PASTOR’S PERSPECTIVE: “THE UNREQUITED RISK OF LOVE”
By: Ron Woodrum
C.S. Lewis had a lot to say about love. In fact he wrote an entire book on it entitled Four Loves. In it he writes, “To love at all is too be vulnerable. Love anything and your heart will be wrung, and possibly broken. If you want to make sure of keeping it intact you must give it to no one, not even an animal. Wrap it carefully raound with hobbies and little luxuries; avoid all entanglements. Lock it up safe in the casket or coffin of your selfishness. But in that casket, safe, dark, motionless, airless, it will change. It will not be broken; it will become unbreakable, impenetrable, irredeemable. To love is to be vulnerable.” All who love of in risk of experiencing “unrequited love”. Merriam-Webster Dictionary defines unrequited love as “love not reciprocated or returned in kind”. History is replete with living proof of the existance that enigma of love. The Roman poet Ovid, in his Remedia Amoris, gave counsel on how to overcome “unrequited love”. Dante Alegheri, author of Dante’s Inferno, was also known to be the victim of unrequited love of a beautiful young lady named Beatrice Portinari. She died suddenly at age 24, and some of the most beautiful poetry about love and heartbreak was written by Dante. Charles Dickens wrote about such love in his book Great Expectations. He writes of Pip, who loved Estella, who had no ability to return that love due to the influence of her adopted mother, Miss Havershan, who totally corrupted her view of love. Estella rejects Pip, to marry a man who would prove to be abusive to her. After his death, Estella and Pip finally find love together, but not before experiencing the “unrequited risk of love”. W.B. Yeats, broken-hearted over Maud Gonne, wrote some heart-breaking poetry about those experiences. Goethe, in his book Sorrows of Young Werther, writes autobiographically about himself over a heart that had known the pain of unreciproted love only too well. Ayn Rand, in her book We the Living, wrote about her rejection by Lev Bekkeman. One of the most moving records of unrequited love is written by Lord Byron, in his poem Love and Death , writes about loving someone through all of life’s experiences, and carrying with him to death that unrequited love. His last two verses says,
“And when convulsive throes denied my breath,
the faintest utterance to my fading thought,
To thee…to thee…e’en in the gasp of death
My spirit turned, oh-oftener than it ought
Thus more and more, and yet thou lovest me not,
And never wilt/ Love dwells not in our will.
Nor can I blame thee, though it be my lot,
To strongly, wrongly, vainly love thee still!”
Our movies and songs deal with this risk head on. Who can forget, in Forest Gump, how Forest loved Jennie, who he eventually got a bit of love to come back to him, yet not without the pain that went before. Songs, such as White Flag, by Dido, Beautiful, by James Blunt, Taking Somebody With Me When I Fall, by Larry Gatlin to name just a few. Then of course, fans of Charles Shultz, and his Peanuts comic strip, knows quite well that all his characters have experienced this kind of “unrequited love”. Charlie Brown loving Lucy; Lucy loving Schroeder; Sally Brown loves Linus; Peppermint Patty loves Charlie Brown. When asked why he included such a story line in many of his comic strips, Shultz, a Christian writer who loved the Lord Jesus Christ openly, said, “I incuded that subject because so many of us can identify with it!” How true.
One of the most intriguing example of “unrequited love” that impacted history was the experience of Philosoper Friedrich Nietzche. His father was a Lutheran pastor. Early in his life he professed faith in Christ. But his father died when he was five. He turned to God for all the love and attention he missed upon losing his father. He even wrote about it in a poem-To The Unknown God. He wrote:
“I lift up my hands to you in loneliness
you, to whom I flee,
To whom in the deepest depth of my heart
I have solemnly consecrated altars”.
He felt as if God did not return the love he extended to Him. As a result he turned away himself. He became an advocate and author of the Death of God philosophy. He often wrote about love, but never included God in the discussion. He even said one time, “There is not enough love and goodness in the world to permit giving any of it away to any imaginary beings, (i.e. God)” In his last book, Dithyrambs of Dionysus, he wrote: “Who still warms me, who still loves me? Offer me hot hands! Offer me coal-warmers for my heart. He is gone! He Himself has fled! My last companion, My great Enemy, My unknown, My hang-man god!” Today’s message deals with this subject. “How To Recover From Unrequited Love”. The victim considered in the message is God. Last week we looked at God counting the way he has loved us. Today’s message is the painful question from Him to us-“where is your love for me?”. It must be something we do not just say with our lips-but show with our lives!