Love Triangles
I’ve been counseling and encouraging heartbroken, angry, and discouraged people for years, and I’ve reached a simple conclusion – Boldy embracing a love triangle is the most direct route to finding lasting peace and contentment.
Slow down. I am not advocating anything inappropriate. Instead, I have two specific love triangles in mind.
The first represents the Trinity. It’s not just a triangle, but an equilateral triangle, meaning there is equal distance between the three points of the triangle. In 1 John, we’re told that “God is love.” The three distinct expressions of that love are God the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. We see each of them loving and engaging one another and their creation in unique ways from Genesis through Revelation.
I’m convinced that the richness of the relationship between Father, Son, and Holy Spirit inspired God to create man. God didn’t create man because he was lonely. He created man because the joy within the Trinity was too good not to share.
While this first love triangle, the Trinity, is a universal model of perfect love, the second love triangle is what makes or breaks our personal sense of joy and contentment. Just as God’s love is at the center of the first triangle expressed through relationships with the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, our own love is at the center of the second love triangle and is expressed through our relationships with those on the three corners.
But the three corners of our personal love triangles are not the Trinity, but rather God, our neighbors (friends & family), and our enemies. Consider how Jesus starts his first recorded sermon in Matthew 5:
Contentment comes from learning to depend on God rather than one’s own efforts. (Matt 5:3)
Contentment comes from recognizing and grieving when we break God’s heart through sin, choosing independence from God. (Matt 5:4)
Contentment comes from the humility that comes from experiencing the first two. (Matt 5:5)
Contentment comes from yearning to know & trust God more. (Matt 5:6)
Contentment comes from offering others mercy. (Matt 5:7)
Contentment comes from having an undivided focus on God. (Matt 5:8)
Contentment comes from reconciling & making peace with others. (Matt 5:9)
Those who are ridiculed or persecuted for living this way are content. (Matt 5:10-16)
To be at peace, we must not hold anger but seek to forgive & reconcile. (Matt 5:21-26)
Lust is toxic and self-defeating and steals our contentment. (Matt 5:27-30)
Marriage is sacred and justifications for divorce are limited. (Matt 5:31-32)
We should always be honest without the need for oaths. (Matt 5:33-37)
Retaliation is misguided and farther divides us from those we should love. (Matt 5:38-42)
We are to love & pray for our enemies as well as our friends and family. (Matt 5:43-48)
Each one of these addresses how we are to love God, friends & family, and/or our enemies. The very structure of Jesus’ first sermon indicates that these are interlocked or interwoven aspects of joy and peace.
Imagine an equilateral triangle. In an equilateral triangle, the distance from each corner remains equal to the distance to each of the other corners. As you increase the length of one leg, the other two legs are also lengthened. You are in the center with God, friends & family, and your enemies on each corner.
Now, consider our common blind spot. Most of us fail to realize that when we increase the distance between us and any one point on the triangle, the distance to each of the other points is also increased:
When we distance ourselves from God, our relationships with friends & family are compromised and our differences with our enemies are magnified.
When our relationships with friends & family sour, our relationships with God and our enemies are tainted or even poisoned.
When our relationships with our enemies harden our hearts, our relationships with God and friends & family suffer.
Jesus seems to be telling us that while we may want to measure our love by a just few relationships, that true contentment cannot exceed the love we extend in our most strained relationships.
We may not resolve every conflict. Though when unresolved conflicts keep us awake, affect our perceptions, change our tones, and distance us from others, we are settling for something less than the joy and contentment God created us to enjoy.
Consider the distances between you and God, you and your friends & family, and you and your enemies. If one of those distances is farther than you’d like, or farther than you think God wants, then so are the other two. The perfect love that Jesus addresses in Matthew 5:46-48, suggests that with spiritual maturity comes the recognition that the three primary kinds of relationships move in unison whether we intend or not.
Thanks for Reading,
John