Love Starved- The Parable of the Long Spoons
July 29, 2017
Are we losing the ability to love? (or is it just me?)
The Parable of the Long Spoons purports to describe our condition today: We are unable to give love so we do not receive it.
One day a man said to God, "God, I would like to know what Heaven and Hell are like."
God showed the man two doors. Inside the first one, there was a large round table with a large pot of stew. It smelled delicious and made the man's mouth water, but the people sitting around the table were thin and sickly. They were holding spoons with very long handles and each found it possible to reach into the pot of stew and take a spoonful, but because the handle was longer than their arms, they could not get the spoons back into their mouths.
The man shuddered at the sight of their misery and suffering. God said, "You have seen Hell."
Behind the second door, the room appeared exactly the same. There was the large round table with the large pot of wonderful stew that made the man's mouth water. The people had the same long-handled spoons, but they were well nourished and plump, laughing and talking.
The man said, "I don't understand."
God smiled. It is simple, he said, Love only requires one skill. These people learned early on to share and feed one another. While the greedy only think of themselves... [Author unknown]
Sometimes, thinking solely of our personal gratification, we tend to forget our interdependence with everyone and everything around us, so much so that we stop caring about them. But, as the parable makes it clear, by doing so, not only don't we help others overcome their suffering, but we're also unconsciously harming ourselves, since we are all connected on a very deep level.
Reflections
Can you identify with this parable?
In the twilight of Christian influence, people today tend to be more self-centred than ever. As a result, while we have material plenty, most people strike me as emotionally starved. A word of consideration or encouragement, a "like", is devoured like a fish thrown to a seal. I am no exception.
"Love" used to be woman's stock-in-trade. But feminism in education and the media have convinced women that this is "exploitation."
Why is it so hard for people to like, let alone love each other? Do people like each other as much as they used to? Are we depriving ourselves of needed love because we are so stingy? A Law of Nature is that you have to give in order to get. Have we lost that ability?
I notice that people are turning to dogs for love. There are 85 million dogs as pets in the US. But even a dog is too much of a commitment for me. I got tired of letting my (late) dog in and out of the house, giving him a tithe every time I had a snack, waiting for his sniffing on walks, tracking dirt into the house, feeling responsible for his happiness, not being able to leave him alone for more than two hours. I loved that dog, cried when he died, but I didn't get another.
Plants are my speed. I can handle watering them. But plants don't give off a lot of love. I may have to get another dog.
MG said (July 30, 2017):
I think it's pretty simple; 99% of the modern world around us is devoid of Godly Agape love and that is the type of love that truly changes us as individuals and humanity as a collective. All the other types of love so Motherly/Fatherly, Brother/Sister and Eros/Romantic love only goes so far ... it's Agape love that has the ability to heal the physical, emotional and psychological wounds we carry as individuals and as whole groups on a quantum level.
What is Agape Love it is unconditional love it is love that accepts the good with the bad. It is the kind of love that can motivate a man to love his wife in spite of her cheating or motivates the women to love her husband knowing he's a porn addict or motivates a man to give food and water to a prisoner he knows is an ISIS member that killed his best friend ... but to be able to do things like that you need to surrender every part of your soul, mind and spirit to God so that he can touch you with this kind of love. He knows that were sinners and that we have potential for great evil yet he loves and excepts us just the way we are with our fears, anxieties, sins, evil selfish acts. It is this kind of love that is the solution to all the worlds problems, the issue is that for a human to hand over everything he's got including his own ego is the hardest thing to do .... this is what it means to die on the cross with Jesus and most people including Christian's are just too scared to do this and so we live in a world mostly devoid of this Agape love.
Look at Abraham who is known as the father of faith; he was only ready to truly hand over everything he had when with faith in his God he went up the mountain with Isaac ... Abraham at that point knew that his God was pure love and knew what was best and he knew that even if he killed Isaac God would be able to miraculously bring him back to love or not but whatever was going to happen Abraham had completely surrendered to God's Agape love. To get to that Agape love and be able to love others that way we must go through our Isaac moment which for each person will look different because we all have different deep desires and wants.
I have recently started a Christian prayer/meditation program that I'm hoping will lead me there ... it is for porn addicts and it is called the Pilgrimage. I recommend it for any man dealing with porn addiction.