Love at a Glance

Love is the word that floats around everywhere. It is the slogan of companies, the motto of philosophies, the ideal of romantics, and the one object we fix our attention on at this time.

To some, the simple phrase, "I love you" is sought as a signature of worth. To others, a dreaded past has become the unfortunate reality of desiring those three words to be said by that one person to whom the heart was placed for care. To some, the simple phrase has become a ghost of a distant past. The person is left feeling like an Ebenezer Scrooge.

Hard hearts are solidified through the giving love with no love returned, or worse betrayed. The forgery is done by the one who was thought to be where the vulnerability could flourish. The person who was supposed to hold the fragility of that human heart within hands of grace has become a simple reminder. The reminder is that love is to have the possibility of being hurt. To love is to be vulnerable.

It is like the heart is made of glass; it can easily become broken but it allows a glance into a mirror. The mirror, a moon made of glass reflecting the images that shine upon it. To see outside the prison cell with walls of glass, the glass must be broken. To see the worth of love a heart must become broken and contrite. That is the only way to see outside the glass walls of our prison cell. Without brokenness, we could not have seen that we were trapped. So let's take a glance into that mirror.

1st Corinthians

The Way of Love

13 If I speak in the tongues of men and of angels, but have not love, I am a noisy gong or a clanging cymbal. 2 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. 3 If I give away all I have, and if I deliver up my body to be burned,[a] but have not love, I gain nothing.

4 Love is patient and kind; love does not envy or boast; it is not arrogant 5 or rude. It does not insist on its own way; it is not irritable or resentful;[b] 6 it does not rejoice at wrongdoing, but rejoices with the truth. 7 Love bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things.

The Heart as the Culmination of Love

For all of Paul's discourse, this portion, in particular, is quite easily understood. The list is not an extensive list but it does accomplish its purpose. The passage contains three main points of emphasis: what love is, what love is not, and love as a motivation. The first order of business is addressing love as a motivation. It directly addresses the main source of love, the heart.

The heart in this instance is not simply a cardiovascular organ that circulates blood around the body system in a succession of beats. The biblical heart refers to the whole being or more accurately the consciousness of a person. The ancient biblical authors really didn't have any relative idea of the place where systems of mental processes as we know them take place, they rather put those purposes in the heart. The Hebrew word for the heart is לבב and it is pronounced "Levav" or לב as "Lev." In the heart, you have thoughts, the ability to process the physical world, to feel emotions, and to make choices. All of which is the full embodiment of where love should foster and originate.

Let's focus on the choices of the heart. The first problem with the desires of the heart is that they are wicked above all else due to the fall of man. It is an injustice that humans do not see their neighbor as someone who is as valuable as them. The natural inclination is to choose to see people not as how God originally designed. I will further that point later, but let's look to dissect the problem before the solution is reached.

Sin is a dislocated heart, a love that has become disordered. One of the main words for sin, ava, biblically means a dislocated heart. Like a bone that has been pushed out of socket or a part that is out of place. But I will further the disordered when I get to Augustine. The main reason sin is love out of order or a dislocated heart is located in Matthew 22:36-40, where Jesus answered the question, "What are the two greatest commandments?" It is to love God with all your heart, strength, soul, and mind and to love others as yourself. To do the opposite of those is to disobey Jesus and God's commands. So without a desire to love God and others, we are left to have our hearts dislocated. Getting used to a disordered heart by sinning makes the heart become numb or specifically turn to stone.

The Desire For Love

C.S. Lewis speaks to the desires of the heart by giving a sort of trilemma in his chapter on "Hope" in Mere Christianity. He begins with people looking into their hearts to find things in this world that we were not designed for complete satisfaction. This he calls the fools way. Those objects will give us a little dose of satisfaction once we make them the ultimate love. But the feeling does not last very long.

What is used as the ultimate love could never and will never fulfill our desires. It was not created for that purpose. We have this desire for meaning, value, and purpose. But this desire cannot and will not be gratified by anything that is worldly. So when people think they can find value in their career, that will fail. They will think, "you know if I just find the right profession then I will be happy." Or with monetary wealth as the primary goal, the question on the mind will be "how much is enough?" The answer is usually one dollar more than what is already possessed. Or with a significant other, they say once they show me affection I will have found my value from that one person's love. Trust me on this, that will fail. That will fail hard. Another is ideas and thoughts. If I just find another way of thinking, if I read this thinker, if I mix a little bit on stoic philosophy, with a dash of the romantics, sprinkled with the enlightenment thinkers, that will make me feel as if I know how to process everything correctly. But with a large intelligence usually comes great sorrows.

All those objects, money, vocation, a love partner, ideologies, may not be an evil thing to want but when made ultimate, it creates people who are performance-based. You have to work yourself to a certain goal and once that is attained then you will be happy, then you will feel loved. All of those give just a small shot of happiness but the body builds up a tolerance to it like a drug. The need for a stronger dosage grows. But the proper dosage cannot be reached. Those objects will keep failing and the search continues for another. The search for meaning in anything but the source of love continues until death, the great equalizer, comes knocking at the door without the person ever finding satisfaction.

"In the day-to-day trenches of adult life, there is actually no such thing as atheism, there's no such thing as not worshipping. Everybody worships. The only choice we get is what to worship. And the compelling reason for choosing some sort of god or spiritual-type thing to worship, be it Yahweh or something like that, is that anything else you worship will eat you alive"-David Foster Wallace

Anything else you worship other than God will eat you alive.

The next part he addresses is pretty much nihilism. He calls these people the prigs, which is a worldly-wise person who behaves as if they are superior to others. The better description would be the embittered old critic who states that nothing is really worth living for so just drink and be merry. All of those passions you have were just really meaningless in the long run. Today we live, tomorrow we will die, so find meaning in that we have no meaning. But no one can live by that statement unless they want to live the consequences of it. Then the question becomes why not suicide?

“There is but one truly serious philosophical problem and that is suicide. Judging whether life is or is not worth living amounts to answering the fundamental question of philosophy. All the rest — whether or not the world has three dimensions, whether the mind has nine or twelve categories — comes afterwards. These are games; one must first answer.”-Albert Camus

As the German philosopher, Nietzsche popularized, "God is dead" and in that he referred to morals. Once those are gone how are we ought to carry out our desires to do anything in the right way? If there is no right way then there is no wrong way. Therefore your subjective desire is all that matters and there is no objective to life. But the funny thing about the "God is dead" is that he doesn't stay dead for long.

“I am convinced that when Nietzsche came to Switzerland and went insane, it was not because of venereal disease, though he did have this disease. Rather, it was because he understood that insanity was the only philosophic answer if the infinite-personal God does not exist.”- Francis Schaeffer

So we are left with this desire for meaning, for purpose, for a telos, and this where one of Lewis's most popular quotes comes in, "If we find ourselves with a desire that nothing in this world can satisfy, the most probable explanation is we were made for another world." So in a most basic sense, we have a desire for and a need for love that nothing in this world can satisfy. True satisfaction is from another world or better put from heaven.

A Love That Conquers

So why do we need to love? Prophecy and doing miracles is quite an amazing feat, how does love fit into these events? If I can do these acts why do I need to love? It is because it all begins with love. Love for something is the motive behind doing any action. It is a matter of where that love is directed at. Where might this love be going? It is to where ever the desire of the heart is. The heart will love what it loves. Without the renewal of our hearts on behalf of God, we are left desiring the wrong love.

Pride is seeking to love yourself above that of the other person. It can also be to put oneself higher than one should ever be. So Paul is first addressing this issue before he gets into what is and is not love. If you desire all that he lists above for the sake of yourself, then, what you are doing is utterly worthless. Quite simply "God opposes the proud and gives grace to the humble." If you want a lesson on humility read the latter half of Job, but here the outcome does not justify the cause. It is rather the intentions should justify whatever comes from it. But the way in which we receive this change in motivation is through God's love. Through grace.

The love of God when extended to us changes that desire to put ourself first. The first fruit of the Holy Spirit is love and there may be quite a good reason for this. It directly impacts our relations with other people. We love because God first loved us. We forgive because God forgives. We give grace because God gave us grace. Love is not swelling up of desires to kindle some little spark from within ourselves to be kind. Love is not simply a feeling. It is a response to the ever-loving-kindness of the grace of God given to us through his son's righteousness. Was this grace given in response to us reaching some requirement or upholding some law or living up to some standard? No. But still, we require others to live up to some standard before we show them love. That should not be. We have a grace narrative that gives us value and significance. Look into the mirror and see that grace puts everyone on equal standing. This is where love begins. This is where the motivation to love begins. At grace.

To whoever desires to experience this grace must position themselves at the fountain of grace, the river that never runs dry. Find the waterfall of grace and stand under its torrent. Wait and watch the fluidity of love shift to concrete once it is found. In thinking that the earning of favor was the necessity, the sweet taste of grace makes the word hallelujah roll off the lips. Grace makes us "taste and see that the lord is good (Psalm 34:8). "

Imagine the heart as the burning bush as in Exodus 3:1-4:17. With a regular flame, most wood would be eaten up as fire is necessitated by its burning of fuel. With the holy flame, nothing was left burnt since its fuel is from the eternal. Love is sometimes likened to a burning desire and holiness to that of a flame. With a holy type of love, we are left to be warmed and comforted. The imperfections in our hearts are burned away the closer we get to God. With the wrong type of love, we end up getting burnt. A lot of us know the smell of that smoke far too much for our liking. This is why sin is a love the has gone astray and like the quote above, sin, like fire, eats people alive. Hell is essentially freely finding your identity in anything but God. That is part of the reason why hell and sin are like burning alive. It keeps burning even when there is nothing good left to consume.

Romantic Love Is Addicting

Some drugs overtake the brain to stimulate the feelings that come from loving relationships, and more specifically, romances with others. The emotions that people experience when they are in love include increased sense of well-being, increased extraversion, increased empathy towards others, an increased emotional warmth, and more willingness to discuss emotionally charged memories. If you begin to have altered vision with those feelings you are not experiencing love, you somehow took ecstasy. MDMA, Ecstasy, Molly, all have the same effects as being in love with someone romantically. Thus, if we look at the effect of the high wearing off to that of the drug being taken away after an addiction we can see if that also correlates with an addiction to romantic love being taken away or lost. The effects of the regular use of Molly after the high include sleep loss/insomnia, concentration difficulties, lack of appetite, depression, and impulsivity. Those are the same effects of a broken heart. Thus, love is a drug.

If we become addicted to love and reverse God is love into love is God, we become greatly disjointed. Just like most idols, you get high for a period of time and then need more and more. By building up a tolerance, you have an increased level of intimacy that you require from others. There can be a lot of problems that come from the love high such that actions are committed that would not have been made given sobriety. Usually, it goes one step at a time, from a simple kiss to making out then to third base and now you wake up in the morning with guilt and regret. The worse part is we still need our fix. Part of any type of breakup or loss is that our brains want to remember the great memories in order to get some serotonin. Thus in order to move past someone, the best advice would be to process those memories, focus on the aspects of the relationship which were not very happy without degrading the other person, and look to the future. If you don't then your brain will continue to bring them up to get that shot of serotonin, and when that serotonin is being reabsorbed you will feel quite depressed. It is almost like people were not supposed to feel this dejection. It seems like we are made to find a love that does not cause us to become contrite.

"Deceiving others. That is the world's definition of romance."-Oscar Wilde

Continuing the topic of romance, in my opinion, it is overrated. I've learned from people who have had strongly dedicated relationships is that it is easy to make the spouse or boy/girlfriend a savior. One day the spouse will be dead and so thus your savior. In all relationships, death comes for one before the other.

We all we have to say goodbye for the last time to everyone we meet and love. Interestingly, goodbye is short for a phrase from the medieval times. When leaving the castle for battle, the community would gather on the city walls saying God be with you to the knights as they ventured out. Goodbye is a shortened abbreviation of the phrase "God be with ye." So if you have love for someone you will want to say goodbye to them before they go. To one of my favorite romantic poets, William Blake, death is not the end though. It is the beginning. To bid farewell is to start a new adventure. So when death do we part be willing to say goodbye.

What Is Love Not?

It does not envy or boast, is not arrogant and rude, does not insist on its own way, it is not irritable or resentful, and it does not rejoice at wrongdoing. Let's take a closer look at a phrase in particular, "Love does not insist in its own way." Insisting on its own way can be taken to mean demanding upon one's own conviction. As in caring for the self over the good of another person. It is like someone who only watches out for their own skin, never willing to make the sacrifice play. This means loving in its own way is trying to put yourself unreasonably above others.

"What is courage? It is loving your neighbor's safety over your own.

What is cowardice? It is loving your own safety over theirs.

What is injustice? It is loving your own power over the rights of other people.

What is justice? It is putting the needs and rights of other people over that of your own power and self-interest."-Tim Keller

The result of sin is injustice against ourselves, others, and God. Sin always breaks someone's heart. It can be your own heart, or another's, or God's.

"Now physical beauty, to be sure, is a good created by God, but it is a temporal good, very low in the scale of goods; and if it is loved in preference to God, the eternal, internal, and sempiternal Good, that love is as wrong as the miser’s love for gold, with the abandonment of justice, though the fault is in the man, not in the gold. This is true of everything created; though it is good, it can be loved in the right way or in the wrong way – in the right way, that is, when the proper order is kept, in the wrong way when that order is upset. (City of God, XV.22)"- Saint Augustine

Each person and relationship has different variations of values. Value usually is demonstrated through the amount of attention it deserves. You can only show how much you care for them by how available you are for I t. You cannot expect to foster loving friendships and other relationships without making yourself available to them. Some relationships require more attention and availability. Those come in something like a hierarchy. The whole system trickles down from what is on top. What is put on top is what has the most value. Since there is a God, he deserves infinite attention and availability. It creates a waterfall of love at the source. It flows down into all other aspects of each relationship. It creates friendships closer than that of a brother, romantic relationships of one plus one making one, family relationships that can suffer through the fire, and a relationship with the divine comforter. Put anything else above those relationships make them corrupted.

What is Love?

It is patient and kind. Patience is difficult but it stands true. Patience is the time between inserting the money into the vending machine and the product coming out for you to enjoy. Something is happening. The cost was paid upfront and now the time is coming to see the fruit of the labor. Waiting demonstrates the worth of what is being waited on. The higher the worth of something, the longer it takes to receive at times. Kindness in this instance has an interesting connection. Kindness is used elsewhere to describe a gentle warhorse. A creature that has so much strength that it can seriously injure a person but instead uses its strength to bear the burden of someone else. Real love binds together strength, endurance, and control like a war horse.

Now love is more than simply a duty. It is actually the death of duty and likewise, duty is the death of love. Love is given undeserving. Like grace, it is gift. A gift to another in the fashion of bliss. Let's say I have been away from my (hypothetical) significant other for a while and decide to surprise them with a return home. I call ahead to the local candy shop and order some chocolates to pick up. After I obtain the food, I get home and knock on the front door. My significant other steps out and I hand over the present. She looks at me with a smile and says, "awww why'd you do that?" Then I reply with a stern, "it was my duty..." Now she probably won't like that reply that much. What I should rather say is "nothing makes me happier than seeing you in delight because I love you." (Also pray that I won't have to work in hypotheticals with that story in the future.) But I believe that is the proper way of addressing the difference between love and duty. Duty or obligation takes the choice out of love. Love is a gift and not a simple requirement. Love is a way of saying to someone, "It's good that you exist; it's good you are in this world."

Let's try an experiment. Imagine your crush, girl/boyfriend, significant other, or someone you really see a future with saying the words I love you to your face for the first time. How does that make you feel? Like a dream come true. Now imagine that same person walking up to another person and saying I love you the next day while you watch. Like having a shot of poison straight into the heart.

"The words, I love you, are only meaningful because they are given committedly and exclusively to you. Outside of that moral framework of exclusivity and commitment, they become cheap. They mean nothing. That's why a very famous group of British philosophers, the Spice Girls, published a song with these lyrics, 'don't tell me you love me just tell me you'll be there.'" -Michael Ramsden

Just tell me you'll be there.

Love Must Have Truth

Love cannot be divorced from truth. Thus, in order to know love, what must be known is the reality of the object of the love. Falsity cannot be loved. That is the problem with love a lot of times. We have become so used to seeing the falsity of image in people thinking that it is reality. Half the time we make the person into what we think they should be instead of what they actually are. That is why one of the loneliest places is the internet because most online relationships are built on falsehoods. Part of the process of truly loving someone is seeing who they are by wading through the deceptions our mind places upon itself in searching for someone to give love. We make up certain aspects of a person and when we find out that person is not what we thought they were, we are surprised. It is a paradox in looking for the truth of a person in all types of relationships. In order to find authenticity, you must first be authentic. In order to find true love, you must first present yourself as you truly are.

Love being built on truth is the only way to find "true" love. The way we find the truth is through judgment. So love has an element of judging whether the object receiving the love is bearing its true image. We must see someone with their imperfections as well as their good qualities in order to love authentically. At times the only way to get to the heart of someone is to take away all the false images that they have. In order to get a breakthrough in the heart, it might have to be broken. Love might have to be divorced.

In The Great Divorce, a woman is presented before a spirit from heaven and they speak on why the woman cannot and does not want to go to heaven. Lewis's main idea for the book is that the gates of hell are locked from the inside and not the outside. In short, the woman is angry at God for taking away her son. Her love for her son makes him an idol. Pam, the mother, states, "If He loved me, He'd let me see the boy. If He loved me why did He take Michael (her son) away?" The spirit replies after a little bit of dialogue, "The only remedy was to take away its object. It was a case of surgery. When the first kind of love was thwarted, then there was a chance that in the loneliness, in the silence, something else might begin to grow."

At times, in order to love someone, we must not be the surgeon like God but be able to aid him in that process of fixing that disordered love. To be the nurse that stands by awaiting the needs of the surgeon, maybe a thread in order to stitch up a scar, a knife to cut out the infection, or bandages to heal a wound from the past. We standby willing to help where needed. That way a new type of love can grow from the hurt, and not simply grow in the person but in us. Now hurt people will continue to hurt others but healed people will continue to heal others. If we are to be a healers, we must be healed. And how are we to be healed? By looking to the great physician for the infirmities to be mended. "For he wounds, but he binds up; he shatters, but he heals." (Job 5:18)

Love That Bears Grief

Love bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, and endures all things. To love is to suffer. By this we know love, that he laid down his life for us, and we ought to lay down our lives for the brothers (1 John 3:16). The ought that is given is a moral obligation. that means it is not simply a suggestion to the Christian but a commandment. A commandment to lay down our lives. Not simply to die like a bodyguard getting shot protecting a valuable person, though it may be similar to that in some circumstances. It is to give a little bit of the time that you have each day to another. The most precious gift we can give to another is time. To lay down a little bit of life each and every day and show what love is. To love is to bear heartbreak with another, to endure through the pain of loss due to the depravity of man, to believe that the pain will come to past, and to hope in the grace of God to take the fragments and make a beautiful art piece.

Another's Sorrow by William Blake

Can I see another's woe,
And not be in sorrow too?
Can I see another's grief,
And not seek for kind relief?

Can I see a falling tear,
And not feel my sorrow's share?
Can a father see his child
Weep, nor be with sorrow filled?

Can a mother sit and hear
An infant groan, an infant fear?
No, no! never can it be!
Never, never can it be!

And can He who smiles on all
Hear the wren with sorrows small,
Hear the small bird's grief and care,
Hear the woes that infants bear -

And not sit beside the nest,
Pouring pity in their breast,
And not sit the cradle near,
Weeping tear on infant's tear?

And not sit both night and day,
Wiping all our tears away?
O no! never can it be!
Never, never can it be!

He doth give His joy to all:
He becomes an infant small,
He becomes a man of woe,
He doth feel the sorrow too.

Think not thou canst sigh a sigh,
And thy Maker is not by:
Think not thou canst weep a tear,
And thy Maker is not near.

O He gives to us His joy,
That our grief He may destroy:
Till our grief is fled and gone
He doth sit by us and moan.
Can I see another's woe,
And not be in sorrow too?
Can I see another's grief,
And not seek for kind relief?

Can I see a falling tear,
And not feel my sorrow's share?
Can a father see his child
Weep, nor be with sorrow filled?

Can a mother sit and hear
An infant groan, an infant fear?
No, no! never can it be!
Never, never can it be!

And can He who smiles on all
Hear the wren with sorrows small,
Hear the small bird's grief and care,
Hear the woes that infants bear -

And not sit beside the nest,
Pouring pity in their breast,
And not sit the cradle near,
Weeping tear on infant's tear?

And not sit both night and day,
Wiping all our tears away?
O no! never can it be!
Never, never can it be!

He doth give His joy to all:
He becomes an infant small,
He becomes a man of woe,
He doth feel the sorrow too.

Think not thou canst sigh a sigh,
And thy Maker is not by:
Think not thou canst weep a tear,
And thy Maker is not near.

O He gives to us His joy,
That our grief He may destroy:
Till our grief is fled and gone
He doth sit by us and moan.

We seek a quality that no person can fulfill though. Almost like we need someone to be omnipresent when we need them. We want love in one particular way at a time. That is through finding comfort in what someone can give. So when love is focused on as a particular what is sought is only those particular qualities. Standards and characteristics are sought as the particular because that creates some level of intimacy. Those particulars, whether it be affirmation, affection, service, physicality, etc, are the pieces that we believe have been missing. The thought process is that in gaining those attributes we can create a oneness of being or at the very least something close to perfection. What is not sought is the absolute, for something to fulfill those desires completely. We need the absolutism of an unfettered love for it to be pure in essence and being. What we all deep down desire is for love to step on the scene in whole actuality. What is desired is for something to come and make all the pain, the patience, and the brokenness have a purpose. For love to become incarnate.

Where Heaven Meets Earth

Who will sit by us and moan? What is this incarnation? From where does the fountain of grace position itself? Where is this person who can bear another's sorrows? How are our desires from another world fulfilled? Where is the place the artist makes the broken pieces into beauty? Where is this great physician's clinic? Where is love made true? Where is true love shown?

The incarnation of love was found in a manger. The fountain of grace began with blood and tears in a garden. Another's sorrows were bore at a friend's tomb. The desires we have were crafted with the hands of the divine with broken pieces as his paintbrush. The great physician's clinic is marked by calloused knees. Love was made right on the road up Golgatha hill. And true love was shown on a tree.

Love has become incarnate and stepped onto the scene. The covenant has been made between the people who wish to have love fully and love himself. The rings in his hands from nails show that he is committed to those who want him. If you wish to find a love eternal come see how he loved us. Find the love that is speaking. He says come to me and fall on your knees in a proposal. You will stand up to see the hands with holes hold you and press you close. He will show you the hell he went to pull you out of the darkness. He will show you the depths of his mercy and the goodness of his justice. He will show you your heart break has a purpose. That it was worth it if you choose to find rest in him.

"Come to me, all who labor and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest. Take my yoke upon you, and learn from me, for I am gentle and lowly in heart, and you will find rest for your souls."- Matthew 11:28-29

“Our heart is restless until it rests in you.”-Saint Augustine Confessions Book I