Monday, June 16, 2014

“What Is Love? Baby Don’t Hurt Me. Don’t Hurt Me, No More.” Haddaway - 1993

01-22-2014

“There is no fear in love, but perfect love casts out fear; for fear has to do with punishment, and whoever fears has not reached perfection in love.  We love because he first loved us.”  (1 John 4: 18-19 NRSV)


Now that I have many of you bobbing your heads to the side as you are reading this (admit it, if you were an SNL fan in the 90s you were at least tempted to bounce your head a little), I wanted to take a moment to share a few thoughts I have had lately regarding an ancient and continuing problem within the human condition... the problem of "love".

I have often seen social media posts and quotes that say things like “I’ve given up on wasting time worrying about people who don’t like me” or “I’m only going to expend energy loving the people who love me.”  (I’m paraphrasing here of course.)  And while I understand the underlying principle, I have to say I disagree with the idea that Love is a transaction.  That doesn’t mean that I advocate staying in abusive relationships, nor do I encourage being taken advantage of as a standard operating procedure (that isn't a very loving expression on the part of others either).  But I find that if we treat love as a commodity to be counted, countered, withheld, traded, or accumulated, we take away its immeasurable quality and value.

At any given point in time as parents, our children DO NOT always expend a lot of energy expressing “love” for us.  (In fact, sometimes it’s exactly the opposite.).  Do we withhold our love from them or cut them off?  Our spouses may not always “like us” in the course of our lives together in marriage… is it a waste of time worrying about them?  Friends and relations move into and out of our lives as a matter of natural growth and change.  It may not be a function of anything other than circumstance, but do we stop caring for them because they are not in our immediate daily living at this time? 

Love - pure love - is given for no other reason than the giver enjoys the benefits given to the one who is its object.  Balance and peace inside of relationships are the products of giving without regard for what we get back.  This includes our relationship with God.  A mercenary heart cannot experience this kind of love because it is more interested in what it will get out of the arrangement. 

God gains nothing from us, yet continues to love us.  Perfectly complete in every way, God needs nothing from us, but continues to woo us… continues to bless us and gift us… continues to give forgiveness we cannot earn nor will ever deserve.  And it is only because of that Love that the human heart becomes pure enough that it can both experience and give something this priceless.  God has never loved us because we are good; God makes us good because we are loved.  We are transformed by Love, and others can be transformed by our love for them.  But love only has true value if it is given as a gift, not offered as a business deal. 

What do I mean by that?  Well, it isn't love that breaks our hearts... it's the absence or removal of love that does that.  When we give love only because we want someone to "return the favor" it sets us up for disappointment and pain.  We will always be disappointed by "quid pro quo" relationships.  BUT, if we can learn to love in a way that sets no expectation, and if others love us in this way, it frees us to simply enjoy the people with which we share it.  For the record, this doesn't mean that anything goes... just that we can love in spite of frailties and faults; and that we understand that people who are imperfect, just like we are, will sometimes fall.  Love means that we help them get back up when they do, and they do the same for us.  Perfect love sometimes says "I love you just the way you are, AND I love you too much to leave you in that kind of pain and anguish.  Let's move forward together."

We are not yet perfect, but in each act of love shown we become more so.  In each practice of loving kindness we come closer and closer to perfection.  In each moment of Christian fellowship and unity born from a desire for others’ restored and strengthened relationship with God in love, we see perfection manifested in our hearts and in our world.  Receiving love of this magnitude fills us with a desire to be as good as the love makes us feel we already are... to be as good as it tells us we are to the Giver.  Giving it can do the same.  It shifts our reality, and makes us see everything around us differently.  Or to quote again from 1 John 4, “… if we love one another, God lives in us, and his love is perfected in us.” (v. 12b NRSV) 

In this, love is not a problem, but is instead the strength, courage, comfort, and contentment that God (who IS love the scriptures tell us) shows it to be.  Love ceases to be a problem... and becomes the solution to every problem.  May the inestimable power of the Holy Spirit create in your heart a perfect and Holy love that keeps you, and those who are gathered around you, today and every day!

Love in Christ,


Chris    

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