I hope you all have the cheesy theme song from Night at the Roxbury currently running through your head. It’s what aways comes to my mind when I hear that question… even though I’ve never seen the movie.Again, I haven’t posted in a while. I’m exhausted and just trying to make it until next week when I get to escape for some needed R&R. I’ve been thinking lately, however, about my own definition of love. As I continue on this journey of trying to live in community with people I realize that all over the New Testament people are telling us we should love one another. That’s scary because I don’t know what that looks like. Danielle, one of my new roommates, and I have been talking lately about what it means to approach people ‘in love’ or to communicate ‘in love’. Sometimes I think we use it as a guise for telling people things we don’t like about them… kind of like a ‘for your own good’ thing. I don’t think this was what it was intended to be.
I’ve also been learning lately that love is perceived differently by different people. I’ve learned this the hard way by realizing that things I have always done to communicate love and affection for people I care about aren’t necessarily making people feel cared for or appreciated. But, maybe that’s not the point. It’s a real struggle for me to come to a definition of love that is separate from affection and general ‘warm and fuzziness’. Yet I see that type of love as incomplete and unsatisfying.
Anyway, as I was reflecting on this yesterday I started thinking about the passage in 1 Corinthians that you always hear at weddings… you know, the one in chapter 13 where Paul talks about love. I figured this would be as good a place as any to start a study on what love might mean. Here’s what I’ve found so far…
1. Paul uses many more ‘love is not’ phrases than ‘love is’ phrases
2. I don’t know what it means to dishonour someone (or not dishonour them in this case)
3. Love chooses for the other person
I find it interesting that Paul chooses to define love by telling us what it isn’t. I can only wonder if that is because our world is SO bad at demonstrating it that we wouldn’t even be able to wrap our minds around a positive definition. I wonder if even when Paul was writing, people in the world were doing such a bad job of loving one another that it was easier for Paul to simply point out to them things they were doing that were not loving. Perhaps this is just me wanting to find comfort in the shortcomings of my Christian ancestors so that I don’t feel like a complete and total failure.
Since I started working in the inner-city I have had many conversations with our pastor about honour. He spent most of his adult life in Pakistan, an honour culture, and draws many interesting comparisons between Pakistan and our neighbourhood. I wish I understood more about honour but I really don’t. Part of it is that I grew up in an individualistic society that encouraged me to look out for number one and I think honour is more of a community value. I am convinced, however, that there is something important about love that is wrapped up in this idea of honour.
It’s interesting to me that we attempt to sell love in our culture as this feel-good, emotion based high. It’s marketed as a drug through chick flicks and soap operas. I don’t know if I’m off base but when I watch these things or read magazines or listen to stories from young girls, I end up thinking a lot more about what I get out of love. I focus a lot more on the feelings of euphoria, or whatever, that I should be experiencing in this cultural idea of love. Yet this doesn’t stand up to scripture at all. In fact, a close comparison can only lead me to the conclusion that our culture is sadly disillusioned about what love is.
So, what’s a girl to do? I said at the beginning of this year that it will be one of learning to love and be loved. I am convinced that those two things are central to figuring out not only what it means to live in community but what it means to live as a Christian in this world. It is annoyingly frustrating, but thankfully I have a really good teacher and some pretty great fellow students. It’s exciting to be in a community that is asking these questions. I think back to eight months ago when I knew two people in this entire city and am so grateful that God is knitting me into a family again… a broken, kind of messed-up family… but a family who is deeply trying to figure out what it looks like to follow Jesus and to live authentically in that.
March 12, 2008 at 11:26 pm
haven’t read this yet. but look! link: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PTc_FoELt8s you’ll like it, and cry, like I did, a bit, I think
March 13, 2008 at 12:50 am
Oooooh. Tracy. Such a good blog! I have totally been thinking about this exact thing. How do I know God loves me, how do I know I love God? And especially, in my case, how do I honour my parents? What the heck? What is honour?
You last paragraph is my favourite. I thought of quoting one of the lines in there, but I realize I loe all of it. Well done, Tracy. Great BLOG!
I’ve even been reading 1 Cor. 13, too! I’m trying to figure out what love is as I work on my new living situation. What is the difference between a “comfortable favourable habit” and “self-sacrificial love”? What does it look like to love someone the way they need to be loved?
I’m also reading The Five Love Languages, which recently made me through it across the room, but sadly, it’s rather wise psychology so… I’ll try to get it done (and picked up from across the room) before I see you next.
March 13, 2008 at 12:52 am
* throw it across the room
March 15, 2008 at 1:40 pm
If there were rules to love, it would take away all the good things (and bad) that come with it. Why does everything have to be analyzed and disected until you’re positive that you’re doing it, living it, feeling it, thinking it, exactly the way God wanted you/us to? God didn’t invent love .. he invented people with the ability to feel and think and act and make choices. It is up to us to live out our own lives and feel things the way we want to feel them. If everyone thought, felt, did, said, etc etc exactly like everyone else then we would be at a standstill in society. If you are going to analyze what God wants love to look like, then we could also wonder what he wants stress and frustration to feel like. More things that have been brought into society and are in place to keep us healthy, alive, rejuvinated and normal even though they may not make us feel great for a period of time. I can imagine that God, or any higher power would not want anyone to be getting stressed or frustrated over things such as love.
March 15, 2008 at 1:41 pm
LOVE YOU SISTER