LOVE

I’m still in the process of writing this (can it get any longer?!) but feel free to read what I have so far:

I suppose this is kind of my mission statement. Well, the reasoning behind and evidence for it at least.

“Hear, O Israel: The LORD our God, the LORD is one. Love the LORD your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your strength. These commandments that I give you today are to be upon your hearts. Impress them on your children. Talk about them when you sit at home and when you walk along the road, when you lie down and when you get up. Tie them as symbols on your hands and bind them on your foreheads.” Deuteronomy 6:5-8

I’m advocating love.

None of this mushy noncommittal crap they feed us through movies and books for some fleeting relationship. Not the word I hated when I was a little boy because of it’s connotations. I’m talking unconditional love for everyone. Girls, Guys, Children, Adults, Republicans, Democrats, Moderates. Despite net worth, despite ethnicity, despite sexual orientation, despite view of the environment, despite preferred brand of shoe. (Galatians 3:28)

Yes, I know this sounds all hippie-like, but I’m tired of the selfishness, hate and anger that I see in so many people, including myself and other Christians (and who are we kidding, we really have no reason to be selfish or hateful).

I’ve noticed that unconditional love is one of the most prevalent subjects in the Bible (it’s the basis of the first and second greatest commandments according to Jesus [Matthew 22:37-39], who I’m fairly certain is the leading expert on the subject), and often, to my dismay, I overlook it. I’m writing this as a reminder to myself and others to live love, to pursue the spirit and pray that we may be examples of the Fruit of the Spirit to others.

Biblical support of love:

“Beloved, let us love one another, for love is from God, and whoever loves has been born of God and knows God. Anyone who does not love does not know God, because God is love. In this the love of God was made manifest among us, that God sent his only Son into the world, so that we might live through him. In this is love, not that we have loved God but that he loved us and sent his Son to be the propitiation for our sins. Beloved, if God so loved us, we also ought to love one another.  No one has ever seen God; if we love one another, God abides in us and his love is perfected in us.” 1 John 4:7-12

So, if we truly have God’s love in us, we will love others.

“Wash yourselves; make yourselves clean;
remove the evil of your deeds from before my eyes;
cease to do evil,
learn to do good;
seek justice,
correct oppression;
bring justice to the fatherless,
plead the widow’s cause.” Isaiah 1:16-17

“If anyone thinks he is religious and does not bridle his tongue but deceives his heart, this person’s religion is worthless. Religion that is pure and undefiled before God, the Father, is this: to visit orphans and widows in their affliction, and to keep oneself unstained from the world.” James 1:26-27

I just like that these verses that are hundreds of pages and years apart say the same thing. Exemplify your love for God by reaching out to those who are helpless. God is steadfast!

“If I speak in the tongues of men and of angels, but have not love, I am a noisy gong or a clanging cymbal. And if I have prophetic powers, and understand all mysteries and all knowledge, and if I have all faith, so as to remove mountains, but have not love, I am nothing. If I give away all I have, and if I deliver up my body to be burned, but have not love, I gain nothing.

Love is patient and kind; love does not envy or boast; it is not arrogant or rude. It does not insist on its own way; it is not irritable or resentful; it does not rejoice at wrongdoing, but rejoices with the truth. Love bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things.

Love never ends. As for prophecies, they will pass away; as for tongues, they will cease; as for knowledge, it will pass away. For we know in part and we prophesy in part, but when the perfect comes, the partial will pass away. When I was a child, I spoke like a child, I thought like a child, I reasoned like a child. When I became a man, I gave up childish ways. For now we see in a mirror dimly, but then face to face. Now I know in part; then I shall know fully, even as I have been fully known.

So now faith, hope, and love abide, these three; but the greatest of these is love.” 1 Corinthians 13:1-13

We can do many things, but if there isn’t love in what we are doing, then it is for nothing. 1 Cor. 13 says “Love never ends,” and 1 John 4 says “God is love,” so: Love is going to last forever! (quoth Jenny and Tyler) Love’s gonna last forever and ever! Why would you waste your life hating things and looking for the negativity in life when you can pursue God; pursue love! C.S. Lewis has great points to consider on this subject, too, from a wonderful writing of his, The Weight of Glory:

“It may be possible for each to think too much of his own potential glory hereafter; it is hardly possible for him to think too often or too deeply about that of his neighbour. The load, or weight, or burden of my neighbour’s glory should be laid daily on my back, a load so heavy that only humility can carry it, and the backs of the proud will be broken. It is a serious thing to live in a society of possible gods and goddesses, to remember that the dullest and most uninteresting person you talk to may one day be a creature which, if you saw it now, you would be strongly tempted to worship, or else a horror and a corruption such as you now meet, if at all, only in a nightmare. All day long we are, in some degree, helping each other to one or other of these destinations. It is in the light of these overwhelming possibilities, it is with the awe and the circumspection proper to them, that we should conduct all our dealings with one another, all friendships, all loves, all play, all politics. There are no ordinary people. You have never talked to a mere mortal. Nations, cultures, arts, civilization—these are mortal, and their life is to ours as the life of a gnat. But it is immortals whom we joke with, work with, marry, snub, and exploit—immortal horrors or everlasting splendours. This does not mean that we are to be perpetually solemn. We must play. But our merriment must be of that kind (and it is, in fact, the merriest kind) which exists between people who have, from the outset, taken each other seriously—no flippancy, no superiority, no presumption. And our charity must be a real and costly love, with deep feeling for the sins in spite of which we love the sinner—no mere tolerance or indulgence which parodies love as flippancy parodies merriment. Next to the Blessed Sacrament itself, your neighbour is the holiest object presented to your senses. If he is your Christian neighbour he is holy in almost the same way, for in him also Christ vere latitat—the glorifier and the glorified, Glory Himself, is truly hidden.”

So, why should we work towards having an unconditional love for others? Because you are influencing everyone around you in small–and sometimes very large–ways. Because Jesus says, “‘Truly, I say to you, as you did it to one of the least of these my brothers, you did it to me.’”