Hiding from Love.

We love others to the extent that we have allowed God to love us.

Think about this for a minute for it runs much deeper.

I wonder how many of our feelings that we call love actually stem from places within us that haven’t truly been healed by God? Consider the aim for perfectionism in some religious circles. There are folks out there who feel that the demand of their belief is to be perfect but often the very aim of perfection prevents people from fully developing into healthy, balanced human beings.

I recall one woman from church I attended several years ago. She was considered a saint by most of the members for her self-giving and sacrificial love and service. The reality was that she was a flaming co-dependent who couldn’t say no.

How can we tell the difference between neurotic desire for perfection and acceptance and a genuine longing for wholeness? At some point folks burn-out, fade-out or just walk-out and this seems to be happening in large segments of the church.

Many are hiding from love behind a mask of pseudo-love and are not even aware of it.

I am reading Soul Making: The Desert Way of Spirituality (1985) by Alan Jones and he addresses that topic and he also asks:

“It is easy to document the “successes” (if we take standard statistics of popular evangelists) but how do we document casualties of religion? How do we number those people who have been hurt and brutalized literally “beyond belief” by certain ways of believing? Such things are hard to document; but there is scarcely one of us who has not encountered many a wounded believer who thinks that he or she is an unbeliever.”

Religion can be a great disguise for hiding behind places within us that only mask the places that haven’t be healed by God’s love. And we can only love others to the extent that we have allowed God to love and heal us.