All You Need Is Love?
The world in 1967 was a tumultuous time. The six day Israeli-Arab war destabilized an already tense Middle East. The Vietnam War was raging, with nearly half a million American combat soldiers fighting in the jungles and mountains. Riots in American cities were wreaking havoc, causing President Lyndon Johnson to call out National Guard units to protect people and property in several cities.
It was during this traumatic time that the Beatles came out with one of their many hits, “All You Need Is Love.” The song rose to the top of the charts in no time at all, as people were tired of war, race riots, and political deceit. Lennon’s words of love resonated with a generation weary of humankind’s savagery.
The song is incredibly simple, part of the genius of the British rock group, and yet even the Beatles’ manager wasn’t exactly sure what the lyrics meant. On the surface “love” sounds simple, warm, and comforting, but “love” is complicated, as most anyone who has loved can testify.
I read recently of a bison calf that had to be euthanized by Yellowstone National Park rangers. Apparently, a well-meaning but uninformed visitor tried to help the baby bison when it was unable to cross a river and join its herd. Once the man touched the animal, the other bison rejected the calf. Consequently, the park rangers had no choice but to destroy the baby bison. Obviously, the man’s intentions were meritorious but his lack of understanding the herds’ instincts resulted in the calf’s death.
Bison Calf at Yellowstone Is Euthanized After Man’s Intervention
To put it simply, love isn’t all you need. Feelings of love must be coupled with understanding, sensitivity, and wisdom or love may cause more harm than good.
Take marriage, for instance. Two people can love each other but if they fail to learn each other’s love language, the feelings of love are likely to turn sour over time. If your partner knows how to love you—what makes you feel loved—your marriage is far more likely to survive.
Parenting children requires more than love, too. Regardless of how much we love our children, we need some guidelines to help our children grow into healthy and well-adjusted adults. When our children were at home, my wife and I scrambled to read material on how to be a better parent. In earlier times, when extended families all lived under the same roof, young parents could lean on the wisdom of their parents and grandparents to teach and guide them. Today’s nuclear family has, by and large, lost that storehouse of wisdom.
We can even love our jobs, but if we don’t know how to do our jobs, we will surely fail. As a pastor, it took me years to learn how to love the congregations I served. Love was not enough.
As a teenager in the summer of 1967, I would wile away the hours listening to songs like “All You Need Is Love” and think that love was the be-all and end-all. I was blissfully unaware that love was far more than a warm, cozy feeling. If something felt good, I reasoned, it must be of God. I had a lot to learn.
My education began a short time later. In the fall of my senior year in high school, when my father was 47-years-old, a stroke paralyzed him, probably as a result from a surgery gone awry a few years earlier. After months in an Air Force hospital, he was finally brought home, not able to walk or use the left side of his body. His speech was also impaired.
My mother loved my dad, but her struggle to learn how to care for him taught me a great deal about love. She needed far more than warm, fuzzy feelings to change his diapers every day, his bed sheets and feed him like an infant. She was his nurse 24/7, with no relief. She grew tired and needed help, but in those days there weren’t many social services available. My mother had to learn how to love my dad in his debilitated condition. I learned then that love is a commitment “for better or worse.”
Slowly, over time, my father improved enough to walk on his own, but never regained the use of his left arm or hand. He had always been a strong, proud man who was fiercely independent but in the aftermath of his stroke he, too, learned how to love my mother in his weakened state. Strange as it may seem, I think their love grew for each other during those trying times because they learned to love each other in different ways. Love is complicated.
I will always love the Beatles and their music. One thing I’ve learned, though, if you think all you need is love, you have a lot to learn about love. A whole lot more.
