Can Love Be Learned?

sermon by Torin Eikler
Romans 13:8-14, Psalm 119:33-40

Have you ever tried to teach something to someone who just can’t seem to grasp the concept? I don’t mean someone who is being intentionally dense or doesn’t care to put in the time and energy to understand. I mean someone who really isn’t ready or able to understand what you’re trying to teach? It’s a helpless feeling … wondering if you just aren’t finding the right words … growing more and more frustrated with your pupil until you are ready to chuck the whole process out the window … beginning to question if you really understand yourself.

I’m pretty sure any of you who have raised children can identify with those moments. I know I have felt that way many, many times already as Carrie and I have tried to help Sebastian understand new things.

(I hope you’ll excuse me for using Sebastian as an example so many times. There just seem to be so many parallels between a child’s learning and our own growth as we mature in faith.)

Anyway, it seems that no matter how many times we explain - about things as simple as cleaning up a mess (or not making it in the first place) or as important as not throwing rocks or whatever it may be at another person and the danger of running into the street - he doesn’t seem to get it. The concepts of self-preservation or being careful not to hurt others are just beyond his capacity, and we can only keep trying to find patience that we don’t always seem to have in the hope that the time when he does get it comes sooner rather than later.

But the struggle to learn – really learn – difficult concepts is not the province of children alone. How many of you, for example, could explain Einstein’s theory of general relativity? Or how internal combustion power, friction, and momentum work together to determine fuel efficiency? How about computer chips? Or how Christ could be fully human without sinning and fully divine if he did sin?

(Let's do that again and if you could raise your hands, that would be great 'cause I’m still having difficulty with this stuff myself, and I could use some help. General Relativity? … 2, okay … engines? … 3, good … computers? … a couple kind ofs, all right … Christology? … no? Well two out of four isn’t too bad. I’ll talk with you all later.)

These are difficult questions for most of us because they lead into really big, complex ideas that aren’t a direct part of our experience (or at least we don’t realize that they are.) And, for the most part, we are content to let them sit there in all their incomprehensible splendor as long as it doesn’t seem to affect our lives too much. So, we look for simple rules that will help us get along without understanding all the complexities.

One of my father’s favorite movies is “The Gods Must be Crazy.” He likes it partly because it takes place in Africa where he grew up and partly because it deals with our struggle to understand the unknown. But mostly he loves it because it’s funny and witty and insightful or, as he would put it – “it’s just plain fun.” For those of you who haven’t seen it, I strongly recommend it for an evening’s viewing.

In the movie, an isolated tribe of bush people are visited by an object from the gods – a Coke bottle. It falls from the sky (or more precisely, from a plane flying overhead). None of them have ever seen a bottle before, and as they explore its uses, including bonking each other on the head, they soon come to believe that it is an evil thing that is not meant to be touched by human hands.

So, the hero of the story whose name is unpronounceable, for me at least, decides to take the bottle and throw it off the edge of the earth. He soon discovers that the earth doesn’t end where he thought it did, and as his quest continues, he comes into contact with modern civilization and the “gods” with white skin. After many adventures and mishaps along the way, he finally returns to his home and his family (without the bottle) and while he cannot comprehend or explain everything he has seen, he does share one truth he has learned – one rule for the tribe to follow – avoid the gods and the wonders they have because the gods are crazy.

That kind of encounter is quite unlikely for most of us. We live, after all, in the global society that is the purview of those crazy gods. But we do live our lives according to simple rules that mask unbelievable complexity. We know, for example, that if we let go of a pen or a knife or a concrete paving stone, it will fall down instead of floating away. It doesn’t really matter how the equations that describe the forces of attraction between objects of varying masses balance in those moments. We only know that we need to get our feet and not our heads out of the way if we want to avoid a potentially painful accident. Just one of the basic rules we live by.

And that’s what we teach our children– rules to live by. Don’t throw things at people. Don’t touch the stove. Food is for eating not playing. Don’t take the toys that someone else is playing with. Don’t pound on the cat with a book – in fact, don’t pound on the cat at all. Sleep is good even if you don’t think you want it. Don’t cheat. Don’t lie. Listen to your parents.

Not so different from the commandments we are supposed to live by ourselves. Honor your father and your mother. You shall not steal. You shall not bear false witness. You shall not covet. You shall not murder. You shall not commit adultery. More rules to live by – rules given to a people who were not ready or able to understand the concepts that truly govern our lives together. Kind of makes you wonder if God felt a bit like a parent with fussy, willful children who just didn’t get it.


Paul’s letter to the Romans makes it clear, though, that there is much more to it all than rules. Love, he says, is at the heart of all these commandments, and his words echo the words of Christ who said that all the law of Israel and all the words of the prophets can be summed up a command to love God and love others. The central law of life as children of God, it seems, is … love. And love seems … somehow … to exist on a different level than laws of physics or engine mechanics or the common sense rules of survival. While they can be taught, I’m not sure that is true of love. No, love is different.

Ideas and concepts can be taught and learned by the mind. They deal with how things work and what we should do, and they can often be boiled down into simple rules. But motivations – those things like love that deal with why we do things – they don’t live in our heads. They live in our hearts and our guts, and I don’t know of any case in which I, at least, have been able to teach motivation. In the case of the law of love that lies at the heart of God’s plan for humanity, it seems that even God has had trouble teaching us why to do the things we do.

The Ten Commandments and all the other specific rules that were given to us to help mold our lives into the right shape are good rules to follow. But no matter how well we adhere to them, no matter how we study the implications and seek out patterns to help guide us, they still don’t cover every circumstance of life.

Even all of Christ’s teachings, taken together with his example as a guide, can’t do that . And, even if they did, following rules for the sake of the rules - for righteousness sake – is not the point. It may help us to live better lives and create a better world, but without the right motivation – without love – we are, as Paul puts it, no better than clashing cymbals or clanging gongs.

Love is the key to life in the Realm of God, and no amount of rules can bring us into that place, if our history and our experience is any guide. They can approximate it maybe, help us to live in a world that mirrors God’s dream for us. But without love as our motivation for life, we will always be on the wrong side of the looking glass. And, the question is, how do we discover that key within ourselves?

There is a line from a song that has been coming into my head all week. It is from the duet that Tevye and Golda sing together in “Fiddler on the Roof” when Tevye is wondering if Golda actually loves him or is just living with him because their marriage was arranged and that’s what one did in that time and place. After talking (well, I guess singing) around the issue for most of the song, the two of them share this little exchange back and forth:

T - The first time I met you was on our wedding day.
I was scared.

G - I was shy.

T - I was nervous.

G - So was I.

T- But my father and my mother said we'd learn to love each other.
And now I'm asking, Golda, Do you love me?

Eventually, of course, Golda admits that after 25 years she has learned to love Tevye, and Tevye returns the favor.


The words are striking to me because I have had the same experience in my life. Well, not exactly the same …. But I have often found myself thrown together with people that I did not know at all. And even in just a year’s time living and working with them, I came to love them – even when our time together began in fighting and disagreement. Strange, isn’t it, how sharing a bathroom or a living room or dinner time can change your perception of someone?!

But it’s more than that, I suppose. It’s more than just sharing space that opens our eyes and our hearts to the people we love in our lives. It’s the time we spend talking and listening to one another that helps us to understand what lies underneath the surface impressions and posturing of the people we meet. It’s that vision of who they really are that lets us let go of the little frustrations and the way others rub us the wrong way. It’s the relationships that we build with them that frees us embrace them with all their faults and all their brilliance – to embrace them in love for who they are and who they want to be.

Perhaps that’s the answer. I still wonder if love can be taught, but perhaps love can be learned through relationships.


When Jesus gave guidance about the commandments in the Sermon on the Mount, he told us to look beyond the rules to the motivation. “You have heard it said, ‘you shall not murder,” but I say to you if you are angry with a brother or sister, you will be liable to judgment. You have heard it said, ‘you shall not commit adultery,’ but I say to you that everyone who looks at a [another] with lust has already committed adultery. You have heard it said, ‘you shall love your neighbor,’ but I say to you love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you.”

When Jesus spoke of the measure of faithful living in his description of the Day of the Lord, he said that the blessed would be those who met the need they found in the world. They fed the hungry, gave drink to the thirsty, welcomed the stranger, clothed the naked, and cared for the sick and imprisoned. They did all this not for the sake of following rules or with a thought for their reward.

And so should we – follow the example of those sheep in Jesus’ prophetic vision of the final judgment. We should reach out to those in need around us in love – a love that we will surely learn if we truly follow their lead. For, those disciples got their hands dirty. They did not settle, as we so often do, for donating money or taking their left over, tired old clothes to the Goodwill or sending off a card to a shut-in when they remembered. They met the people they reached out to. They welcomed them into their lives – strangers or no. They brought them into the house to offer the hospitality of food and drink. They took clothes to them in their homes. They stayed with them when they were sick, cleaning them and feeding them and emptying their chamber pots.

All these things they did in love, love that grew in them as they got to know those they helped. Each time they reached out to another person they learned to understand and live the law of love a little more fully. And, who among us does not need to understand that law more fully?

Perhaps if we can find or make the time to reach out and touch the need in the world around us – hand out sack lunches at the Baptist Church, talk with lonely people in nursing homes, or volunteer with Bartlett House – perhaps with each new relationship we build along the way, we too will learn a little more and a little more and a little more. One day, we may even look around and find that we are standing on the other side of the looking glass holding the key in our hands.

May it be so.