There is an intangible wire that connects us to other people and wraps us around desires. These lines spew from our hearts and attach themselves to that with which we are attracted emotionally, and sometimes spiritually. This wire is most usually identified but misdefined as love. I say misdefined because our intentions are not usually separated from our actions. If I act in love, but I intend to gain attention, was it an act of love or simply a mask? I believe this creates a misconception that love is an inherent ability instead of an active choice. Because of this misconception, people truly don’t know what love is or how to love, including me.
1 John 4:7 “...because God is love.”
Growing up, love was an ethereal property that could be found in my mother’s kisses and found absent in my loneliness. It was like a stiff wind that didn’t arrive or leave based on any logic. Sometimes I just felt loved and sometimes I didn’t. In a late-night soul search, I stumbled across the verse “because God is love”. I was no brainiac in terms of math(I still am not), but the mental image this verse conjured was God = love, and similarly, love = God. It seems to beg the question, if I don’t know love, how could I come to know God?
What is love? I can hear Haddaway being dubbed over the image of SNL’s “Roxbury Guys”. Jim Carry Antics aside, what is this intangible, complex emotion that has left literary poets in shambles and likewise left their readers inexplicably annoyed? We generalize love to a feeling because that’s all we know of it’s being. Yet, it doesn't do justice to the idea of love as a whole because you can’t weigh the love you have for food on the same plane as the love you hold for your significant other. The bible highlights 4 different loves, Philia which is a love for friends and equals, Eros which is erotic love, Storge which is love from a parent to a child, and lastly, Agape which is perfect unconditional Godly love. If you find out how to pronounce Agape, let me know. For the sake of today's argument, I'll be simplifying it into two groups, perfect love(Agape and Storge) and gross love(Eros and Philia). In relationships dealing with gross love, we love people with our time, our energy, our gifts, and we expect reciprocity. I believe this is a key distinction between gross love and perfect love. Perfect love does not require reciprocity. A quote by C.S. Lewis has stuck with me over the years. He states, “love is never wasted for its value does not rest upon reciprocity”. If we expect a return on our investment of love, it is no longer a gift, but a business transaction. The more I delve into the deep pits of social media’s relationship advice section, I find people desperately clinging to the feeling of romance, more than they are seeking a way to love their romantic partner. Women are happy for their bodies to be used, as long as they can be promised security. Men are willing to put up with volatile emotional states as long as it means they aren’t lonely. Instead of a relationship of unity, we have two emotional addicts grasping for any sense of sentimental familiarity or companionship. They don’t want to invest in love, they want to be loved, and they are willing to put up with that investment to get what they crave. It seems quite normal in today’s climate to witness a couple made of two survivors, looking for gross love to sustain each other. However, wouldn’t it be stronger if the relationship was made of two servers, both looking for ways to please the other for the sake of loving them? In that scenario, it would be self-sustaining because you are no longer for yourself, but for the good and well-being of the one you love. This is perfect love. In its nature, it is unselfish, patient, and forgiving. That is God. He is giving, benevolent, and pinnacle in all respects, forgiving. Perfect love is an investment, but why is it so hard to love. Because it is hard.
If we choose to fear, we are not choosing love, and therefore manifest and allow to mature a much darker beast, hate.
One of the biggest pitfalls found when trying to incorporate perfect love into action, is its perfect opposite, fear. I have often heard the statement, “love is more powerful than hate”. In theory, this sounds beautiful and it would make logical sense that the divine creator who embodies love would be stronger than the absence of it. Observing the methods of every tyrannical dictator in history, you start to question love's power as you witness their success in utilizing an iron fist of fear. It made them abhorrent leaders, but their methods were effective in controlling the masses. Earl Felton, an American screenwriter, once wrote in one of his films, “What you fail to understand is the power of hate. It can fill the heart as surely as love can.” Yet, it is not so much hate that overpowers the strength of love, it's the adoption of fear. I Corinthians 13:4-5 states, "There is no fear in love. But perfect love drives out fear, because fear has to do with punishment." If we choose to fear, we are not choosing love, and therefore manifest and allow to mature a much darker beast, hate. We all fear, at some level, of being hurt. We don’t know when we will be hurt or how we will be hurt, but we still anticipate that pain will strike at some moment in our life. When this fear is established by someone or something hurting us, we open ourselves up to a choice. We either forgive the offense/offender or we stay hurt. Not forgiving intensifies the fear we already had, as the wound will remain unless cleansed. When we continually reject forgiveness(a pinnacle foundation of perfect love), we begin to harden our hearts allowing resentment to build like residue. This resentment breeds the festering of hurt and can mature into hatred. As it pertains to unforgiveness, you are looking at a repeat offender. The act of forgiveness rids you of pain and most importantly fear. I have noticed that when I do not forgive those who wrong me, for those who wrong others, or simply my loved ones for their ignorance, I build into a feral, wounded animal that falls into manic episodes of love and hate. I see myself lash out uncontrollably, afraid of pain, and becoming perpetually enraged by other's actions. It is not because I wish to hate or because I am inherently evil(at least I hope not), but because I have not allowed God to forgive me. There is a gaping absence of perfect love. My older brother Jeremy’s favorite film is Good Will Hunting. We see depicted in the movie this brilliant young man, named Will Hunting. His personality is arrogant, which he uses to constantly push people away emotionally. No one denies he is a genius, but no one can become close to him because of an artificial wall he has produced. Through the movie, he develops a relationship with a therapist played by Robin Williams. In their conversations, you see the layers of the boy peeled back to reveal that his facade of all-knowingness is a defense mechanism to hide his internal fear from those around him. I have watched this film four times since he introduced it to me, and every single time, I am reminded of the undeniable truth. Those who are abrasive, cocky, arrogant, harsh, abrupt, nasty, etc, are victims of their fear and unforgiveness. They have trapped themselves into their preconceptions and without accepting perfect love, they can never be free of their prison. Fear and judgment are easier than forgiveness and love, but it is perfect love that rejuvenates a tired mind and gives hope where there is none. It is because of this that we are commanded to love others.
Why is punishment loving?
While I was charting out the logic of perfect love on my wall, looking like Pepe Silvia from It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia, I hit a dead-end of questions. Why does God punish his children and why are parents instructed to punish their children? Isn’t punishment a form of fear? Isn’t fear the opposite of love? I think this calls for another defining quality of perfect love. It is perfect because it is loving in both action and spirit. Growing up, I had a skewed image of the Lord. Instead of seeing God as a being of love, I saw Him as a being of judgment. I thought that was what God was supposed to be. This quote by Mahatma Gandhi, you know who he is, began unraveling my misunderstanding of God.”Power is of two kinds. One is obtained by the fear of punishment and the other by acts of love. Power based on love is a thousand times more effective and permanent than the one derived from fear of punishment.” I realized that I only loved God because I was afraid if I didn’t, He would punish me. It was a frightening and simultaneously liberating moment when I was free of fear. Yet, I realized, the spirit in which I loved God wasn’t right. My actions towards Him were loving, but my intentions were empty and fear-fueled. He is a merciful God and honored my servitude but what He wanted was my heart. That might have been more frightening than believing He just wanted my actions. When God “punishes” us, He is in actuality liberating us of the very sin that chains our feet to the ground. It is only in our selfish ignorance that we label His love as hate. This is the same in regards to a parent and child, Storge. Unfortunately, there are unloving parents who punish their children for the sole purpose of inflicting control on them, but the job of a parent is to protect a child from its own unknowing. When a child walks towards the fire and receives a smack on the hand for doing so, the action of the smack is a rebuke that saves a child from death. In that instance, it was loving because the spirit of the action was meant for protection. This does not mean that abuse of a child is fair game because it is a means to an end. Punishment has to have a spirit of love for growth to be catalyzed. I believe that an act of love carried out in a spirit of fear or anger can spiritually plant a seed of fear or resentment in the child of question. It carries over to our relationships. Say my little brother calls me ugly. If I yell at my brother and say he is being a jerk. I am being both unloving in action and spirit. If I sit with him and say he is not a nice person, but my overall goal is to finagle a certain response. I am loving in action and manipulative in spirit. If I sit down with him, explain to him that being a mean person is going to hurt him for the sole purpose of making him a better young man, I am being both loving in action and spirit. Any anger I have towards him has to be resolved before I begin to deal with the situation. I believe that a lot of children misunderstand the intentions of their parents because they misconstrue their parent’s unloving actions as their unloving spirits. Parents are not perfect and in their desperate fear to protect their children, their fear manifests through their anger. Both parent and child must become masters in the way of understanding the easily misunderstood. Every relationship must rest on that foundation of love, forgiveness.
That is where my conversation ends and where love begins, forgiveness. I am an easily irritated person. I like things to be in their place and for things to be done in a certain way. When this personal pride is challenged or merely scratched by another’s suggestions, I find myself...vexed. I am therefore constantly finding myself at an intersection. Do I forgive this person, or do I ignore my heart only to let it grow in its selfishness? I can’t say I always take the right turn, but I can admit that I am happier for turning towards something greater than me. In all this conversation of relationships, I want to emphasize a person in particular that deems worthy to be loved. You. When God states that “above all else, love each other greatly”, He wasn’t excluding ourselves. We are not meant to be our own judges, inflicting whips on our backs in retribution for our own mistakes. We might as well put a crown on our head and call ourselves God. We are partaking in a great indulgence of pride when we allow ourselves to wallow in pity instead of giving way to a higher choice. God asks us to put our gavel down and give Him the position to forgive us. When we allow Him in through our free will, we find ourselves blanketed in grace and comforted in peace. Only when we allow Him through, can we experience perfect love.
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