Control
Control is hate wearing a mask.
That is the statement I made on a couple social networking sites. It generated more discussion than I expected.
I tried responding to the comments on Facebook, but apparently they do not allow comments in excess of one thousand characters. Oops.
One of my friends wrote that perhaps it would be better to say that control is fear rather than hate. I agree but do not think that hate is too strong of a word in this case.
Another suggested that parental control is a good and necessary thing, therefore control is not hate. I think that loving parental guidance is very different from being over-bearing and controlling. If you love someone, you respect them to enough to watch them make their own decisions.
Self-control was also mentioned, but Biblical self-control is not really about “control” in the sense I have been using it at all. It’s about training, discipline, and heading in a certain direction. Control over another human being finds its ultimate expression perhaps in slavery. That’s control. That’s a million miles from love. I would call that hate.
“Love is patient and kind. Love is not jealous or boastful or proud or rude. It does not demand its own way. It is not irritable, and it keeps no record of being wronged. It does not rejoice about injustice but rejoices whenever the truth wins out. Love never gives up, never loses faith, is always hopeful, and endures through every circumstance.” (from the thirteenth chapter of St. Paul’s first letter to the church in Corinth)
I do not see any room in there for control. Love “does not demand its own way” seems straight forward enough to me.
In the extreme, we have the prime example of love in Christ.
“There is no greater love than to lay down one’s life for one’s friends,” he says in the thirteenth chapter of the Gospel according to St. John.
Then he proceeds to do it.
Not only was he not trying to control others, but he went all the way and relinquished complete control over his very life.
Control is hate wearing a mask.
Maybe the disguise is a better one than I would have initially supposed if it is generating this much controversy.
