Volume 5, July 21, 2004

Hi everybody. File this one under “LOVE WINS--??”

Ten years ago I started a weird habit. I’d send in a column to my accountant every time I sent him our month-end tax stuff. I was desperate to write, and found an easy victim in Maurice. Maurice is kind and I was his client and, well…he’s a tax guy, okay? Tax people are a different lot. They’re desperate for diversion, and they’re a little unpredictable. I wrote, Maurice read. It was beautiful. Still is.

Anyway, I recently sent Mo a diatribe on a bumper sticker frequently seen in the West Michigan area. I have no idea if this is a nation-wide campaign, and don’t care. Bumper stickers intrigue me. My favorite is this: “JESUS LOVES YOU: Everyone else thinks you’re an asshole.” Kills me every time. And what does it mean that I find great comfort, yea, even encouragement in that particular bumper sticker? I digress.

I started to archive the letters I sent to Mo. Since I still see the LOVE WINS bumper sticker every time I turn around, and since I get the same feeling every time I see it, I realize I’m not finished with it. Maybe this newsletter is my final exposition. Maybe I’ll get over it. Here’s Mo’s letter.

March 2, 2004

Dear Accountant,

I have a beef today, Dear Accountant, and I’m rolling up my sleeves. Ya comfy? Well, you better grab yourself the last of the burned coffee in the Bunn carafe and settle in with your 5th Avenue. This is not going to be pretty; you may even call in your local diocese.

My beef is with the new crop of bumper stickers I see all over town. I get the same ornery feeling every time I see it. You know what it is? LOVE WINS. No, I’m not spewing green and my head isn’t twisting around. (Yet…)

LOVE WINS. I believe some local church or denomination or non-denomination is handing these gems out. You know how I know? I’ll get to it. First, I want to say what bothers me about it: it’s smug. Smug! It’s bathed in smugness! LOVE WINS? Now, Mo, I’m an upbeat kinda gal. I believe in love. But I’m also a realist (try writing a book about the Gerasene Demoniac) and I’ve come to know, in my almost 40 years upon this earth, that much as I want it to, love doesn’t always win. Brutal, but true. And why doesn’t it win? Well, it’s because God gave us a choice and most of us boneheads do not choose love.

Now, if they want to get Biblical, and they could, here is something they could do: how about LOVE NEVER FAILS. How about, IF I SPEAK WITH THE TONGUES OF MEN AND OF ANGELS BUT DO NOT HAVE LOVE I HAVE BECOME A NOISY GONG OR A CLANGING SYMBOL. They’d have me there, Mo! I’d be shoutin’ Amen at bumper sticker like that! (And probably getting into an accident for the time it takes me to read it.)

If it’s short and sweet they want, if it’s punchy and gutty they’re looking for, how about any one of these?

--LOVE IS PATIENT.
--LOVE IS KIND.
--LOVE BEARS ALL THINGS.
--LOVE BELIEVES ALL THINGS.
--LOVE HOPES ALL THINGS.
--LOVE ENDURES ALL THINGS.
--LOVE ONE ANOTHER.

To me, LOVE WINS is a Christian flipping the bird to an unbeliever. (I think you’re getting ready to call your priest…) Honestly, Mo, I don’t have a demon and I’m not trying to be ornery. It just makes me unhappy is all. Can you see the difference between their sticker and any one of mine? Can you feel the difference, and you’re not able to tell me exactly why?

God gave us a choice whether love will win or not. It’s up to us. I think it would be more accurate if it said, LOVE SOMETIMES WINS. I’d agree with that, and I’d see hope in it because it’s honest. (I swear you think I’m a fatalist and I swear I’m not.)

Let me tell you how I found out a church is sponsoring it.

You must know, first of all, I’d been long irritated with it. I’d see it in the parking lot at Target, Meijers, Bob’s Butcher Block. I’d see it on the road. I’d see it usually on sporty expensive vehicles, and wonder if it was something like a Purpose-Driven-Life campaign. Then one day I overheard a conversation. A woman said, “Got in a fender bender the other day: this guy rear-ended me and I got out of the car and gave him a piece of my mind. Later when I drove away, I saw his bumper sticker--Love Wins. I was horrified because I realized it was on my car too; I wondered if I’d see him at church. Sure enough, I saw him next week at church. I was so embarrassed."

She went on to say she apologized to him for reaming him out, and this is what I wonder: what if he didn’t go to her church and belong to the LOVE WINS club? Would she have apologized then?

I should have been mightily justified when I heard that, Mo, because I’ve carried this beef since I first started seeing them. The situation couldn’t have been more eloquent. But I felt no triumph.

LOVE WINS carries the given that the driver is Socrates. I win over you people in your small bickering ways. You’re going through a hellish divorce? LOVE WINS, buck up. You’re trying to beat an addiction? LOVE WINS, stop your whining. Your brother died in Iraq? LOVE WINS.

I’d like to see these people hand them out to those who lost loved ones in terrorist attacks. Did they honestly think love won, then?

Mo, you know what I don’t see in a stuck-up bumper sticker like that? Love.

Please don’t call your priest.

I don’t mean to bail on my former indignation, but I’m little kinder and gentler since I wrote the letter. A young neighbor has it on her car, and she used to babysit for me. She’s a good girl, an honest one, with a heart right as rain. I’m not mad at her. Good people sport that sticker, and I don’t want to be mad at them.

All I’m saying is life cannot be reduced to these two words. Much as we want love to win for ourselves and for the people in our immediate orbit, it doesn’t always win. People don’t want it to. Won’t let it. Won’t do what it takes to make it win. Some friends of mine are getting a divorce, and their kids are coming apart. Did love win for the kids? Love takes a beating, sometimes. Love gets battered, shut down, shut out, ignored. The crummy thing is, we cannot make love win for someone else.

I’m likely the only person in West Michigan who is not enamored with that bumper sticker. I’ll get over it. I think I’m already moving on, if I can see who drives the car. The cheering thing is, Jesus said He would never leave us, never abandon us. He didn’t say love would win. Only that it wouldn’t fail.

Someone please make another bumper sticker. LOVE NEVER FAILS sounds pretty good to me. I can see Jesus in that one.

Groot—out.

—Tracy Groot

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