AN INTIMACY-DEPRIVED WORLD
Several years ago Eric Segal, a professor of English in Yale University, wrote a simple little volume about love. Amid the complex, abstract movie scripts replete with symbolism that flood contemporary movie offices, his seemed to be quite absurd. He simply produced a story of the intimate relationship between a Harvard hockey player and a Radcliffe coed. Equally simple and trite was the title applied to both the book and movie - Love Story. Most of you are aware that Love Story became a box office bonanza. This story of love, intimacy, and death rivals Gone With The Wind in cash receipts. Many reviewers predicted that it would revolutionize the movie industry. It did not. Producers and directors did not flock to the melodramatic theme in moviemaking. Like a breath of fresh air, the Love Story type of move blew across the horizon and was gone.
As one who stood in a line two blocks long to see the movie, I contributed to the phenomenal financial success of Love Story. Oh, I did not relish the personal characterizations in the movie. As a Harvard grad myself, I realized that Ryan O’Neal little resembled the average Crimson hockey player. And suffice it to say that Ali McGraw has little affinity with the Radcliffe coed! Yet I came; I wept; I was moved.
Our world needs a Love Story every so often. As we move about in a country that possesses destructive nuclear forces equal to 35,000 pounds of TNT for every human being alive, we grope for emotional foods. Intimacy is the one thing we crave. We need it to survive; we need recognition that we are alive, that we are essentially worthy in being the unique selves that we are.
Most of us exist alongside other people, but not really "with" them. We are truly the parallel generation.
Luis Bunuel, who won an Academy Award nomination for The Discreet Charm of the Bourgeoisie, offers a profound critique of our society in another of his movies, The Exterminating Angel. This imaginative movie revolves around eighteen wealthy, influential people who attend an eloquent dinner party. During the course of the evening they discover that, for some inexplicable reason, they cannot leave the room. As the days pass, they run out of food and water. The tinsel facade of their social existence is abruptly shattered. They discover that they have absolutely nothing in common. In fact, they despise each other. Before long these wealthy, powerful, cultivated people become openly the superstitious, malicious, savages they have always been.
Our parallel existence, however, is safe. It is highly unlikely that we will become trapped with our "friends" without food and water. Our masks are not in danger of being dislodged. Thank God for that. But our search goes on - a search which has been ours since infancy. We wish to relate, not in just a superficial way, with some other human beings. We are influenced throughout our lives by the fact that we came into this world with a unique heritage of humanness. Carl Sandburg has noted this in the prologue to the Family of Man: The first cry of a new born baby in Chicago or Zamboango, in Amsterdam or Rangoon, has the same pitch and key, each saying, "I am! I have come through! I belong! I am a member of the family."
Indeed, member of the family or nothng are we. We recognize that loss of intimacy is loss of everything. Perhaps our greatest challenge in the coat-and-tie world in which we live is that of achieving intimate relationships in an intimacy-deprived world.
Rollo May has noted how strange it is that, in our society, sharing tastes, fantasies, dreams, hopes, and fears makes people more shy than going to bed with someone. Perhaps we are more afraid of the tenderness that goes with psychological and spiritual nakedness than sexual relationships and physical nakedness. Indeed, whereas Adam and Eve wore the fig leaf to cover their private parts, we may well have moved it to cover our faces. We are afraid to cry in public. We flinch at displays of weakness. We sit emotionally starved. We live in the same house with other human beings for decades without ever experiencing a joining or a linking of thoughts, feelings, fears, dreams, or delights. We are together, yet we are in absentia.
THE INTIMATE GOD
As I reflect upon our need for intimacy, I gain new insight into the life of Jesus of Nazareth. "And when Jesus drew near Jerusalem and saw the city he wept over it, saying, ‘Would that even today you knew the things that make for peace.’ " (Luke 19:41) I imagine there is no greater feeling of aloneness than recognizing that other people do not sense the tremendous importance of what we are doing. How painful it is when our wish to share falls flat upon preoccupied ears or ears that want to make fun of us.
Most theologians value Christ for his ethics, his sacrificial death on the cross, or his ushering in eternal life and eternal hope in resurrection. These emphases are of unquestionable significance. Yet it is also true that no one has come to God as Father except in Christ. Nowhere, in Islam or Buddhism, Hinduism or Marxism, do we find affirmed the ultimacy of the personal relationship of man with God. Jesus capitalized on the Old Testament concept of God as lovingkindness [Hesed]. This father-son relationship terminated in a covenant binding on its members.
Perhaps we need to look afresh at the imago Dei or image of God. Is not the image of God man’s capacity for intimacy? Man is an intimacy-needing being. A dog does not recognize its own puppies once they become grown. Fish eat their babies. Certain female insects eat their spouses to provide food during pregnancy. Alone among the animals, man needs emotional food to exist. Man needs man in order to be true man. George Albert Coe described religion as "the discovery of persons." Indeed, we can only make the "good news" come alive in valuable human relationships.
Howard and Charlotte Clinebell in their profound work, The Intimate Marriage, have defined intimacy as "the interlocking of two individual persons joined by a bond which partially overcomes their separateness." Intimacy is something with which we are born. Yet we use it or lose it. Our capacity for intimacy is no assurance that it will be achieved.
PERVERSIONS OF INTIMACY
Many of us have misunderstood the nature of intimacy. Frank A. Clark, author of The Country Person, once said, "To enjoy a friend, I need more in common with him than hating the same people." So much of what we call friendship or intimacy is based on common hatreds. Our logic tells us that if John Doe hates Bob Smith and I hate Bob Smith, it follows that John Doe is my intimate friend. This is not true in relationships between men and women, and it is not true in relationships between man and God. Some of us study the Scriptures and find what we think God is against. We then stand in opposition to these same forces in life and feel that we possess an intimate relationship with God. But such thoughts neglect the God of compassion, love for all men, and forgiveness.
Another misconception is the belief that intimacy means you scratch my back and I’ll scratch yours. Intimacy, however, involves genuine caring for the other. It is that power to love someone and receive him in the very moment that we realize how far he falls short of our hopes. There are touchy spots in everyone’s psyche. And this knowledge gives us a responsibility to respect these spots. This is a by-product of an intimate relationship.
THE JOY OF TRUE INTIMACY
Sometimes I think we ministers contribute to the decline of intimacy in our society. We often emphasize the hard word involved in achieving intimacy and totally neglect the joy and spice of life which accompanies intimate relationships.
One of the ambivalent tasks of a minister is preaching at funerals. While sadness is certainly a part of it, joy and ecstasy are also. To see a person, who has graciously given of his life to his friends, living on in the lives of those present at his final laying to rest is a beautiful experience. There is nothing greater than the development and nourishment of intimate relationships. Bertrand Russell declared:
I have sought love first because it brings ecstasy - ecstasy so great that I would often have sacnficed all the rest of my life for a few hours of this joy. I have sought it, next, because it relieves loneliness - that terrible loneliness which one’s shivering consciousness looks over the realm of the world into the cold, unfathomable, lifeless abyss.
Camus is right, "Destiny condemns us all to death." Behind our search for intimacy is the consciousness that we must one day die. Deepening our relationships with other people will not eliminate our anxieties about death, but it will make it possible for us to live without panic.
You and I know hundreds of people, but we have only a few friends. Keep those friends. In fact, deepen the friendships. Be an intimate friend yourself. There is an art to developing intimacy. Reach out and touch someone. Intersect with his life. Give of yourself. Ours is a personal God. Christ has set the example. He has touched us and commissioned us to touch others. I rejoice that you have intimate friends.