by James Smart

Created on: June 02, 2008

Let's look at the misunderstandings of what love is first. Love as desire: We can excuse promiscuity as love. When we stop feeling desire for someone we no longer "love" them and feel it is time to move on. Love expressed only this way is just selfishness. Love as a form of control: The overbearing parent who wants to live their life through their children and then say "it is only because I want the best for you". Who's best? Love as permissiveness: A parent who spoils their child and never teaches discipline or self control. This kind of love is based on immediate feelings - the parent cannot bear to think that their child is in any form of discomfort for a moment. If such a parent were to subject their child to discipline they fear they would lose the love of the child and also have to endure the knowledge that their child is in some way suffering at this moment in time. What this parent doesn't realize is that their child will grow up to never understand respect, and develope an underlying anger at their parents for never introducing boundaries in their lives, and never learn the self control to build character in life. They will be ruined, and all because the parent loved them "too much" to say "no". Love as feelings: It is easy to do the right thing when we feel like it or we like the person we are doing it for. The single person who looks forward to marriage thinks they should be "in love" with their partner forever and then think something has gone wrong when they find that some time down the line those feelings of infatuation have gone. These things are not love.

The message of the New Testament can be summed up in this: God loved us so much that even while we were His enemies he allowed His only Son to die for us so that we can be saved. The love of God is, and therefore Christian love (should be) unconditional. It is not based on feelings or whether or not you "like" someone. Real love is tough at times. It says "No!" in order to form us in to people of integrity. Real love can have feelings but it is not ruled by those feelings - often to love is a decision. We often have to choose to love first and then the feelings follow. Real love is concerned only with the ultimate good of the other no matter what the sacrifice to the self. The ultimate good of another may mean treating them harshly in the present time though - it is not the permissive love which I have already mentioned. Such love can make you look bad at the moment but it serves the other's greater good! God treats His children like this most of the time! Real love instills discipline. If you were perfect maybe you would feel love all of the time, but while we are still "fallen" we have to grit our teeth and do the right thing - and that is what is right for our neighbor or even our enemy! Loving your enemies doesn't mean allowing them to continue in an abusive existence. Loving your enemies means choosing to understand their feelings and see things from their point of view and to forgive them and to hope and pray and to work towards them changing their behavior - if indeed it is them who are in the wrong!

Love is the emptying of ourselves and being channels of God's unconditional love. It doesn't give up. It loves the unlovable. It puts itself in somebody else's shoes. It is not egocentric. And to be loved perfectly frees us from all the evils which we are compelled to sink to in order to feel alive.

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