What I Am Learning About Love

"At some thoughts one stands perplexed, especially at the sight of men's sin, and wonders whether one should use force or humble love. Always decide to use humble love. If you resolve on that once for all, you may subdue the whole world. Loving humility is marvellously strong, the strongest of all things and there is nothing else like it."

-- The Brothers Karamazov

"Usually when people read 1 Corinthians 13 they focus on verses 4-7. I was intrigued to read on into verse 8 to discover that "Love never fails." I decided that I could go around telling Julie that I loved her until I was ready to commit to her for the rest of my life. "Love never fails." I didn't want to take that lightly so we didn't. On February 9th 2008 I said the words "I love you" to a girl for the first time in my life and it was the greatest commitment I could have ever imagined."

-- Nathan Hoag

"The Bible says homosexuality is a sin, but it also says to love your neighbor. The church has done a good job of loving its Hindu neighbor but a very poor job of loving its homosexual neighbor."

-- Tim Keller (paraphrase)

I don't know much at all about love. This is what I have come to realize. I do a lot of things in the name of love, and I often categorize people in terms of those I love and those I don't, but I'm starting to think it's all kind of a joke. I don't really even know who I love. Do you decide who those people are based on your level of devotion to them, your sense of obligation toward them, your desire for good or bad to befall them, your perception of where they fall on a particular moral spectrum, or your need for them? I think I generally judge people based on the last category. Lately I worry that the people I love the most are actually the people I need the most. I need my parents for their guidance and their support. I need my closest friends for their affirmation and their affection. Most damningly, I need my students for their confirmation of my identity as a "success," a "professional," a do-gooder." Which is why I so often use force in the face of their wrongdoing rather than love. It's not because what they've done is worthy of the response. It's because I need them to behave so that I can feel as though I've done my job (the irony being that no matter how well I do my job in that area, my supervisors unfailingly find some other weakness to point out - perhaps there's a lesson there). It's about subduing them rather than caring for them. My prayer lately has been, desperately, "Lord, let Your love for them come through me, because I don't love them beyond what they do for me." It's a good thing that Jesus came to love perfectly in my place, because I don't think I've ever loved even a little bit for the right reasons. This breeds insecurity, mistrust, co-dependency, and a general dissatisfaction with life. And I long to understand love the way that God designed it rather than the way that humans mess it up, because that is the way to life. What would the world look like if all Christians loved completely, so that the ways in which they were wronged served only to strengthen their commitment to others rather than damaging it. Do we see this? How we use the people in our lives for our own gain, subjecting them to our personal whims because of unsatisfied needs, and then punishing them when they don't perform. But how did Jesus love? When He was betrayed, abandoned, and crucified, He only loved more. And then He died because we could not love. I may be realizing this for the first time.

Song In My Head: "From The Inside Out" - Hillsong - "Consume me from the inside out, Lord"