Tough Love Among the Insects
Feeling amorous is dangerous, and can be fatal for some species of insects! The male honeybee literally explodes during mating. He self destructs because his sex organ detonates like a small bomb when he mates with the queen bee. The only compensation for the poor chap is that this guarantees that he will be the father of all her offspring.
The female black widow spider is aptly named. Her suitors meet a fate that may be even worse. Almost immediately after the male has transferred sperm to his mate, she often turns around and eats him for supper. The female black widow spider obviously feels that once the male has performed his necessary task, he’s expendable and might as well provide some good nutrition. She gets a real deal, a chance to be a mother, and a free nutritious meal to boot.
Don't imagine that the scales are always in favour of the female in the insect world. When that unpopular fellow the bed bug feels in the mood for love, he opts to stab the female in her abdomen using his sexual organ like a sword. He relies on the female’s circulatory system to move his sperm to a storage tank, ready to fertilize the next batch of eggs she lays. Fortunately, female bed bugs have built in band aids. They produce a special pad of tissue to cover the resulting abdominal wound.
So next time you’re in the mood for love, think about those insects and be thankful.
We called it “Tough Love among the Insects” but it really doesn’t have anything to do with love at all - except to highlight the confusion that many of us have between love and sex. Love and sex are certainly not mutually exclusive, but they are certainly not synonymous either.
But sex is not the only thing that is sometimes confused with love. Sometimes gratitude is. If someone does something particularly nice for us, we might respond by telling them we love them. This is especially so if some self-sacrifice on their part was necessary. What we really mean is “thank you” but that seems somehow inadequate.
The reason that we should maintain a distinction between love and thankfulness is this: Love initiates and gives. Thankfulness is a response to having received. More than one couple involving a “giver” and a “taker” have been surprised one day to discover that both were in love with the same person - the taker. His or her response to the loving self-sacrifice of the other was verbalized as love, but was in fact nothing more than an expression of gratitude. Though the “L” word was used, there was no intention to give to the other.
When it comes to ultimate expressions of love, the giving of one’s life for another is usually the benchmark. There really is no act of sacrifice greater than that. Often the giving of the life involves surrendering personal dreams and ambitions so that the loved one can realize hers or his. Sometimes it involves actually dying for the one we love.
There are not very many examples to draw on. The fact is that most of us don’t have someone in our lives we love deeply enough to give our own lives for. Within the Christian context there is a case which is even more astounding. That is the sacrifice of Jesus on behalf of humanity.
The startling thing about Jesus’ death was that it was not just for those who considered themselves to be friends of God. Jesus died for His enemies, which is a good thing because we all seem to start out as enemies of God. Our selfish streak is so strong that we resent bowing to anyone else in any way - even God.
We understand God’s essence to be love. The encouraging thing about this is that no matter how unlovely and unlovable we consider ourselves, we don’t fall outside the realm of those God loves. His love and forgiveness is extended to all who would like to experience it.
David Humphreys and Ron Hughes
© August 2004
