love...twue love

for those of you that follow this blog, a lot has happened since i last posted. i am now on active duty with the navy as deputy chaplain for mag-31 at the marine corps air station in beaufort, sc. a majority of my work so far involves trying to fix marriages that are on the verge of calling it quits. the command sergeant major came and talked to me and asked me what i thought the problem might be. i told him that i believed a lot had to do with immaturity. however, last night, my prognosis was called into question.

while sitting down with my bride and watching one of our favorite guilty pleasures, "the bachelor", jake, this season's bachelor, was talking about his decision to eliminate one of the four remaining girls. in his many interviews, he kept repeating the phrase, "i am falling in love with her", referring to the four girls in question. i began thinking about that phrase, "falling in love". i myself have used it many times. however, i believe this is a large part of the problem with marriages today. we have a very skewed idea of what love actually is. hence the phrase, "falling in love".

think about that phrase for a second. what is love? a ditch? a grave? it must be if it's something you can fall into. i think a more proper phrasing would be "falling in lust". after all, that's what it is a majority of the time. and lust is definitely a rut, or a grave. and you can definitely fall into it. but isn't that the picture that is painted for us on the tv and in the movies? love is shown as a trivial feeling that is usually based on a sexual attraction or intimacy. love has been trivialized down to nothing more than a feeling. and marriages built on the shallowness of this viewpoint sprout quickly, like a seed that falls on the patch of dirt on top of a rock, but as soon as adversity hits, the "love" that bloomed so quickly withers and fades and the marriage ends.

so the question that is left is "what is true love?" one definition we can find is in 1 corinthians 13. in the list that is presented there, nowhere do we see that love is a feeling. nowhere do we see that love is based on physical attraction. instead, love is portrayed a very selfless action. i used to say that love is a decision. however, in recent days i have realized something. love is more than a decision. in order to truly define love, we need only to look to the One who personified love. Christ. He came to this earth out of love for us, denied everything that was rightfully His, and sacrificed Himself out of love for us. in that portrait of love, we do not see in any way that Christ's love for us was based on anything about us. in fact, we give Him every day reason after reason NOT to love us. yet He loves us still. in corinthians, husbands are told to love their wives the way that Christ loves the church and gave Himself for her. so the answer: love is CHRIST.

if love is Christ, then we are to look to His example of love. even in the face of infidelity, Christ's love for us remains true. why? because His love is not based on trivial and shallow ideals. it is pure love, the love that we are to have for our neighbor. if we are to have it for our neighbor, it is reasonable to expect that we have it that much more for our spouse. if we seek to love as Christ loves us, then it will not matter how mad our spouse makes us, nor how many pounds they put on in that third or fourth year of marriage. it will not matter if they return our love, or if they give it to someone else. we will still love them because we are modeling Christ.

this valentine's day, remember what love really is. it isn't flowers or candy or romance or candlelight dinners. those are all expressions of love. but they are not love. flowers wilt, chocolate gets eaten, candles go out, and romance comes and goes. love, Christ-like love, lasts forever.