David McElroy

Most of us are better at talking about love than we are at actually loving. In this respect, I am chief among sinners.

Loving other people is a struggle. If it were easy, the world would be a very different place. But it’s not easy. And it’s even more difficult because our culture seems so eager to narrow the meaning of the word. A lot of people want it to apply to nothing more substantive than the shallow Hollywood version of love, which is little more than lust with some shiny new clothes.

Real love is much deeper than that, but I struggle to find words for it. I saw glimpses of the idea in many of the words attributed to Jesus in the Gospels, but I didn’t take them seriously when I was young — because I didn’t see the Christians around me living out what the words meant.

For years, I unconsciously internalized the notion that God’s love — and especially this notion of us loving our enemies — was hokum that we talked about in Sunday school, but ignored for the rest of the week. Talking about love seemed like an empty ritual for “good people” — but it meant nothing to me in “real life.”

But something eventually changed me. You can call it love. You can call it God. Or Spirit. Or even “the Universe,” if you prefer. You can use whatever word you’re comfortable with. But this powerful spiritual love changed me.

And that change left me a stranger in this world. It left me with one foot in the earthly world of hatred and misery and one foot in a spiritual world where we were all united in profound and genuine love.

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When I was a very small child, my life was easy to understand. I was my father’s son. I adored him and wanted to be like him. And I needed him to be proud of me.

I wanted and needed my mother’s love and attention. I saw myself as a tiny protector for my younger sisters. Nobody actually told me these things about myself. This was simply an acceptable role for a little boy in my culture. It was my identity.

As I grew up, I added bits and pieces to my identity. Without realizing it, I was choosing from a limited menu consisting of what my culture believed was acceptable. Bit by bit, I developed a definite identity.

I knew who I was. I knew where I belonged. A lot of things were wrong in my life as I grew up, but I firmly understood my place in this world.

Eventually, I broadened my view of myself and who I was. I became someone whose identity diverged more and more from what traditional culture considered acceptable. I made choices which would have once seemed unimaginable to me, but which had come to be acceptable by the culture.

And I’m left with a seeming contradiction. I’ve found a wonderful array of choices which previous generations never had. I’ve had freedom to make my life into things which cultural norms would have prevented for my grandfather or great-grandfather.

But those choices I’ve had — the choices I’ve made for myself — have also taken me further and further from the cultural grounding which gave their lives stability and meaning. And I’m not certain whether my life is better or worse than the lives of those who lived before such choices were possible.

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I was only 5 years old, but I remember everything about the incident with startling clarity. I was a child who never did anything wrong — not intentionally, anyway — but I was about to do something destructive. And I never could explain why I did it.

We lived on Holly Hill Drive in Atlanta. My mother had some friends over to the house one morning. They were in another part of the house, having coffee and the sort of conversation which bores little boys. I was alone in the living room. It was fairly dark.

I felt deeply unhappy and alone.

Without any conscious thought, I picked up something sharp. I went to an expensive piece of furniture — a dark mahogany console into which our stereo was built — and I carefully marked a large “X” onto the polished wooden lid.

That ugly damage was a part of my childhood from then on. It couldn’t be repaired and I saw it every time we played music. But I was always baffled about why I did it.

In the last 10 years or so, I‘ve finally figure out what happened. It wasn’t rational. I wasn’t really trying to cause trouble. I just wanted my mother to look at me. My unhappy little heart was crying out for her attention.

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