Intimacy
Crave Intimacy?
These are a few excerpts from Erwin McManus’ book Soul Cravings. The human condition is fascinating, our desire to be known and loved. We are left asking ourselves: Why can’t we evolve past our need to be loved?
“Given all the problems love can create, why do we keep longing for it? How many thousands of years will it take for us to learn? How many Romeos and Juliets need to lie dead on the floor before we’re willing to give up on this perverse addiction? Oh, I know they weren’t real, but then again, is love? If evolution is our preferred understanding of the human story, why can’t we evolve ourselves out of this primal Achilles’ heel we know as love? And don’t give me this thing about the propagation of the species. Love isn’t necessary for reproduction – just sex is. All you need is attraction, not emotion… If intimacy is only about attraction, we could just keep lust and dispense with love. But it won’t go away… It seems humiliating to say it, but we need to be loved.”
~ Erwin McManus, Soul Cravings, Entry 2 ~
“We will reshape, redesign, and remake ourselves to be a part of a broader community. We will go to great lengths and great pains to become insiders. At one end of the spectrum, we will pierce ourselves, tattoo ourselves, and mutilate ourselves to be our unique selves, who look like a lot of other people. At the other end of the spectrum, we will use Botox, collagen, and plastic surgery to become what we hope other people will love. We will go through hell weeks, allow ourselves to be demeaned during hazing, and even commit unimaginable acts of violence to make it through an initiation just so that we can belong, so that we can be apart of a tribe. In the end we are all tribal. We are created by a relational God for relationship. God made us for relationships, and we only begin to experience life fully when we move toward healthy relationships and healthy community. Your soul will never be satisfied with anything less. When we are estranged from God, we drift from love. Without God we lose our source of love but not our need for love.”
~ Erwin McManus, Soul Cravings, Entry 15 ~
So what do you think: Is belonging central to being human? Why do you think so?
I think everything around us points to the truth about our craving for intimacy…just look at all the tabloids and headlines in the magazines at the check-out counters in the supermarkets! But those same magazines are full of stories of people’s failed attempts at finding intimacy…an interesting reflection of the rest of society I think.