How quickly could you learn to love someone? Let’s get specific - exactly how many questions would you need to ask until you felt close to a total stranger?
What questions would you ask if you wanted to really get to know someone? What would you do if you were feeling distant in your marriage or estranged from your grown children and wanted to reconnect? Is it possible there is a formula?
In order to answer these questions we need to go two places – we need to go to New York, and we need to go to Egypt.
I’m Scott Beyer and this is the Love Better podcast where we explore the truths and lies about love and more importantly how to make love a skill – something we can get better at and hone.
Let’s start out in New York. In April of 1997, Dr. Arthur Aron of the University of New York at Stony Brook and his colleagues published an experiment called ‘The Experimental Generation of Interpersonal Closeness: A Procedure and Some Preliminary Findings’ – this decidedly unromantic title was quickly replaced by the nickname ‘The Love Experiment’
Dr. Aron had seen and participated in studies about how people interact when they are already close or how people interact when they are strangers… but how do people move from being strangers to being close? Turns out, it isn’t that hard. Three dozen questions. Could it really be that easy? Thirty-six questions and all of a sudden you love someone?
I’m fascinated by this experiment for several reasons. One reason is that Dr. Aron’s experiment reminds me of someone in the Bible that really loved well… but we will get to him in a minute. The other reason is that we tend to mystify love and the feelings associated with it. We act as if love is something that happens to us, not something we choose… and that includes the feelings associated with loving people. We assume that we have little or no control over how we actually feel about others, but the science that Dr. Aron is doing (and has consistently repeated and confirmed) says the exact opposite.
His team took complete strangers, partnered them up, and had them ask each other three sets of twelve questions – each set became increasingly personal. Here are some sample questions from the experiment in increasing order of intimacy:
Before making a telephone call, do you ever rehearse what you are going to say? Why?
What would constitute a “perfect” day for you?
When did you last sing to yourself? To someone else?
What is your most treasured memory?
If you knew that in one year you would die suddenly, would you change anything about the way you are now living? Why?
How close and warm is your family? Do you feel your childhood was happier than most other people’s?
If you were going to become a close friend with your partner, please share what would be important for him or her to know.
When did you last cry in front of another person? By yourself?
If you were to die this evening with no opportunity to communicate with anyone, what would you most regret not having told someone? Why haven’t you told them yet?
These kinds of questions coupled with four minutes of uninterrupted eye contact made a profound difference in how close people felt to one another. I’ll put a link to all the questions and a couple articles about the experiment in the show notes so you can check them all out if you’d like.
So, here’s the question – have we been thinking about being close to people wrong? I think so – Dr. Aron’s research says that closeness can be manufactured and I think the Bible agrees with him, too.
Now, let me prove it… time to go to ancient Egypt.
It’s time to look at Joseph.
Joseph has eleven brothers and to say that his family is dysfunctional is an understatement. His father, Jacob, has two wives one of whom he loves more than the other and the whole family knows it. Jacob plays favorites, his wives play favorites, and the children grow up knowing the pecking order instinctively. This is not a family where love flourishes it is one where competition and rivalry are the dominant traits. Joseph’s childhood family isn’t a team, it’s an arena and Joseph has a target on his back, literally, the day his father gives him a beautiful coat that makes him stand out from his other brothers.
The end result – Joseph’s older brothers throw him into a pit without water, sit around eating a meal and chat about whether they will kill him or sell him. They sell him, and at seventeen Joseph heads to Egypt as a slave. Joseph’s story is a story of victimhood. For the next thirteen years, every bad day, every problem, every missed opportunity, and even two years he spent in jail can be blamed on someone else. The events that unfold in Joseph’s life from slavery to false accusations to imprisonment and right down to the cupbearer forgetting Joseph’s kindness… these injustices pile up one after the other in the life of Joseph. The thing that Joseph should be known for is bitterness… but he isn’t. Joseph isn’t bitter and he isn’t angry and he isn’t vengeful and that blows my mind. What is it that Joseph is seeing that most of us would miss?
Why isn’t Joseph angry and tired and bitter and worn out by life? Why doesn’t Joseph hate his brothers? Later in life, even they are shocked by this fact. When two decades later, Joseph reveals himself to his brothers when they show up in Egypt for a famine – they are terrified and dismayed. They knew what they deserved… but I want you to listen to how Joseph speaks to them instead. Let’s read the record in Genesis 45:1-11
"Then Joseph could not control himself before all those who stood by him. He cried, "Make everyone go out from me." So no one stayed with him when Joseph made himself known to his brothers. And he wept aloud, so that the Egyptians heard it, and the household of Pharaoh heard it. And Joseph said to his brothers, "I am Joseph! Is my father still alive?" But his brothers could not answer him, for they were dismayed at his presence. So Joseph said to his brothers, "Come near to me, please." And they came near. And he said, "I am your brother, Joseph, whom you sold into Egypt. And now do not be distressed or angry with yourselves because you sold me here, for God sent me before you to preserve life. For the famine has been in the land these two years, and there are yet five years in which there will be neither plowing nor harvest. And God sent me before you to preserve for you a remnant on earth, and to keep alive for you many survivors. So it was not you who sent me here, but God. He has made me a father to Pharaoh, and lord of all his house and ruler over all the land of Egypt. Hurry and go up to my father and say to him, 'Thus says your son Joseph, God has made me lord of all Egypt. Come down to me; do not tarry. You shall dwell in the land of Goshen, and you shall be near me, you and your children and your children's children, and your flocks, your herds, and all that you have. There I will provide for you, for there are yet five years of famine to come, so that you and your household, and all that you have, do not come to poverty.'" (Gen 45:1-11 ESV)
With the way that Joseph talks to them, you would think he had been close to them for years! He talks about wanting them to be comforted, he doesn’t want them to be angry with themselves, he wants them to be near him so he can support them in the times that are coming.
Joseph isn’t angry and Joseph isn’t bitter… in fact, Joseph isn’t even distant – Joseph wants to be close to them. What is Joseph seeing that we wouldn’t. I think Joseph was performing Dr. Aron’s experiment before Dr. Aron was. I think Joseph was open to being close to his brothers because Joseph really saw them.
Take for example an earlier incident Joseph had when his brothers came to Egypt – one that happened before he revealed himself to them. The following is from Genesis 42:21-23
"Then they said to one another, "In truth we are guilty concerning our brother, in that we saw the distress of his soul, when he begged us and we did not listen. That is why this distress has come upon us." And Reuben answered them, "Did I not tell you not to sin against the boy? But you did not listen. So now there comes a reckoning for his blood." They did not know that Joseph understood them, for there was an interpreter between them." (Gen 42:21-23 ESV)
Do you know what Joseph did after hearing his brothers talk like that? He turned and wept. Joseph is really listening and seeing his brothers for who they are now – not the men they were twenty years ago that were angry and competitive… the men they had become because of the choices they had made and how those choices haunted them. Twenty years later and they are still talking about the brother they think they destroyed. They are still burdened by the guilt of sins they couldn’t unwind. These men considered every evil thing that happened in their lives as connected to what they had done on that day when they sold him and lied to their father.
There are some powerful lessons here from the brothers about the real cost of sin and the life-altering weight of its consequences, but for now I want you to see what Joseph was doing. Joseph is asking questions, collecting information, and coming to understand his brothers for who they really are… and that knowledge leads to love. Joseph is asking them his own version of thirty-six questions. He is watching and listening and learning about their pain, their journey, and their guilt, and when he does that, love grows.
Mark 12:33 says that we should love God with all our heart and with all our understanding and with all our strength.
To love God and to love people well means we need to understand them. Take for example marriage - Peter says that husbands should live with their wives in an understanding way – why? Because if you don’t understand your wife, how can you properly meet her needs and honor her?
How do you become closer to people? You seek to understand them. Joseph asked questions, he watched, and eventually he understood the bigger picture of who his brothers were. They were troubled boys growing up in the same dysfunctional home and they made bad choices, and those choices had tormented them ever since. It doesn’t make it right, but it does make it easier to love them once you see that.
Which brings the issue back to us. Are there people in your life that are hard to love? Or are there relationships that should be close, but you’ve drifted and the distance now feels insurmountable? What if you tried again? With your spouse, with your kids, with the church, with distant friends?
Amazing things can happen when love understands.
Learn to love better – learn to see people.
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And until next time, “Remember, you are loved, so go… love better.”
