Love is its Own Reward

The disorder of our times is seen in how readily we allow our technological offspring to take over our lives; they become like children who control their parents. Intoxicated by our capacity for invention, we are seduced into subservience by our own designs, which alienate us from our humanity by training us to think that the person is merely an instrument of utility.

Artificial Intelligence is only the most recent techno-tyrant to distort our human experience, but well before the software revolution, the car had already taken us away from our homes, and the television had chained us to our screens. The internet is just a digital combination of the two: the human person moving at an unnatural speed through channels and networks.

We defend this technocratic lifestyle we’ve created by citing its usefulness. “The car and the internet enable us to…” We attempt to justify this reinvention of our humanity based on a new Utilitarianism: a thing is good only insofar as it is useful. But now, the value of utility is so effectively lorded over us that we see even the human person as good only insofar as he or she is useful.

For example, the advent of Embryonic DNA Testing is making it popular for couples to conceive multiple embryos through IVF before deciding which are “normal” enough to implant in the mother’s womb. Those who call this “progress” believe with conviction in the creed that the purpose of life is to avoid suffering. But since the purpose of life is not to avoid suffering, but to know the love of God, one can see how the usefulness of science can blind us to the truth of our humanity.

If science is good, it is because it is from God, just as life is good because it is from God. We don’t make life good by what we judge to be its usefulness. Recall Christ’s words to us, “Even after you have done all you were commanded to do, say, ‘we are useless servants.’” It sounds cruel, but He means that You and I were created by the Father because He wants us, not because He needs us. We are not things God uses; we are people He loves. And “to love” is to will the good of the other, not to use the other for some individual gain.

Love is its own reward.

This gets a little tricky, because men and women were created coworkers of God, made in His divine image; and monks, for example – who live the most useless lives of all – are often, at the same time, the most industrious. The human person, therefore, does have extraordinary inherent value, but only because God is loving us, making it so.

Accepting the truth of our uselessness is not easy, but it can help us to appreciate just how good God is, and how merciful He is with us. After all, what does God see when He looks at us? Are we not, ourselves, like unwell children in His sight? Does God not see our special needs, our handicaps? And yet He brings us into this world because He loves. And love is its own reward.

Love is its own reward means I can be happy to be with my wife, not because of what she can do for me, but because she is given to me by God. Love is its own reward means I can be happy to have this difficult child, because he has been given to me by God. Love is its own reward means that even the sufferings that God permits in this imperfect world are good, because God is good. +