Love is powerful, and even though it was seldom verbalized as love, it's always been very real to me. Maybe I'm an unusual case, but most of the time it was a mutual experience of shared interests especially among relatives and friends that grew into close personal relationships. For some reason, I think it's always been an unspoken reality that is felt much more than it's talked about. In fact, love and God seem to be just about the two most unpopular things to talk about, even though they're the two most important elements in life. Regardless of whether anyone wants to accept it, I believe it remains to be a constant force at work among all forms of life. Trying to understand my relationship with my fiance led me to spend a lot of time searching for ways to explain it all. I had to see what other knowledgeable sources could tell me about this mysterious topic that no one seemed to be able to explain or respect...
Confucius proverbs gave me a lot of food for thought with heavy emphasis on practical things, such as mans relationship with people in the local community rather than on personal relationships, or relationships with the larger community. He had a lot to say about objective reality, but had little to say about things regarding the inner man. However, there was one proverb in the bible that I thought made great sense concerning personal relationships.
During the time I was trying to put things together that made sense, when I was having some problems regarding trust with the one I was having a relationship with, I came across a proverb in the bible dealing with confidentiality. It said, "A tale bearer reveals secrets, but he that is of a faithful spirit conceals the matter." When I was trying to achieve a degree of intimacy in our relationship, especially after having a meaningful conversation with my fiance, she sometimes would spend long periods of time transferring personal information to her mother over the telephone. Like the proverb said, she was probably revealing secrets and was not of a faithful spirit. It was like trying to fill a can full of holes with water. It was impossible to achieve intimacy when it seemed that our private conversations were being shared with her mother. Anyway, while studying and comparing proverbs of Confucius with the proverbs in the bible, I found that the proverbs in the bible concerned itself with the inner man and the proverbs of Confucius focused mainly on the reality of life in the external environment.
This proverb was a big find for me. Up until that point, I hadn't found anything else that made more sense. Confucius couldn't touch this with his carefully thought out writings. Naturally the first thing I wanted to do after looking at this was tell my fiance. It was her bible, not mine. I didn't own one. It had a white cover and looked real nice on her book shelf. I thought it would probably have some special meaning to her. After telling her about it, she said it was ok if I wanted to believe in it, but "It wasn't for her," in those exact words...
That was basically the beginning of the end in our relationship, but I kept hoping and hanging on... If I couldn't get her to look at her own book, her own source of family beliefs, what could I do to bring us together? This was in the early 70's. Astrology was popular during that time and a popular song then was Jesus Christ Super Star, "Who are you and what have you sacrificed?" Needless to say, I had my work cut out for me. Our country was breaking out of traditional Christianity along with the protestant work ethic, and turning to about anything that had anti-Christian beliefs. I wasn't living much differently myself, around that time, but was definitely not anti-truth, or anti-anything other than the war that continued to kill thousands on a regular basis in Vietnam.
There were several other proverbs I found in the bible that really made a lot of sense. I found that once I started reading them, it was difficult to stop. I also found that there was a lot about Love throughout the rest of the bible. One verse in particular that said almost exactly what I had found in my own search for the truth was, "He that Loves not, knows not God, for God is Love." The amount of wisdom and understanding I found in the bible at that time surpassed anything I'd come across in all of my studying. There was no need for me to look any farther, and as a result, I'd become an unemployed, pot smoking, long haired hippie who liked to read the bible...
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