"Peace begins with love."
What a beautiful saying. It gave me pause to think about it, though. For me, a person who professes to be a believer in Jesus Christ, my definition for love is different compared to the definition of love from someone who doesn't profess Jesus as their personal savior. How would a person who isn't in Christ interpret that message? Love in the sense of liking something like cake or Friday nights? Love like the kind I have for my mother or baby sister? Love like the kind I have for my girlfriend or that special someone? What kind of love is that statement referring to?
Who knows.
I would imagine most people would assume the love we should have for everyone. I love my neighbor in the sense of respecting them and leaving them alone. What a pathetic definition we give to love. When someone says they love someone, everyone narrows it down to only three kinds of love: friendly love (likes to be around that person), familial love (blood-relation love, the purest form of love you can have for someone), and lustful love (the kind you can have for anyone you want to do things with...sexually). However, I want to point out a love that is missing from this list. The love we can have for others that don't have any of those qualities. The love that can't really be described because it is defined by the person who has it.
I remember writing a post a long time ago about how people are not capable of loving one another the way Jesus loves because they do not have the Holy Spirit, the author of our love. I want to come back to that with a little bit more wisdom and insight. People can have sacrificial love for others even without Jesus. However, this sacrificial love is broken. It is not whole and can only be performed at minimal capacity for someone without the power of the Holy Spirit. The love a mother has for her child is completely irrational and expected. A love so closely related to the love Christ has for us: irrational, expected, and undeserved. The broken nature we have is what causes that love to wane and sometimes (maybe most of the time) disappear or even turn into hatred. Thankfully, Jesus and his love for us is eternal and unconditional. But I digress.
The love I am referring to is a love I have experienced with a very dear friend of mine. I loved him so much (I still do, so stop thinking otherwise) that I couldn't really explain what that love was. If someone was to ask me I would immediately answer with a typical response like, "I have the love of Christ for him!" Which, I hope, is true. But when he told me a while ago that he started dating someone, something inside me turned upside down.
It felt wrong.
Now, what are you thinking about, Dear Reader? I can almost guarantee there is a thought in the back of your head right now, "wait, is he....coming out and saying...that he had romantic feelings for his friend?"
And here comes the reason for this post.
The love I had for my friend was not romantic. No, not even close. I had no sexual feelings towards him, ever. The love I had was a selfish love. I was jealous when I found out he was dating someone. Wouldn't you only be jealous because YOU wanted to date him? No, I was jealous because I knew I wasn't the most important person in his life. I can probably safely say I was never the most important person in his life at any point in our friendship, but the fact that he was outwardly showing his affection towards someone other than me, bothered me. This selfish, clingy love that no one ever really talks about, is what I want to talk about in this post.
I started watching a show called Steven Universe over the Summer. There is a character, Pearl, who was very close to Steven's mother. She was sort of a servant and protected Steven's mother, Rose, with her life. At first, I thought of it as a love that one would have for a dear, close friend, similar to the love I have for my friends. As the show progressed it started to become painfully annoying and real how the love Pearl had for Rose turned more and more romantic. It got to the point where the love Pearl had for Rose competed with the love of the man Rose had a child with. Again, I related that to the feelings I had for my friend. A sort of love that isn't tangled in sexual lust, but more of a selfish longing to be with them forever. Both are equally wrong and immoral, but they are both different from each other. I feel like the show missed a really good opportunity to showcase the odd love two friends have for one another. The breaking point happened when Pearl sang the song "It's over isn't it?" Pretty much confirming the love Pearl had for Rose was purely romantic. On the other hand, when I think about how the world has its extremely narrow views of love, it was only natural for the show to play the lesbian card. Love between two people always has to have some sexual element to it. Why? Why can't two men love each other without the sexual desire? They can, but the world says otherwise.
This strange love is something I want to train and control. I think it is a marvelous thing, but can easily spiral into sin. For some reason, even us Christians confuse intimacy between friends with sexuality. The love I have for my friend is something I feel like I can carry over to my future spouse one day. Not transfer, but carry over. The darkness within our hearts messes with the pureness of love between people. It is unavoidable, but with the Holy Spirit, anything is possible.
Steven Universe showed me the beauty of love between friends and how that love can turn into obsession and selfish motivations. Can two people of the same gender decide to love each other and be with each other without being sexual? Yes, but that is like saying you can stay awake for a week without a moment of rest. Humans are evil at their core; we always manage to mess things up.
This love I am describing is something that is never spoken about simply because it is foreign to the world, and not acknowledged by fellow believers for the sake of unity. I want to talk about it. It's too beautiful to not talk about it.
I think the underlying problem with this subject is the definition we have for love. Is there a difference between the love I have for my mother and love I will have for my future spouse? Of course not. I want to have the love of Christ for everyone I meet. A selfless, sacrificial love that is too perfect to perform without the Holy Spirit. God blessed man with the woman, but when you think about the spiritual side of life, gender is unimportant, it is only important in this physical world. I am a man, but I am not defined by my body or even my mind. I am defined by Jesus and what he has and is doing. I have to completely detach myself from this body. Isn't that the point of becoming a believer? So why must I restrict my love based on a person's gender? Hardly, I am to have the same love for my future spouse as I do with my immediate family and friends.
The tricky part of this topic comes along when we talk about sexuality. Where does that fit in with God's love? I can't say why, but God really holds sex in high regards. He goes so far as to describe that act of sex as a man and woman becoming one. I equate this with the ultimate way two people can show, physically, their love for one another. God made this exclusive between a man and a woman. Two men cannot share this intimacy together, which is why the love I speak of is barely brought up. Sex is a reflection of the intimacy God desires to have with the church. Does that disgust you? It should. You and I, Dear Reader, both find this a repulsive thought, but that is only because we are sinners. In God's eyes, sex is one of, if not, the most beautiful things a man and woman can do with each other. Think about it, out of the act of sex, babies are made, the most innocent and purest creatures you will ever find on this earth. However, sex does not change the love that I have for my future spouse over the love I have for my family and friends. I am speaking on love, not physical intimacy, which, again, is exclusive between a man and a woman.
There is only one love for believers. The love of Jesus. Whether it be towards your mother, brother, spouse, girlfriend, or your friend, it is something disconnected to the physical world. The love Jesus gives us is spiritual. Don't narrow it down to something constrained to the physical world.
The love I have for the people around me is something I must not taint with jealousy, obsession, and sexual desire. It must be fueled by the Holy Spirit. Detaching the world's definitions of love with God's definition of love is so hard, but it is so worth it. I have experienced loving friendships devoid of sexual motivation. You can't find this kind of love in the world.
You simply can't.
This strange love is something I want to train and control. I think it is a marvelous thing, but can easily spiral into sin. For some reason, even us Christians confuse intimacy between friends with sexuality. The love I have for my friend is something I feel like I can carry over to my future spouse one day. Not transfer, but carry over. The darkness within our hearts messes with the pureness of love between people. It is unavoidable, but with the Holy Spirit, anything is possible.
Steven Universe showed me the beauty of love between friends and how that love can turn into obsession and selfish motivations. Can two people of the same gender decide to love each other and be with each other without being sexual? Yes, but that is like saying you can stay awake for a week without a moment of rest. Humans are evil at their core; we always manage to mess things up.
This love I am describing is something that is never spoken about simply because it is foreign to the world, and not acknowledged by fellow believers for the sake of unity. I want to talk about it. It's too beautiful to not talk about it.
I think the underlying problem with this subject is the definition we have for love. Is there a difference between the love I have for my mother and love I will have for my future spouse? Of course not. I want to have the love of Christ for everyone I meet. A selfless, sacrificial love that is too perfect to perform without the Holy Spirit. God blessed man with the woman, but when you think about the spiritual side of life, gender is unimportant, it is only important in this physical world. I am a man, but I am not defined by my body or even my mind. I am defined by Jesus and what he has and is doing. I have to completely detach myself from this body. Isn't that the point of becoming a believer? So why must I restrict my love based on a person's gender? Hardly, I am to have the same love for my future spouse as I do with my immediate family and friends.
The tricky part of this topic comes along when we talk about sexuality. Where does that fit in with God's love? I can't say why, but God really holds sex in high regards. He goes so far as to describe that act of sex as a man and woman becoming one. I equate this with the ultimate way two people can show, physically, their love for one another. God made this exclusive between a man and a woman. Two men cannot share this intimacy together, which is why the love I speak of is barely brought up. Sex is a reflection of the intimacy God desires to have with the church. Does that disgust you? It should. You and I, Dear Reader, both find this a repulsive thought, but that is only because we are sinners. In God's eyes, sex is one of, if not, the most beautiful things a man and woman can do with each other. Think about it, out of the act of sex, babies are made, the most innocent and purest creatures you will ever find on this earth. However, sex does not change the love that I have for my future spouse over the love I have for my family and friends. I am speaking on love, not physical intimacy, which, again, is exclusive between a man and a woman.
There is only one love for believers. The love of Jesus. Whether it be towards your mother, brother, spouse, girlfriend, or your friend, it is something disconnected to the physical world. The love Jesus gives us is spiritual. Don't narrow it down to something constrained to the physical world.
The love I have for the people around me is something I must not taint with jealousy, obsession, and sexual desire. It must be fueled by the Holy Spirit. Detaching the world's definitions of love with God's definition of love is so hard, but it is so worth it. I have experienced loving friendships devoid of sexual motivation. You can't find this kind of love in the world.
You simply can't.
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