The Glory and Pitfalls of Vulnerability

Love, at least as humans come to know it, really is just being comfortable with vulnerability. I'm not strictly speaking about romantic love, though I think this is central to that as well, but I'm talking about the phenomenon of loving another human being, taken in the most expansive understanding of that idea.

Take any person in your life. If you are 1) vulnerable to that person and 2) comfortable with that vulnerability, than you love them. The more vulnerable we are and the more we are comfortable with that vulnerability, the more we love a person. There is a noetic quality to love. As we become vulnerable to a person, we become aware of our interconnection with them. That we are all part of an organic whole is a truism that can only be apprehended through vulnerability. But to fear that vulnerability is to fear that truth, ie, to reject it.

There are so many ways in which we make ourselves vulnerable to other people. and in which we are inherently vulnerable to others. If I make the core truths of myself known to another, they may use that as an excuse not to like me, or to even hurt me. Over and over again, we find ways in which the world is a dangerous and risky place, especially where other people are involved. It can be frightening to think about, really. And then the question stares us in the face: are we going to embrace this fact, or run from it? Do we seek to mitigate our vulnerability or find in it an ultimate truth? Might the quest to embrace it not be at least part of the meaning of the phrase from 1 John: perfect love casteth out fear?

Part of the fear of embracing that vulnerability, is that it no longer becomes something we restrict to certain people. I mean, the truth of the matter is that I am at least partly vulnerable to every human being on the planet, and thus there is at least the possibility of loving all people. Yet what kind of life might this be like? What would it cost me? One can see quickly why 'love is hard, and takes work.'

And what of God? Anyone who knows me knows that the other famous 1 John statement: God is love, is of paramount importance to me. Perhaps God, too, is vulnerable, radically vulnerable, and what makes him love is the fact that He does not reject or fear this vulnerability. Vulnerability and love, what is the connection? And once the truth of vulnerability is faced and accepted, what comes next?