The Contemporary Crisis of Love

1
The Contemporary Crisis of Love

• Is the Loving Life really what makes life
  meaningful and fulfilling?

2
Goals

• To analyze the validity of contemporary societys
  endorsement of the cult of experience and a
  life of good times as a means to personal
  fulfillment and lasting satisfaction.
• To examine the validity of Jesus life principle
  of unconditional love and committed relationships
  as the way to genuine happiness and fulfillment.

3
Review

• There are three life principles endorsed by
  contemporary society.
• Since we are greatly influenced by cultural
  conditioning, many of our attitudes, habits,
  customs and behaviors are oriented toward either
  one or all three of the life principles.
• Power
• Excessive sensual pleasure
• Avoidance of personal responsibility timid
  compromises

4
City of Joy

• How was Maxs life for the most part that of a
  running spectator?
• What caused Max to loose himself when he was
  younger? How did it affect him from then on in
  terms of his choices?
• What is meant by the terms?
• Spectate
• Run
• Commit

5
Group Activity

• Identify titles of popular books, television
  programs, videos, etc. that endorse the
  principles of pleasure, power, and/or avoidance
  of responsibility.
• How specifically do they endorse the attitude
  that happiness and fulfillment are not the result
  of loving relationships?

6
How do you respond to the questions?

• Is the Gospel beatitude of unselfish and
  unconditional love really the path to true human
  joy?
• Or is the opposite true
• Our happiness and fulfillment come by
• timidly compromising our integrity (cutting
  corners, cheating, taking the easy way out),
• experiencing the pleasures, power, and the
  variety of sensations that life can offer?

7

• What is the cult of experience?
• Cult of experience
• Urges us to grab all that we can while passing
  through this world
• What is meant by the pursuit of good times?
• Good times
• The pursuit of fun, exhilaration, and the absence
  of tension.

8
Do these lead to lasting happiness and
fulfillment?

• Ultimate delusion is
• In the end we are always left with the same
  painful emptiness that we were led to believe we
  could fill
• Whenever we set out to eat, drink, and be merry
  as the way to personal happiness and fulfillment
  we find no resting place, nothing
  unconditionally satisfying.
• We infinitely long for Something More

9
Why?
Because after each good time, we remain as
before empty, thirsty, and longing for the
ultimate good time.

• Similarly, the pursuit of good times, of counting
  the moments of exhilaration that can be crammed
  into a day
• Can never add up to human fulfillment or a
  meaningful life.
• This pursuit is a Camelot that never exists
• Can only result in inevitable sadness and
  disappointment of unfulfilled expectations

10
Balanced Vision

• Not proposing an anti-pleasure form of
  Christianity
• Fun and enjoyable experiences should have a place
  in every life
• But, acknowledge that they can never add up to
  human fulfillment and a meaningful life.
• They only tease us to want MORE.

11
The Christian Vision

• The Christian Vision of Life perceives the happy
  fulfilled person, the one who has a meaningful
  life, as one who lives a good life
• Good Life unconditional commitment of love.

The Cult of Experience Versus Unconditional
Commitment
A Life of Good Times Versus a Good Life of
Unconditional Love
12
How does a good life of unconditional commitment
lead to genuine happiness and fulfillment?

• A meaningful life can result only from the
  experience of love
• This implies a commitment and a dedication to
  another or others.
• Giving the gift of myself in love leaves me with
  a deep and lasting satisfaction that I have done
  something good with my life.
• I live with the acknowledgment that I have
  contributed a gift of love to the lives of
  another or others and made a difference.

13
Happiness and self-fulfillment are by-products of
love
14
City of Joy

• How is Jesus vision of life, that only in
  giving the gift of myself in love that we
  ultimately reach personal and lasting
  fulfillment, developed in the film?
• The Christian vision of other people is that they
  are needy of love and understanding. Which
  characters were transformed by the two gifts of
  love gift of self through self-disclosure and
  gift of affirmation of anothers worth, and
  understanding achieved through emphatic
  listening?

15
Activity

• Read Fritz Perlss Gestalt Prayer
• What are your thoughts and impressions?
• What life principle is expressed?
• Would you send this to a loved one? Why or Why
  not?

• Read Walter Tubbss Beyond Perls
• What are your thoughts and impressions?
• How does Tubbs correct the imbalances of Perlss
• Would you send this to a loved one? Why or Why
  not?

16
The Gestalt Prayer

• I do my thing, and you do your thing.
• I am not in this world to live up to your
  expectations.
• And you are not in this world to live up to mine.
• You are you and I am I.
• If by chance we find each other, its beautiful.
• If not, it cant be helped
• Fritz Perls

17
Beyond Perls

• If I just do my thing and you do yours, we stand
  in the danger of losing each other and ourselves.
• I am not in this world to live up to your
  expectations
• But I am in this world to confirm you as a unique
  human being.
• And to be affirmed by you
• We are fully ourselves only in relation to each
  other

• The I detached from a Thou disintegrates.
• I do not find you by chance
• I find you by an active life of reaching out.
• Rather than passively letting things happen to
  me
• Rather than passively letting things happen to
  me
• I can act intentionally to make them happen.

18
Beyond Perls (cont.)

• I must begin with myself, true,
• But I must not end with myself
• The truth begins with two.
• Walter Tubbs

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Activity pp. 194-195

• Read Fritz Perlss Gestalt Prayer
• What are your thoughts and impressions?
• What life principle is expressed?
• Would you send this to a loved one? Why or Why
  not?

• Read Walter Tubbss Beyond Perls
• What are your thoughts and impressions?
• How does Tubbs correct the imbalances of Perlss
• Would you send this to a loved one? Why or Why
  not?

20
Perls vs. Tubbs

• Perls
• Ignores one of the deepest truths of human
  existence
• For a person to be is to be in relationship

• We are essentially relational and therefore
  cannot be complete without relationships
• Humans need warmth, caring, empathy, and
  commitment
• Essential process of becoming a person.

A Human Loner is an Oxymoron
21
Activity

• List 10 people you know well.
• Arrange the same list according to whom you
  believe are the most happy to the least
  happy.
• Arrange the first list according to whom you
  believe are the most loving to the least
  loving.
• Is there any correlation? Is it true? Are the
  most happy also the most loving?

22
Summary

• The Christian Vision of Life
• Life is for loving
• We can be happy and fulfilled by loving
  ourselves, others, and our God.
• Happiness and fulfillment are by products of a
  loving life.