Dead-End Love

A French miscalculation, La Rue San Joie, and a reminder that it is best to pick your battlefields wisely.

This week, we take a look at the dead ends of life and how to avoid them.

"Remember, you are loved, so go, love better!"

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Transcript

         In 1953, the French found themselves mired in a war they couldn’t seem to win.  France, along with their allies, had been battling communist forces throughout the countries of Laos, Cambodia, and Vietnam for seven years… and as the war between the French and the Viet Minh (also known as the Democratic Republic of Vietnam) raged on, it became clear that the battle would take them to North Vietnam.  So, the French gathered their tanks, their convoys, their armored transport vehicles, and their men and headed for North Vietnam.  They made their plans and took the obvious route - Route 1.  A four-lane highway that traversed South Vietnam to North Vietnam.  It will take you all the way from Saigon to Hanoi.  After the battle was over, the French stopped calling it Route 1.  They gave it a different name – La Rue San Joie, the Street Without Joy because their  #1 route to victory turned out to be a dead end.

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 turn love into a skill – something we can get better at and hone along the way.

The French war we are discussing is the precursor to the Vietnam war Americans are more familiar with… but with similar results.  When America went to war with North Vietnam… the enemy they were fighting was born out of the one the French began fighting a decade earlier.  This war was referred to as the First Indochina War… and it was lost on Route 1.  It was lost on the Street Without Joy.

In our ever-present pursuit of how to love better, I want us to learn from the Street Without Joy because learning to love better can feel like a war at times, even if it is just an internal war with your own passions and pride.  And one of the first rules of war is whatever you do – pick your battlefield carefully.  Good tacticians make sure they are choosing the upward road, not a dead end.

With the South China Sea on one side, and swamps, sand holes, and quicksand bogs on the other, the Street without Joy became a choke point. It was so enticing to have a straight shot into the heart of North Vietnam, and sure the French had tanks and artillery and well-trained, well-funded troops… but that road was a shooting gallery.  Bernard Fall was a journalist at the time, embedded in the French forces and his record of the French operation to traverse Route 1 is horrific.  Up and down the highway the Viet Minh had dug tunnels, embedded traps and bombs, they had created interlocking villages that allowed their forces to travel unimpeded and unseen from one location to the next – essentially guaranteeing the ability to anonymously and efficiently pick off the French forces one by one.  For twenty miles, the French soldiers traveled an almost unending barrage of ambushes.  If you want to win a war, the Street Without Joy is exactly the battlefield you avoid… but the French didn’t avoid it, they soldiered on hoping that they were big enough and strong enough and well-trained enough to win the impossible war, but with odds like that they never stood a chance.

Which is the lesson that Bernard Fall attempted to share – some roads never lead to victory.  If you want to win a war – you need to understand what roads to stay away from.  It’s true in war, and I believe it is also true in love.  And in order to prove my point… I need you to take a side trip with me to talk about how not all love is better love.

When we talk about love we sometimes get confused because the word love is used in multiple ways.  Sometimes love refers to an emotional state or desire and other times we use the word love to talk about the choice to do what is in the best interest for another.  Consider the sentence, “I love strawberry rhubarb pie.” (and I do, it is delicious… arguably the most delicious of all 3.14159 desserts) and compare it to Jesus’ sentence, “Love your enemies.”  Strawberry rhubarb pie love is a desire – loving your enemies is a choice.  These two types of love are not merely different, they are often diametrically opposed to one another.  Oftentimes, the way Jesus tells us to love means I must choose to do something I don’t desire to do.  Jesus didn’t desire the cross, but He loved us enough to go anyways.  His love went against His desire.  That is the entire point of His prayer in the garden on the eve of His crucifixion.  He left His disciples behind and fell on His face and prayed, saying, “My Father, if it is possible, let this cup pass from Me; yet not as I will, but as You will.”

The noble, transcendent love of Jesus required not doing what He wanted, but what His Father wanted.  And likewise, it can work the other way.  When we focus on what we desire (like delicious pie) it can put us in a position where that desire becomes all-consuming and we are too tempted by our desires to remember to choose the better love – the love that does what is best, not what is most convenient… and it doesn’t matter how strong, smart, or clever you think you are – your desires can absolutely wreck real love.

Which brings us back to Route 1 and the lessons of the Street without Joy.  The French never had a chance on that road – it wasn’t ever going to work.  It didn’t work for them and it didn’t work for the American troops either.  It was a road without joy… and in life there are lots of roads like this.  Roads that seem like the path to all our desires, but are actually dead ends all along.

The book of Proverbs talks about these types of roads.  The roads that lead to nowhere but ruin and despair.  Proverbs is a book of the Bible that focuses on practical wisdom and how to make choices with long-term success in view.  Oftentimes things we think will enhance or repair our lives are actually streets without joy.

For example, Proverbs 23 talks about the false road of liquor.

It says, “Who has woe? Who has sorrow? Who has strife? Who has complaining? Who has wounds without cause? Who has redness of eyes? 30 Those who tarry long over wine; those who go to try mixed wine. 31 Do not look at wine when it is red, when it sparkles in the cup and goes down smoothly. 32 In the end it bites like a serpent and stings like an adder. 33 Your eyes will see strange things, and your heart utter perverse things. 34 You will be like one who lies down in the midst of the sea, like one who lies on the top of a mast. 35 "They struck me," you will say, "but I was not hurt; they beat me, but I did not feel it. When shall I awake? I must have another drink."

         Anyone that attempts to find love at the bottom of a shot glass is bound to come up empty.  And the problem isn’t that they chose the wrong type of alcohol or the wrong time of day to drink it or even the wrong type of people to drink with… there is no combination or scenario where alcohol helps you love better.  It is a false love that ends badly.  Self-medication is a dead-end street.

         Another sorrow-filled road is the road of sexual immorality.  We are often told that love is love and it doesn’t matter who or when you love them… but adultery, pornography and other sins of the sexual realm are the wrong type of love – they are desire masquerading as virtue.  Consider Proverbs 7’s explanation of the pathway to adultery and the prostitute.  Proverbs 7’s description literally describes a young man walking along a street that leads to sexual sin.

This is a lengthier reading, but well worth it for the image it conjures up.

It says, “For at the window of my house I looked out through my lattice, 7 And I saw among the naive, [And] discerned among the youths A young man lacking sense, 8 Passing through the street near her corner; And he takes the way to her house, 9 In the twilight, in the evening, In the middle of the night and [in] the darkness. 10 And behold, a woman [comes] to meet him, Dressed as a harlot and cunning of heart. 11 She is boisterous and rebellious, Her feet do not remain at home; 12 [She is] now in the streets, now in the squares, And lurks by every corner. 13 So she seizes him and kisses him And with a brazen face she says to him: 14 "I was due to offer peace offerings; Today I have paid my vows. 15 "Therefore I have come out to meet you, To seek your presence earnestly, and I have found you. 16 "I have spread my couch with coverings, With colored linens of Egypt. 17 "I have sprinkled my bed With myrrh, aloes and cinnamon. 18 "Come, let us drink our fill of love until morning; Let us delight ourselves with caresses. 19 "For my husband is not at home, He has gone on a long journey; 20 He has taken a bag of money with him, At the full moon he will come home." 21 With her many persuasions she entices him; With her flattering lips she seduces him. 22 Suddenly he follows her As an ox goes to the slaughter, Or as [one in] fetters to the discipline of a fool, 23 Until an arrow pierces through his liver; As a bird hastens to the snare, So he does not know that it [will cost him] his life.

         Both the alcoholic and the adulterer have the same problem – they have allowed a short-term desire to control their long-term destiny.  The alcoholic wants relief from sorrow and the young man wants to be flattered and respected.  But real joy and real respect can’t be gained through shortcut.  You have to take the long road round to genuinely find these sorts of things.  If we want to love better, we need to be very wary of shortcuts and easy love.  Real love rarely comes quickly.

         So some streets are dead ends which we shouldn’t even step foot on.  Dead end streets are duds from the beginning.  Things like sin, lust, jealousy, hatred, and bitterness all are number one routes to misery and doom. 

However, there is another way to think about the streets without joy – what do you do when you find yourself, through no fault off your own traveling a road that seems full of sorrow.  After all, maybe the French generals shouldn’t have taken the army down Route 1, but a lot of those French soldiers were just following orders – they were just living life and ended up somewhere they didn’t want to be.  What if I’m on a road I don’t love?

In the 23rd Psalm, God is described as a shepherd and this beautiful short Psalm looks at life like a journey where the shepherd leads us as His sheep… and there has always been one line in that Psalm that troubled me.  See if it hits your ear the way it does mine:

[Psa 23:1-4 NASB95] 1 A Psalm of David. The LORD is my shepherd, I shall not want. 2 He makes me lie down in green pastures; He leads me beside quiet waters. 3 He restores my soul; He guides me in the paths of righteousness For His name's sake. 4 Even though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I fear no evil, for You are with me; Your rod and Your staff, they comfort me.

         Did you catch the part that troubles me?  God leads us beside quiet waters – I like that one.  He gives us green pastures – fair enough, if I were a sheep I’d like some delicious grass to munch on… but what about verse 4 “even though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death”

         Why is God leading His sheep through the valley of the shadow of death?!  I’m no shepherd, but I'm thinking that seems like a really bad valley to be going through – doesn’t this valley seem like the one of those dead end streets?.  Maybe the valley of the glittering sunshine would be a better one to travel through, right?

         Except that isn’t what God does.  Sometimes He leads us through places we don’t love so we will learn to trust and love Him more than our environment.  Sometimes the street has no joy so that our joy doesn’t come from the world and circumstances we are in, but our joy can come from a different source – not the where of our life, but the Who.  Who we love and who we walk with in our life matters more than anything else.

         As the saying goes, life’s a journey, so this week.  Make sure your feet don’t wander into streets with dead ends… and wherever you travel, make sure the Shepherd leads you.

         Learn to love better – learn to love the right roads and avoid the dead end streets.

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And until next time, “Remember, you are loved, so go… love better.”