Does Love Have A Time Frame?

Something dawned on me yesterday that I need to write down so I remember it. That's why I'm inflicting it on you. It's all about my needs, man. I don't care about anyone but me!

Hmm. I said the quiet part out loud again, didn't I? Oh well.

I rant all the time about the "God is love, love is love, kissy-kissy love-love" emphasis within the Catholic Church. It's a justification for cowardice, passivity and surrender to the modern culture. If you don't stand up for what you believe, no one can ever attack you. Just go with "kissy-kissy love-love" and you'll be safe and your tummy won't hurt.

A Hypothetical

If your wife or daughter is being raped right in front of you, should you "let go and let God?" Should you pray? Should you wait for the Holy Spirit to change the heart of the rapist? Should you softly talk about how God is love?

I doubt that even the squishiest of progressive Catholics would say that. They'd all say that you should physically intervene immediately.

OK, so we've now established an act and a time frame under which aggression is necessary and morally right. What if the rape is going to happen 10 minutes from now? What if, instead of a rape, it's one of those random punches to the head so popular in NYC right now?

Where do aggressive, protective responses stop and the kissy-kissy love-love begin? Under what conditions do you revert to your preferred state of passivity and surrender?

The example illustrates that morality is a hybrid of love and aggression. Love without aggression, which is what we have now, is a recipe for losing.

Minnows And Predators

I was at an aquarium a long time ago and they had a tank with a school of neon tetras and a single, larger fish. The neons maintained a minimum distance from the big guy. It was like the larger fish had a force field around it which repelled the neons. In reality, the tiny brains of the neons were executing a simple program.

If (distanceToFish > min) then doNothing();

That's the program we're running. So long as your wife isn't being raped, we can execute our default behavior which is doing nothing. "Let go and let God" is pretty similar to "Do nothing."

My life is spotted with tragedies which arose from moral collapse. Both of my brothers died as drug addicts. I have a special, err, love for people who advocate for legalized drugs, for the entertainers who glorified it and the people who sell drugs. My daughter's trans disaster has been well-documented here.

Those are concrete examples of lives being destroyed over a period of time a wee bit longer than my rape example above. Still, the results were just as devastating. Like the neon tetras who did nothing so long as the big fish wasn't a threat, we did nothing until my brothers were addicted and my daughter was injecting testosterone into her thigh. By then it was too late.

This is my problem with the kissy-kissy love-love thing. It can't cope with people who are committed to doing evil. It absolves you of any responsibility to actively, aggressively fight evil. If you let go and let God and the evil still happens, it's God's fault. You can go limp, let evil crush those around you all while feeling morally justified.