With today being a certain holiday, I decided to make this blog about love.
One very common sentiment that I see from people is that love is the only real truth in a world where everything is competing and everyone claims to be right. This sentiment really looms large especially with religion. With so many different faiths around the world either fighting with each other or fighting within themselves there does not seem to be any solid ground to stand on. Some seem to think that all religion is a farce (empty religion is definitely a farce). With this conclusion, people might often turn to love as being the only constant truth we can stand on.
In one very recent movie one of the characters says something about the character of love. In the movie Interstellar Dr. Brand says that “Love isn’t something we invented. Its observable, powerful . . . something we can’t yet understand. Maybe it’s some evidence, some artifact of a higher dimension that we can’t consciously perceive . . . Love is the one thing we’re capable of perceiving that transcends dimensions of time and space. Maybe we should trust that, even if we can’t understand it.”
To a certain degree, these statements are right. Empty religion gets us nowhere and love is always higher than that. However, the question I would ask is where is the source of love? I know from what I read in the scriptures that God is love. He does not merely possess love, His very essence is love. God gets to define what love is. It is a very good thing that first John says “God is love” and not “love is God.” If the latter were true we could render love to whatever subjective opinion of what we want it to be. This too is unstable ground to stand on as other empty religions are. We humans are far too wayward and twisted to be able to define healthy love. Only God whose thoughts are not our thoughts and whose ways are higher than our ways can be the real foundation for healthy love.
But someone might argue, what about the wrath of God? He cannot be all loving and yet punish sinners. He cannot possess both love and wrath. The only answer I have for that would be that God is wrathful because when his children willingly go down a self-destructive path he pronounces judgement to prompt change. It is for our own good out of His own love. When people are blind to all other options than self-destruction, even if it feels good, something has to be done to wake them up from their slumber. This seems harsh but it all has a source in love.
Paul said in first Corinthians that faith hope and love will remain and the greatest is love. Without it we are nothing. No amount of spiritual gifts will ever matter if there is no love in them. His long description of love in the thirteenth chapter shows us the real character of love and it’s a very convicting one. If love is patient and kind and keeps no record of wrongs, I already see myself not meeting the criteria. It must be more powerful than any strength I have.
At the end of this we are left with this conclusion. Yes love can be trusted more than all other things. Also, God is love therefore, we must go to very essence of what love is which is God himself in order to have the unshakable love we search for. Because of that, love can only be trusted if it is from God. It cannot be trusted if it is from someone’s subjective views on love which comes from empty, fallen, human wisdom which will pass away.
