When we practice expectancy in our relationships, we are preparing ourselves for possible depth meetings that may take place between others and ourselves. Preparation means ridding ourselves of prejudices and preconceptions, fears and anxieties, ulterior motives and purposes, in order that we may speak the word of love and truth to others, and really hear the word of love and truth that they speak to us. In similar fashion, we may prepare ourselves to be open to whatever God may speak to us through persons or situations during that day. Finally, because we have thus prepared ourselves for a real meeting between people, we will not so easily seek to manipulate and exploit them.

Mutual Attention

The quality of mutuality calls for mutual attention. Those who would call each other into being and be the instrument of God's love in human relations must pay attention to each other. It is difficult to speak if we do not have the listener's attention; it is difficult to listen if we do not have the speaker's attention. Absence of mutual attention breaks down communication. Sermons may not have the attention of the congregation because the preacher's attention is fixed only on the sermon as a production, or on himself as a performer, and not on the congregation that he is now addressing, and whose response is necessary if his sermon, as communication, is to be completed. Likewise, a child may not hear the parent because the parent is not really paying attention to the child. We hear ourselves saying, "Look here, you pay attention to me." We say it in desperation because we know that our angry command will not accomplish the desired result. The inattention that we receive from one another discourages us personally and blocks the possibility of the dialogue that might reunite us.

How can we secure the attention of others? The answer is simple: by being attentive. As a teacher I have found that if I am really attentive to my pupils, they pay attention to me. But if I am just doing a job and not really concerned about them, they do not hear me because I am not hearing them. If we want attention we must be attentive. If we want love we must love. If we want anything we must give it. This is a Christian principle. We cannot demand something and get it. Attention, then, is a gift that we give one another. We give the gift of attention and receive it in return. We have no automatic right to it, nor does anyone.

Attentiveness is something that can be learned. We learn by having eyes that see and ears that hear. Eyes, of course, are made for seeing and ears for hearing, but we can learn also to hear with our eyes and see with our ears. When I am seeking to understand another, for example, I find that what I see in his face and manner helps me to understand what he is saying; and, likewise, attentive hearing helps me to understand what he is also revealing in his face and manner. We pay attention by watching the eyes, facial expressions, and behavior of people, by listening for the question behind the question and for the meaning behind the meaning, remembering that there is tremendous content behind what is said and shown. If we would be servants of love, we must have ears that really hear and eyes that really see; and, like our Lord, hear and see deeply in order that the truth which men are really seeking may be found. Such hearing and seeing was the gift of Christ to men, and should therefore be the gift of Christians to men.

It follows, then, that the good teacher is one who, participating in a relationship with our Master Teacher, can accept any question that a person may bring, knowing that if he stays with it, he will be led, step by step, to that person's real concern. When the teacher gives that kind of attention, the students are more apt to respond relevantly, which is their attention to the teacher. Then the teacher has the wonderful experience of mutual attention in which meaningful communication has taken place. What I have said about teaching and the relationship between teacher and pupil is true of all relationships. The reward for the gift of attention is that others will respond with clues in the form of questions or comments that will enable us to meet them at the point of the meaning of their life. Not only does this kind of listening provide a basis for a highly significant curriculum for teaching, as we saw earlier, but also a basis for true human community and communication. Our self-centeredness, however, gives us a natural pull away from attentiveness. But the Spirit of Christ Who, in drawing us to Him, draws us to one another, will make mutual attentiveness possible so that two-way communication will become a reality for us.

One current objection to this kind of mutual attentiveness travels under two guises: one is the possibility of being offensively nosy and intrusive; the other is the fear of really violating the privacy of other people. Certainly, privacy should be respected, and we should not force ourselves upon others, but attentiveness is not intrusiveness. Every human being wants to be known and to know as a person, and in ways that are both conscious and unconscious. We seek others that we may be known and may know. Attentiveness is really alertness to the lonely cry of man, and respects rather than violates the individual's separateness and sanctity.

Mutual Respect

Mutual respect is also a necessary quality in human relations. Respect for oneself and for others is not as common as one might expect. We find self-concern and some concern for others, but not respect. Respect for others is hard to maintain if one does not respect oneself, and it is appalling to realize what low estimates many people have of themselves. Although they may disguise from themselves and others their despair about themselves in many ingenious ways, lack of self-respect nevertheless is characteristic of many people's self-image. Their view of themselves results largely from their experiences in relationship, many of which we have already discussed. We may try to prevent the development of negative attitudes and feelings toward ourselves and our children, but no matter how loving we try to be, we shall inevitably cause some injury, distortion, and deprivation to the maturing person.

What, then, is the answer to this human problem? If the effect of growing up is to produce in us misgivings about ourselves and others, how can we acquire the self-respect and respect for others which is necessary for those who would truly serve God and man? Since mutual respect is a necessary condition for creative human relations, it is necessary that the vicious circle of non-respect be broken by someone. It is at this point that our participation in the re-creating life of God in Christ, which is made possible by the presence and work of His Spirit in us, makes a decisive difference in our self-estimate.

The Incarnation is the affirmation of God's faith in His creation. Christ is an expression of God's faith in man and what He is able to do through man. The principle of mutuality, which we have been affirming in our present discussion, is true not only for the relation between man and man, but between man and God as well. For the love of God in Christ affirms our value as persons in His desire to work through the people who will respond to His love, and shows His respect for what they can do. God's love and respect for men was expressed through the person of Jesus and continues to be expressed through persons in each generation. His people, the servants of His Spirit, are the ones who will break the vicious circle of mutual non-respect, and give the gift of mutual respect.