August 2007

You see it in the movies all the time; a couple falls in love and even though there are unconquerable obstacles, they persevere and eventually find themselves together.  They marry and live happily ever after.  After all how could it end up any differently?  They were in love.  They did not want to be in love, they were not looking to fall in love, it just happened.  And so we are taught about love.  Love seems to be beyond our ability to control, like believing lima beans to be tasty.  For those of you who do not know it, I hate lima beans.  I did not choose to hate them, in fact, it would have been to my advantage as a youth to like them.  I know that they are a great source of potassium, I am aware that they are good for me, and I may even choose to eat them on occasion, but I cannot will myself to enjoy them.

Love seems to have a mind of its own and so we often wait for it to happen rather than make it happen.  As a parent you might tell one of your children to be nice to their brother or sister, but you would not likely tell them to love them.  And yet, when Jesus was asked to identify the greatest commandment, he said, “Love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul and all your strength”, almost as if love were a choice.  It would have been easier if he had said, “Obey the Lord your God,” or “Follow the Lord your God”.  And, in fact, that is exactly what the Pharisees thought when they saw the command to love; obey or follow. 

In New Testament Greek, there are four words used to describe love.  One word is used to describe mother love, one brotherly love and the third speaks of romantic or sexual love.  The forth word is agape and describes Christian love.  It is a special type of love that was shown to us by Christ as he lived among us.  It is a love that finds its origins in the will but does not stop there.  

You see, Hollywood teaches us that love happens to us, that it is a force we cannot control, but Scripture teaches us that love can and must be learned.  If we are going to learn to love like Christ, we must begin by acknowledging that we are at our core are selfish.  Apart from Christ, we love only because it benefits us; either directly as we receive love back from someone, or indirectly as it gives us reasons to think better of ourselves.  What Christ’s love calls us to do is to look past our selfishness and pursue others for who they are rather than what they can do for us. 

This is where our relationship with God takes center stage.  As young Christians, it is easy for us to be bowled over by all that God does for us.  We love God and we love what God has done for us.  We seek God’s assistance and rejoice when our prayers are answered.  The danger is that we can ultimately view God as the Giver of gifts, love God when the gifts are delivered and become angry or indifferent when the gifts are not.  It is at this point that we are challenged to grow in our relationship with God.  Can we look beyond our selfishness and love God even when our prayers are not answered?  We can do so if we are able to see past God the provider and see the God Who loves and Who Is.   We learn these lessons through study, through fellowship with other believers and through relationship with God; pouring out our heart and listening to the heart of God.  Listen to me carefully: we should think often of the many blessings God has given us, and our thankfulness should spark love.  But our love will only find its completion in a knowledge of God’s heart.

In the movie The Princess Bride, the heroine Buttercup, has a servant Wesley.  He loves her, but she sees him only as a servant.  Every time she asks him to do something, he says, “As you wish”.  Over time she realizes that his phrase, “As you wish”, is filled with more meaning than she first thought.  Eventually he tells her, “When you heard me say, “As you wish”, I was really saying, “I love you”.  And so it is with us.  We initially see God as our servant, someone who gives us the things we request.  It is only later that we see that those gifts and the withholding of gifts are invitations to love more than the God Who Gives, it is an invitation to love the God Who Is.