I’m going to talk a little bit about love today…I’ve talked about it before, and I’ll talk about it again, for I am a hopeless romantic and am therefore dominated by love. This was brought on by Sunday’s sermon at church (March 11th). My pastor is doing a Lenten sermon series on loving one another, and in this entry I’m going to talk a little bit about what I got out of it.
Let’s agree on something straight out…our culture hard core overuses the word love. Raise your hand if you’re guilty of saying one of these…”I looove chocolate,” or “I love my job” (equally appropriate for our overuse of hate, but that’s another topic all together…and since I don’t really care for hate, I probably won’t talk about it anytime soon…sorry to all the hatemongers out there). I certainly am…guilty of the first at least….I dunno about the second….but there are people out there who are I’m sure. What’s this got to do with anything? Good question I just asked vicariously for you.
What about this one? “I feel like I love [insert significant person of said feelings here].” Hmm, tricky tricky. Let’s get to that later…I’m not really fully prepared to answer it now, but hopefully by the time I get to the end of the entry I’ll have figured out how to address it.
Let’s first take a look at what love is. Where shall we look? Why, to God for guidance silly billy, that’s where we should always look…although if any of you are like me, that’s easier said than done…why consult God first and then act when you can act first and than maybe when it’s convenient for you ask God, or just…um…well, just keep on acting? Something we all should be working on methinks, me included. (By the way, when I say we, I mean we Christians…if you’re not a follower of Christ, you should be…Jesus loves you and wants to be your friend, so you’d best wise up and make friends with the Creator of the Universe pronto, lest you are caught in a freak gasoline fight accident or something…but I’m way off topic now, and this parenthesis is way to long, so I’m going to stop it). It’s really tough giving stuff to God...and I don’t understand why. We’ll be quite quick to trust our lives to something made by man…I’ve flown on an airplane four times in as many weeks, and I’ll be on an airplane again in two more weeks….trusting my very life to the maintenance workers, the pilots, and the airplane….and I do so without thinking twice….so shouldn’t I trust God all the more, who certainly won’t ever fail me? I think so…but it is tough.
Now you ask a Christian, “What is love?” and the Sunday school answer is “Love is patient, love is kind, etc, etc, etc.” I Cor. 13 would have been my first answer too. And all that is very very true, and quite honestly beautiful…one of the most beautiful versus in all of the Bible, but I’m not entirely sure that that particular chapter addresses the question at hand. Let’s take another angle.
Jesus told his disciples that they must love one another. Can you just up and love someone? I would argue yes, with Christ, you can. Love is not just an emotional response, but something you must want, you must will, and to which you must say yes! Love is not about what you prefer, or what I prefer, but about subordinating yourself to the will of the Savior Christ. Here’s where I think I’m comfortable addressing that ever hairy, “I feel like I love him/her!” I certainly believe, and know from experience (some wonderful, some painful) that love can grow from just plain pure feelings (I don’t want to sound like I’m saying feelings are stupid…feelings are awesome, and I’m very glad that God decided to invent them…what I am saying is that love transcends what feelings are…love is so much higher, so much bigger, so much stronger….it’s like comparing a musical on Broadway to a musical at a local theater…the local theater’s great fun, but can it really touch what’s possible on Broadway?) Romantic love more often than not grows out of attraction or admiration. It doesn’t have to be physical attraction either, though that is a leading starting point of love and indeed is also often a feeling mistaken for love. Let’s look at Robin Hood (I prefer the animated Disney version myself) where the pretender Prince John appears to be the lion in power, but the true king is Richard the Lionhearted. In this analogy, Prince John is physical attraction, and King Richard is love…one is pretending and indeed mistaken for holding the power of the other. Nothing wrong with physical attraction…God made it, and in the words of a pastor at a Christian youth festival I attended many man years ago, “It’s a great ride”…but it’s not love. Physical attraction is not the only culprit. Emotional attraction or even spiritual attraction can grow into love, just as they can be mistaken for love. We must be careful to choose love over lust, to make sure that our feelings of attraction form into love, and not into lust, for the former is the way of God, and the latter is the way of the world.
So I ask you, can you truly actually love without God? I say no. Perhaps I’m wrong, and I welcome discussion…for discussion = fantastic…but in my experience and from what I’ve learned from the Bible and the Holy Spirit, you can really only truly ever love someone, be it parent, child, brother, sister, friend, or significant other, if you love them through Christ. What do you think about it?
~AndyJams~
No comments:
Post a Comment