Tough Love
When I ask students, “What is love?” they think of scenes from TV dramas or movies — the ones that make your stomach flutter and hearts aglow, like giving someone chocolates or jewelry over a romantic dinner. While that answer isn’t technically wrong, love is more than romance. Romance is just one type of love.
Different people have different definitions of "love." And, there are also various expressions of love: gifts, time spent together, sacrifice, words of affirmation, and appropriate touch (Gary Chapman, The 5 Love Languages). Perhaps the most common definitions of love among Christians are storge, eros, philia, and agape. Storge refers to an emotional connection or bond with family, eros refers to physical attraction and intense desire for the opposite sex, philia refers to friendship or trust among friends, and agape refers to selfless, unconditional love. As a footnote, the last one, agape, is often used to describe God's love.
Here, I'd like to take a slightly different angle and underscore the significance of "tough love" utilized by parents and teachers. I won't take the time to describe it in detail since most of us know what it is: instilling principles, establishing parameters, enforcing rules, and levying consequences. Tough love, in my opinion, is more important than the typical soft, tender, and warm kind of love. Yet, adolescents and children almost always disdain tough love from adults. Nonetheless, since parents and teachers must employ tough love, there will always be some friction between parents and children, and between teachers and students.
Tough love is necessary to teach, protect, and discipline children and minors. There are no ifs and buts about it. If you think carefully, it’s hard to deny that rules, laws, and requirements are, in fact, expressions of love and protection. Traffic lights, for example, exist to ensure the safety of drivers, passengers, and pedestrians. So, traffic laws are expressions of tough love meant to prevent harm, injury, or death. Yet, is that how we perceive traffic signs or laws? No! People view traffic rules and laws as bothersome and restrictive shackles. We’d much rather drive "freely" or even recklessly, with little or no regard for others if we could!
The same logic applies to God's commands. Humans naturally do not want to live under God's lordship. We don't want His laws, commands, and precepts. We don’t want anyone telling us how to live! But, living without restraints like that will result in arguments, conflicts, wars, destruction, and deaths. That's why God gave us rules to follow, principles to adhere to, and laws to obey. Parenthetically, I'd argue that growing lawlessness in our world is the direct result of having no fear of God or respect for His laws.
Responsible adults (i.e., good parents, teachers, grandparents, pastors, etc.) must administer tough love to teach, discipline, and train the next generation.
NCA, as a Christian school community, is committed to appropriately applying tough love to guide, mentor, shape, and support our students. We get that tough love is a difficult pill to swallow. But, our students will understand sooner or later that they were truly loved and mentored by caring yet firm teachers. Of course, we will balance tough love with warmth, care, and encouragement. But, let’s not categorically dismiss tough love. Welcome it and learn from it, for it is good medicine for the long journey ahead.
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