You know what the cool thing about love is? Nobody really knows what it is. If you ask the producers of The O.C., love involves a lot of fistfights and makeout, and ends up in your devorced wife sleeping with your daughter’s former boyfriend, the woman who then marries the father of your best female friend who’s married (though that didn’t stop you from trying to kiss her) to a Jewish guy, and whose sister you are now, and let us be oh-so-delicate here, you are “involved” with even though she’s an international playgirl turned stripper.

Yeah.

On the other hand a lot of people also seem to assume that love involves a lot of being nice to people. Speaking the truth “in love”. Bringing the gospel “in love”.

I’ll diverge for a second. I’m overweight. Not majorly, but enough that I notice it when I check myself out in the mirror. I’m working on it through diet and a more active lifestyle, and as of this very moment, I’m a pretty healthy and pretty happy guy.

That disclaimer aside, I’m going to tell you a story. I saw a woman - about fifty or sixty pounds overweight - exiting a pizza parlour carrying two large pizzas. Now, normally I wouldn’t think anything. It could be “treat day” or something. Maybe she’s bringing it home to her family because she worked a long day and didn’t want to cook.

But then, her daughter. Oh my, her daughter. Where the mother was a little overweight, the daughter who looked to be about 15 was massively and morbidly obese. The sort of obese that makes a person waddle. Now, don’t get me wrong, I see this sort of thing all the time. When I was in the States back in the day, we saw some truly massive people at some buffet-style restaurants. People that almost certainly are destined for massive kidney and heart failure. I usually don’t give these things a second thought.

That moment a few days ago, however, made me hot under the collar. Childhood and adolescent obesity is running rampant in our culture, most of which isn’t exactly a medical problem. It’s more of a get outside more and eat a few apples or something problem.

You know what? That mother is a bad mother. First of all, her child is obese. Maybe she feels like a hypocrite. Who knows. I’ll just speak for parents in general here and not just to that woman. If your children are obese for any reason other than a medical reason, you are a bad parent. You are allowing your child to hurt himself. Do you let him play with guns? Do you let him smoke? Do you let him drive monster trucks? Nope. Because all of those things have a clear social stigma attached to them when children are involved simply because they are bad thing for a child. And in the same line of reasoning, if you’re feeding your obese daughter pizza, you are contributing to the problem.

See, that’s the thing with blame. Your family is a covenant, okay? As a woman married to a man, you’re in a covenant with him. He’s in a covenant with you. Your covenant is also with your children, who you are responsible to rear in a manner that isn’t going to cause them to be removed from their house later in life by a crane, or jump off a bridge with lead in their pockets, or smoke six packs of cigarettes a day. And as long as they remain in covenant with you, their problems are your problems. That means if your son is looking at porn on the internet, it’s not just his problem, and he’s not the one who gets all the blame. It doesn’t work that way.

You don’t split blame up in portions and everyones gets a percentage based on culpability. In fact, there’s lots of blame to go around. If your daughter is morbidly obese, it’s not only 100% her fault, but also 100% your fault. In the same breath. Responsibility, punishment, and blame are funny like that, and when a child is at fault, the parent is also responsible.

What is love in that case? Is it love to coddle your daughter and let her gain weight because you feel guilty about your own or because you have a problem dealing with her issues? No, of course not! Your daughter clearly needs her ass whipped into shape - and I mean that in a non-literal and literal sense all at the same time. You don’t need to be cruel, but you do need to be firm. And there’s a difference. It’s also the difference the prescribes why spanking your child isn’t endangering his welfare or abusing him physically. Firmness, not cruelty. You’re trying to help your child, not hinder him.

See, when you say that you want to speak the truth “in love”, you’ve created a sort of false dichotomy where love and truth are these two opposites that need to be wrestled into a package of niceness, sort of like disguising cough medicine with something vaguely resembling the taste of over-ripe bananas. I’ve always like Buckley’s that way. It tastes horrible - it really does - but it works! So what would you rather have? The awful taste or the nagging cough? I for one, choose the medicine.

Look here - the truth is part of love, and separating love from the truth is just like drinking cough syrop that tastes fine but doesn’t do anything. It’s a placebo thing. There’s nothing wrong with being gentle, and there’s nothing wrong with being kind - these are, after all, fruits of the Spirit - but you simply cannot be an honest human being and always be loving in a kind and gentle way. Sometime love is tough, as much as tough love has fallen into a little bit of its own rut in our day.

I’ve often seen it described like this: the hardcore Bible-thumping wacko fundimentalists carry around clubs upon which they’ve written scripture verses, and when they find you they proceed to beat you into a pulp with them. The hardcore liberal modern and postmodernists carry around a metanarrative and the heart of Christ but really haven’t the foggiest clue what to do with it, and end up giving the homeless guy a stove and sending him on his way. Neither of these are right.

I think love is somewhere in the middle. And sometimes takes a little both tacks. It’s a malleable and adjustable thing and it works differently in different situations.

I have never publically rebuked someone for being fat or purposely treated them like inferiors for being so. But if an obese friend was in danger of ruining his health because he was eating a bag of chips for dinner in his dorm room, yeah, I’d feel compelled to say something.

I mean, that’s love, right?

Dan (Okay, I’ve ranted. Tell me what you think.)

Tags: polemics