Is Control the Opposite of Love?

I love that short scene from the movie Bruce Almighty in which Bruce tries to use his God-like powers to cause his girlfriend to fall in love with him. It’s a funny scene but the fact it doesn’t work speaks so terrifically to the way God has designed our lives.

Love is a choice nobody can take away from us.

Photo Credit: Garrett Coyte, Creative Commons

God Himself gives us free will to walk away, otherwise He is not loving, He is controlling.

Controlling people can make others respect them, fear them, obey them and even serve them, but the one thing they will never do is make people love them.

I knew a guy once who was a shock-jock pastor and created quite the empire.

I know many people who worked for him, who depended on him for their incomes, who associated themselves with him to feel strong, but I never heard anybody say they loved him.

This is true for nearly every controlling person. It’s not that they aren’t loved, because some people see through it and love them anyway, it’s that they can’t trust anybody to love them.

They have to force everything.

What I love about God is He is more interested in exchanging love than exchanging anything else.

And He’s tough. Truly tough. He lets you walk away and He stands there.

The sad reality is we all try to do exactly what Jim Carrey does in Bruce Almighty more often than we’d like to admit.

We are all, to some degree, controlling. Some more directly than others. It’s almost impossible not to. I only bring that up because it’s one of the things that reminds me of just how powerful God really is.

He woos but he does not force, He hurts but He doesn’t numb the pain, He gives whether or not He receives.

C.S. Lewis said “I talk of love as a scholar’s parrot talks Greek” and I think it’s true.

To love is to risk. To control is to fear.

That’s a mantra I repeat to myself in a number of my relationships. In greater percentages, as the years go by, I want to run the kind of risk that gets me closer and closer to real love.

What do you think? Is control an opposite of love?

***I say “opposite” for sake of conversation, not because I think love actually has an opposite. But can love and control go together, or is risk necessary?