wCHAP.6

(9/7/98)

CHAPTER VI

LOVE AND THE SCIENCE OF RELIGION

The area of love lies at the heart of a Science of Religion. There can be no SFLIHM (Sustainable Feeling that one's LIfe Has Meaning) without love. This must include all aspects of love: loving feelings toward others, our experiences, the things in our life, etc. To focus this discussion I will use: THE ART AND PRACTICE OF LOVING [1]. Andrews draws together ideas from a broad spectrum of sources. Because love has always been a key component of religion he draws heavily from this area and has elected to include the spin traditional religions have always included in their ideas and efforts. However, his work can easily be perfected so as to remove those elements that stand in the way of adapting them to a Science of Religion. However, Andrew's book does have some serious deficiencies.

THE ART AND PRACTICE OF LOVING is an excellent example of the way we approach important problems in our culture. I place it in contrast to the goals of a Science of Religion. More specifically it should be contrasted with WHY MARRIAGES SUCCEED OR FAIL. (See Chapter VII.) Where the foregoing book is based on twenty years of research that studies actual couples in great depth to see how successful marriages differ from unsuccessful ones, THE ART AND PRACTICE OF LOVING follows the pattern of looking at what the "experts" say and attempting to provide a rational approach to a complex and poorly understood area.

Obviously, it can be very useful to bring ideas together from a broad spectrum of sources. However, unless this is seen as the first step toward testing what happens in real people's lives something critical is missed. Nevertheless, there are many ideas here to be explored and utilized as appropriate. Also, Dr. Andrew's way of organizing these ideas provides a model that might be useful to a Wisdom Group. Such patterns and structuring of activities might be developed so as to apply to numerous areas relative to levels of membership. Such activities might help individuals in mastering a particular area of concern. But as indicated above, there is a fundamental deficiency in Andrew's approach. We have no way of knowing whether or not the procedures he recommends do in fact lead one to the goal promised.

At no point does Dr. Andrews admit that his ideas are merely conjectures and require empirical study to clarify whether or not they have merit. Since Andrews relies heavily on mystical sources for justifications this is not difficult to understand. However, for one interested in achieving a SFLIHM, we must always be aware that speculation is only a first step. Until empirical evidence supports a position, it is only a source of ideas for consideration and study that may be very important, or may be totally off the mark, or even harmful.

Nevertheless, in spite of Andrews' deficiencies, he does present a treasure of ideas worth exploring:

(P. 1)[1]: "This is a guidebook for loving, deeply and continually, regardless of what happens to you as you go through life. You may be young or old, single, happily or unhappily married, widowed, or divorced. You may be bored with routine or moving to something completely new, pregnant for the first time or watching your last child leave home, starting a new job or losing or retiring from your old one, moving into your first home or into a nursing home, surrounded by friends and relatives or all alone, fit and healthy or living with a terminal illness. Whatever your activities or circumstances, life challenges you to appreciate and celebrate them, regardless of how much you may like or dislike them, to breathe care and joy into whatever you do."

RESPONSE: Next to holding that ideas must be tested in order to determine their value my next most significant difference with Andrews lies in how he sees the individual in relationship to their society. Andrews takes the traditional approach that the individual and their society are separate and distinct and function rather independently. Individuals learn about love by reading a book then they practice that loving and the goal has been achieved.

My position is that one cannot have a Wise Person independent of a Wise Community. Progress toward either requires supporting the other. Therefore, mastering loving incorporates feed-back so that one knows when they are on the right track and when they are not. The ideas and goals they are pursuing are being tested at the same time they are being tried. As a result ideas and behaviors are shaped so they evolve to higher, more perfect, levels. The erroneous, ineffective and harmful approaches are replaced and/or improved. The successful and effective are selected for wider use.

(P. 1): "Despite all the attention our society pays to achieving success by reaching goals, it's obvious that success is not a state people reach -- success is an internal experience. Just succeeding in reaching a goal will not by itself bring the delight and satisfaction it seemed to promise."

RESPONSE: It seems to me that how much satisfaction one experiences from successfully reaching a goal depends on the merit of the goal. If the goal was well selected to lead one toward a SFLIHM and it achieved what it was supposed to, then reaching it could provide tremendous satisfaction. If it turned out that the goal was deficient then success in achieving it could cause pain rather than satisfaction. But almost all goals that our culture tells us will make us successful are erroneous goals. Getting clear on this point is a primary goal of a Science of Religion.

(P. 2): "Countless wise men and women have taught that the major purpose of life is to learn and practice not the art of reaching goals, but the art of loving. These experts, whose recorded teachings date back five thousand years or more, make loving their ultimate concern...."

RESPONSE: It seems to me the foregoing boils down to saying that for one to truly benefit from their life, a key goal must be to make loving an ultimate concern. Certainly loving lies at the heart of a SFLIHM.

(P. 3): "You spend a great portion of your life working at minor activities rather than major ones -- for example, washing the dishes, talking to a friend, or driving to work. Therefore, it is precisely in these daily activities that you walk your loving path, or else you have at most a few isolated loving events."

(P. 4): "Religious and spiritual journeyers from all traditions -- counselors, healers, poets, writers, philosophers, social scientists, and self-reflective natural lovers -- have discovered that a particular set of habits in the form of thoughts, attitudes, approaches, beliefs, and practices made them better at loving. This book can teach you those habits."

(P. 5): "There are more than merely personal reasons for you to commit to a path of loving. Humanity has developed such enormous capacity for both nurturing and destroying that loving is demanded of us as a service to all of life, both present and future."

"If we are to live at all, we must live together in peace and dignity, and we will live together in peace and dignity only by loving. Furthermore, as the earth is being pushed rapidly to the limits of its carrying capacity, it will continue to sustain life only if it is treated with the respect born of love. The greatest offering we can make, to the world and to posterity, is to love."

"After all, we live on a beautiful planet, and we share it with such diverse and fascinating fellow creatures. We have a rich cultural heritage from those who have gone before us, people who have poured out their strength to survive and to secure the lives of those who followed after them. Their vision was that their children would live in joy and peace. We are their children."

RESPONSE: Loving is an essential goal and behavior, but its not true that "we will live together in peace and dignity only by loving." Unless that loving is properly focused and leads to developing the essential social structures it cannot be enough. Hopefully, a Science of Religion and a Religion of Wisdom would provide the guidance necessary to make a loving life possible for everyone and would guide this love in the necessary way.

(P. 6): "This book consists of three parts: practices, quotes, and text. The practices are mostly pleasant ones, designed to strengthen your ability to create loving experiences and remove blocks that keep you from loving....This means that the work requires patience and trust -- trust that the best ideas and practices that humanity has developed for fostering loving are in fact valuable and will work for you."

"The quotations, mainly from religious or spiritual traditions, are intended to stand for all those who have passed this way before."

.

.

.

1. THE ART AND PRACTICE OF LOVING, Frank Andrews, G.P. Putnam's Sons, New York, 1991.