n the New Testament, it is said that love hides a multitude of faults.  The idea seems straightforward enough:  If I love a person, then I do not dwell upon the individual’s faults.  And I certainly do not make it my business simply to draw the attention of others to the person’s faults.  In fact, there are times when I may go on as if the fault was not even there.  We see this ever so clearly with physical defects.

When we truly love a person who has a physical defect, we come to the point where we barely notice the defect.  In fact, that person may remain more conscious of the defect than we are.  One of my dearest friends lost a finger several years ago; and it continues to bother him.  When we first met, he was ever so reluctant to shake my hand.  Years later, I think that he has all but forgotten that I know.  He is absolutely comfortable in shaking my hand, doing today what he never did when I first met him, namely extending his hand first for a handshake with me.  I saw the beauty of his character, and not the defect of his hand.

Part of what made the movie Elephant Man so utterly moving at one point is that a stunningly beautiful woman makes the Elephant Man forget, if only for just a moment in time, his abject hideousness as they recite poetry together.  She brought out the best in him, by getting him beyond his hideousness.

Therein lies the spirit of the expression that love hides a multitude of faults.  At its very best, love aims to bring out the best in us.  In the typical instance, it is true that physical defects, unlike faults of character, cannot be changed.  Moreover, it is typically the case that physical defects do not flow from a defect in character.  With physical defects, love at its best masterfully discounts such defects because they cannot be changed and, moreover, they are not owing to our own fault.

With shortcoming of characters, love does not require—and indeed, it cannot require—that we allow a person to wallow in mediocrity.  For that, quite simply, ain’t love.  If love seeks to bring out the best in a person with physical defects, then by the same token love seeks to bring out the best in a person with defects of character.  And that, when broadly put, speaks to two options: One is to help the person to eliminate the defect of character.  The other is to help the person to compensate for the defect of character. 

Somehow, in the last 15 years or so, the idea of love has become utterly distorted.  It has come to mean ignoring or even lying about the wrongs of a loved one.  More generally, love has come to mean blind acceptance of a loved one even when that person’s faults has caused another great harm. 

Thus, love has become synonymous with blind loyalty; and that effectively turns love into a vice.  No morally decent person would demand blind loyalty of another; no morally decent person would offer blind loyalty to another.

I hold that one of the greatest gifts that a friend or a sibling or a parent can give to the other is a level of righteousness of character that would inspire excellence on the other’s part and occasion shame if the other did something wrong.  Quite simply, it is impossible to inspire excellence if it is known that for us anything goes.  And parents who systematically lie to cover up the wrongs of their child and who defend their child no matter what, far from showing their child that they love her or him: These are parents who have made it abundantly clear to the child that they have no standards of excellence to which they expect the child to live up to.  Of course, they have uttered no such thing.  But this is where actions speak louder than words. 

Quite simply you cannot love me if you approve of everything and anything that I do.  I cannot love you if I approve of everything and anything that you do.  And insofar as feelings get in the way of grasping this truth, then feelings are the problem—not the truth itself.  For this truth remains utterly unchanged and untarnished. 

Love is not harsh for the sake of being harsh.  Love is not vicious.  Yet love is not without boundaries.  Love never knowingly contributes to the harm of another.  A defining feature of blind loyalty is that it contributes to the harm of another while protesting that it is doing nothing but good for the other.  This is a vice—not a virtue.

The best way to bring this out the remarks in the preceding two paragraphs is by drawing attention to the fact that blind loyalty or love that approves of all is tantamount to indifference with respect to the other being excellent.  And indifference is never affirming.  Indifference harms.  It never uplifts.

It strikes me as most fascinating that as the world has grown more materialistic, genuine love is increasingly receding into the background.  On the one hand, there is no logical connection here; on the other, this is not mere coincidence.

Time was, surely, when showing another that one cares for her or him was not about, and could not have been about, showering the person with material goods.  Showing love was inextricably tied to the ways in which people showed support for another when that person was in need, and it was about helping people to help themselves.  The ways in which parents made sacrifices for their children for instance pretty much settled the question that they loved their children.  And children grasped this point all too well.

But material things allowed us make a very fascinating maneuver, namely appeasement.  When a child cries nowadays, we have found it much more convenient to give it something to distract it than to attend to it.  Sadly, this way of proceeding creates a pattern: for both the parent and the child, displays of love have become associated with giving the child a material thing rather than being there for the child in a nurturing and supportive way. 

And by the time a child is an adolescent, the very idea of parental love has been perverted: Material things are the representation of parental love.  And when things serve as the representation of parental love, then the idea of blanket approval cannot be far behind.  For once things are allowed to stand in for love, then the idea of love as a form of nurturance and a springboard for excellence of character has already been cast aside.  The idea of love has been removed from its moral, spiritual, and psychological moorings. 

Love at its best involves giving of oneself on behalf of a loved one.  And this giving is in turn replenished by among other things expressions of acknowledgement and gratitude on the part of the recipient who sees himself as having benefited from the giving of oneself that one has done.  That is why love at its best is very, very, very personal. 

In allowing material things to have become the symbol of love we have effectively detached love from the personal.  And perhaps the most stunning proof of this is that, more so than ever, people feel increasingly less loved although there seems to be no end to the material things that they have been given in the name of love. 

When the simplest gesture is seen as flowing from love itself, that gesture takes on a profound and enduring meaning.  But when love is defined as a merely a function of what one gives, then what is given invariably loses its meaning and significance in a short matter of time.  That is why thousands upon thousands of dollars can be spent on weddings only to have the marriage barely last a year.  The price-tag of the wedding became the measure of love.  Thus, its value proved to be fleeting and necessarily so. 

Whether it be the love between friends or parental love or romantic love: Love at its best carries in its wake gratitude.  We who are the object of another’s love are moved by a priceless gift that no amount of money can purchase and for that we are grateful.  In return, our gratitude inspires love to spread its wings even farther, which in turn deepens the gratitude.  This is a cycle to be sure.  But there is nothing at all vicious about it.  Quite the contrary, it is the most virtuous cycle humankind has ever known. 

Love at its best perfects—creating always and forever a more perfect union.  This is the love that makes for the best parent-child relationship.  This is the love that makes for the best friendships.  This is the love that makes for marital ties at their best.  And so it is that love hides a multitude of faults.  It does so by rendering our faults increasingly less prevelant in one way or another.  That is love.