Coming From Love
LAST WEEK I WAS ESPECIALLY GLAD we had our four-wheel-drive van jacked up four inches and fitted with steel plates under the chassis to protect the gas tank. Why? Because the “roads” shown on the GPS in this corner of South Africa turned out to be gravel paths with large rocks and ditches, as well as goats, sheep, and people to navigate around. The GPS signal also got so weak, I wasn’t sure we would get where we were supposed to go. But after an hour or so of bouncing around, we reached the site of a Teaching with Love talk—a field filled with more goats and sheep and a shade structure with chairs for 25 local government childcare specialists.
We were in this very rural part of South Africa because the local head of education had asked us to do a series of Teaching with Love trainings in the more isolated communities in his district. My talk was about happiness, parenting skills, love, connection, emotional intelligence, and early childcare guidance. As I always do, I finished with time for questions and feedback. But on this day I got silence. No response at all. I just stood there, feeling the disconnect, as I listened to happy children playing, until one of the 25 women said, “Well, you don’t understand our tough-love culture.”
It seemed obvious that she was not speaking only for herself, and I made it clear that I was open to learn—so she explained that it was part of their culture to hit, spank, pinch, grab, and otherwise use force and coercion to control and discipline kids. Because I was a white American, she explained, I “would not understand Xhosa culture.” She added that the Bible supported her by quoting: “Whoever spares the rod spoils the child.”
Meanwhile, the women in the group stopped fanning themselves with their
hands and leaned in to hear my reply. I thought of a question someone had asked me years earlier in a Uganda parenting chat. Through an interpreter I was told, “She is asking you, if her husband doesn’t beat her, how will she know he loves her?”
During my talk, I had mentioned that the opposite of love is not hate; it is indifference. It is our habits of mind that make the suffering or needs of others conveniently invisible. I talked about a woman I met at the site of a Nazi work camp who told me that her parents claimed not to know of the atrocities imposed on Jews, the disabled, and gays. She told me, “Our parents were rewarded for their ‘naivete’ with better jobs, perhaps a better home, or maybe just the ability to live.” My point in telling the story was that ignorance, even if it causes atrocities, is more compelling than love. I then went on to say that we must look beyond what we believe, to why we believe it. In Zen speak, we must seek “the cause of the cause.”
Now, as I contemplated questions about love and beating, what came to mind was another Ugandan atrocity: a 2-year-old girl raped because her uncle believed that sex with a virgin would cure his HIV. What was “the cause of the cause” of that? I felt that I was in the thick of it.
“I said this tough love was not of their culture—and now I got nods. Violence is not really where they came from.”
I began my response by pointing out that the Bible mentions the rod 83 times but never as a tool to hit a child with. I went on: “I drive around and see people tending the sheep with sticks, but I have never seen anyone acting violently toward a sheep, let alone beating one.” I asked if any of these women had ever seen someone beat a goat or a sheep. They shrugged, No. We then chatted about the shepherd’s use of the rod to guide sheep rather than beat them—for the simple reason that otherwise the sheep would scatter and never follow the shepherd. I suggested the same was essentially true with children, as nods of acceptance came from the group. I then said that the cultures of the thousands of African tribes were historically loving and kind to their own children. Using violence as the tool for guiding a child is a recent development.
“Why?” I asked. “What changed?”
The short answer is that colonialism separated men from their families, placing them in slave-like conditions serving masters under violent regimes extracting riches from mines, farms, and factories. These workers gradually took on the violent, coercive methods used to control and motivate them. Then, unshackled by democracy, this angry, fear-based tough love became normalized as a native cultural belief. To the “tough love” lady, I quoted Ephesians 4:29 (NLT): “Don’t use foul or abusive language. Let everything you say be good and helpful so that your words will be an encouragement to those who hear them.” I then asked the group if anything in the Bible said it is okay to beat a child. I asked if their grandmothers ever said it was okay to beat a child. They said no. I said this tough love was not of their culture—and now I got nods. Violence is not really where they came from.
I went on to say that Jesus was born in Nazareth, Buddha in Lumbini, and the Prophet Muhammad in Mecca. But that doesn’t tell you anything about where they came from. For that matter, I was born at Grace Memorial Hospital, a gritty hospital in Detroit that is no longer there. But that is not where I come from. Where we come from is a choice, and we must choose to come from love. We chatted about coming from a place of love, and the women nodded as we chatted. They knew deep in their souls that love is where we come from.
I would love to hear about where you come from. Contact me here.
Click here for more about Spirituality & Health.