Trinidad Reverend says fake love behind domestic violence murders

Reverend Daniel Teelucksingh

(Trinidad Guardian) A Pres­by­ter­ian min­is­ter has de­scribed the spate of do­mes­tic vi­o­lence mur­ders in this coun­try as a cri­sis more dead­ly than the coro­n­avirus. Rev Daniel Teelucks­ingh said those mur­ders are the re­sult of fake love.

In his ser­mon yes­ter­day at the St Charles Pres­by­ter­ian Church in Ch­agua­nas, Rev Teelucks­ingh said four of the more than 40 mur­ders for the year stemmed from gen­der-based vi­o­lence.

 
“We have a very se­ri­ous so­cial plague in this land which has cre­at­ed an emer­gency in Trinidad and To­ba­go more dead­ly than the coro­n­avirus,” he told the con­gre­ga­tion

He said while there have been a lot of dis­cus­sions about the cause of these “fam­i­ly-based mur­ders,” the com­mon thread is that the cou­ples were ei­ther once mar­ried or had love af­fairs. Re­call­ing that in 2017, 43 out of the 52 women mur­dered were vic­tims of do­mes­tic vi­o­lence, he asked: “Why is it so frag­ile and un­pre­dictable? Why where love once ex­ist­ed there is so much hate lead­ing to mur­der?”

Rev Teelucks­ingh said there are cer­tain uni­ver­sal el­e­ments of love, which he de­scribed as “a very beau­ti­ful virtue that doesn’t grow cold.”

“What we have and what we prac­tice in our re­la­tion­ship, spous­es and friends is de­val­ued love. We are look­ing to love but it is fake love,” he said.

He said fake love is cheap like fake and im­i­ta­tion di­a­monds and “we have to find an an­swer in or­der to bring back spousal love in mar­riages, find love that is gen­uine, cost­ly and price­less.”

He re­ferred to the Bib­li­cal de­scrip­tion of love as pa­tient and kind, not jeal­ous, con­ceit­ed or proud, not ill-man­nered or ir­ri­ta­ble, but for­giv­ing and car­ing.

Re­la­tion­ships must be a two-way street, he ad­vised and point­ed out that the Bible states that hus­bands must love their wives and wives must re­spect their hus­bands.

Rev Teelucks­ingh, who has been a mar­riage coun­sel­lor for 52 years, added: “There is a new kind of moral­i­ty in this coun­try that threat­ens the very fab­ric of spousal love. That out­side third par­ty has cre­at­ed so much dis­as­ter in count­less mar­riages.”

He said in­fi­deli­ty strives where spousal love is tak­en for grant­ed and called for ex­ten­sive fam­i­ly life train­ing and ed­u­ca­tion to be pro­vid­ed, not on­ly in sec­ondary schools but as re­fresh­er cours­es for adults.

Love does not change and is a gift from God, he said, and the onus is on every­one who claims to have fall­en in love to be re­spon­si­ble, com­mit­ted and to show mu­tu­al re­spect.