Chicago, IL: Thomas More, 1967, 1972, 1982
(106 pages; $12.95, paper)

In ministering to single Christians, I repeatedly encounter individuals that are terrified of relationships. Let's face it, some singles are single, not by choice or circumstance, but because of their fear of the pain, self-exposure, and vulnerability that comes with a committed relationship. John Powell's book is a valuable tool for helping individuals--whether single or married--come to terms with their fears. According to Powell, Christians respond to the love of God because they are assured of God's love for them. This security allows them to grow in their relationship to God.

What does it mean to love God with one's whole heart, soul, and mind? I think that St. John would answer this question by telling us that before we can really give our heart, soul, and mind to God, we must first know how much God has loved us, how God has thought about us from all eternity, and desired to share his life, joy, and love with us. Christian love is a response to God's infinite love, and there can be no response until we have somehow perceived that God has first loved us, so much so that he sent his only-begotten Son to be our salvation (p. 2).

God's love provides a helpful pattern in understanding the nature of true love. God loves His people by giving himself to them. "If giving and sharing with another is the character and essence of love, then God is love. He needs nothing because he is God. He has all goodness and all riches within himself. But goodness is self-diffusive; it seeks to share itself" (p. 2). In addition, God's love motivates us to love others. Indeed, one of the chief ways we personally respond to God's love is by loving others. In this regard, Powell uses Jesus' teaching in Matthew 25:35-40 to prove that we love God by loving others ("I was hungry… I was thirsty… I was a stranger, etc.… what you did to one of these… you did to me"). According to Powell, this display of self-giving love is the best apologetic for the Christian faith.

Almost any other apologetic for the Christian faith can be memorized, rehearsed, and delivered without effect except the apologetic of love. Love, which of its essence seeks only the good of others and is willing to pay the high price of self-forgetfulness, is a product that is hard to imitate or counterfeit. To love, one must have enormous motivation" (p. 103).

This love does not come without a price. Loving people with God's kind of love is risky, oftentimes exposing us to suffering and difficulties. It would be easier to reject the demands of love or to embrace a counterfeit expression of love. Powell argues that it is easy to mistake our selfish expression of love for God's kind of love. When we love people in order to meet our own needs, we are substituting a counterfeit for the real thing. "When people orient their lives toward the satisfaction of their own needs, when they go out to seek the love that they need, no matter how we try to soften our judgment of them, they are self-centered" (p. 87). This kind of selfish living actually produces more internal misery and loneliness.

Concern for self and convergence upon self can only isolate self and induce even deeper and more torturous loneliness. It is a vicious and terrible cycle that closes in on us when loneliness, seeking to be relieved through the love of others, only grows deeper (p. 88).

Powell's solution is simple in theory, but difficult in practice. "The only way we can break this cycle formed by our aching egos is to stop being concerned with ourselves and begin to be concerned with others" (p. 88). With complete self-forgetfulness we must choose to love people regardless of whether they meet our needs or not. Indeed, the paradox of Christian living is that in giving we receive; in forgetting our self, we find our self.

If we do find our own happiness and fulfillment, it will be because we have forgotten ourselves and sought the happiness and fulfillment of those around us. The problem is that most of us are clutching to our own life rafts. We're tempted to preoccupation with our own self-fulfillment. Everything we do is somehow designed to achieve our own safety and happiness. We can be selfish in very refined and subtle ways (p. 90).

By considering Powell's insights and following some of his correctives, the reader may learn to genuinely love others to the glory of God.

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  © Richard J. Vincent, December 19, 2000