Allow Authentic Love to Be Your Number One Priority

The human person has three primary drives. We all possess the drive for 1) Pleasure, 2) Power and 3) Purpose. Our drives for pleasure and for power supplement our drive for purpose. In other words, these two lesser drives aid us in accomplishing our purpose in life, which is to love well. Everyone’s individual and collective purpose is to love well in their lifetime. Obviously then, if human nature was perfect, the Planet Earth would be a utopia of loving people. No one would ever go hungry, no one would place his/her personal gain ahead of anyone else’s, no one would ever be marginalized and no one would ever die alone after having spent years feeling unlovable.

But human nature is not perfect. It’s broken. And as a result, we don’t always do a good job of loving well. Some of us are so broken that we never fully understand our purpose in life and we are too fearful to pursue it. Instead, we get stuck in our drive for pleasure or our drive for power. As a striking example, let’s look at the Twelve Apostles of Jesus Christ. These twelve men were led by an individual who was Love Incarnate. Yet, many times in the Christian Scriptures, we find examples of the twelve less than admirably living their purpose to love well.

In particular, there is a Gospel story of the Twelve Apostles arguing with each other about who among them was the greatest. Now, people who are rooted in their divine purpose to love well don’t compare themselves to others. The don’t see someone as better or lesser than someone else. But clearly that’s not the case here. In this particular story, the Twelve have lost sight of their purpose and are stuck in their lower drive for power—to be Number One. No doubt each apostle knew he’d experience a great deal of pleasure from being acknowledged as the greatest. And so the bickering between them continued until Jesus intervened.

Today, we are often like the Twelve. We enter into relationships intent on loving well, but then we selfishly get stuck in our lower drives for pleasure or power and we seriously hurt even those we profess to love the most. Like the Apostles, we sometimes demand to be Number One. We insist on being right, we insist that others do as we command and we insist that they like it. In our arrogance, we totally disregard the needs, rights, dignity and feelings of everyone who stands in the way of our attaining ultimate power and pleasure. Think for a moment how often this happens between spouses. Many married people mistakenly think that their spouse exists for only one reason: to make them happy. This warped line of thinking then causes married life to become a series of manipulative episodes and power plays. One spouse must control the other to ensure that his/her every expectation, every need and every whim is fulfilled by the other. And if their spouse resists, he/she will find ways to prove to who’s boss.

In this type of relationship, love is clearly lacking. Actually, it’s not even an afterthought. Instead of two people sharing a life together for the united purpose of loving well, these relationships are about constant power struggles. In some cases, it’s a matter of two people constantly jockeying for one-upmanship, and in other cases, it’s a matter of one person always dominating and the other always having their boundaries violated. In either case, the two people involved are simply feeding off each other’s fears, insecurities and base desires. There’s no spiritual element in these relationships because they have lost sight of their ultimate drive for purpose. Love has been lost to an insatiable desire for momentary, addictive forms of happiness.

If you find yourself in these types of relationships—be they spousal, familial or among friends—it’s obvious as to what’s necessary to make things right. You have to reconnect with your higher drive for purpose. You must make the conscious choice to place loving well above all other things. And that means you also need to talk about it. You and those with whom you are in relationship need to sit down and be honest with each other. You need to work through your issues and together you must decide that love is your first priority. Once love becomes priority Number One, the drives for power and pleasure can work together in positive ways to ensure that you love one another well. And once love authentically becomes priority Number One, neither one of you will ever worry about being Number One again.