Love is Love
Posted by Troy Eckhardt on June 7, 2014 at 9:02 am
After a Facebook friend posted this image, a lively debate ensued. One woman asked two questions which I felt compelled to answer: “What is love?” and “So it’s conditional?”
The following are my responses:
“What is love?”
Jesus said, “Greater love hath no man than this, that a man lay down his life for his friends.” From this we can deduce that love is the extent to which a person is willing to sacrifice for the benefit of another.
Because he said “greater love,” we understand that there are degrees of love. I might love you enough to give you some food that I purchased for myself. I might love you enough to give up my dream so you can pursue yours. I might love you enough to die so you can live.
Please notice that by this definition, love has absolutely NOTHING to do with sex. In our society, we tend to equate the two, such as we do when we dismiss homosexuality’s dark side with a flippant, “Love is love.”
A statement like that implies something like, “Well, we don’t choose the person with whom we fall in love, so let’s have sex with that person no matter who or what they are, for as long as we want, with no real commitment.” That isn’t love: it’s lust, and THAT disease infects both homosexuals and heterosexuals equally.
According to Jesus’ definition above, we DO choose whom we love. It’s a decision made consciously. We can choose to love multitudes of people, (but we don’t have sex with them all.)
Picture this: A man says his wedding vows to the woman to whom some cosmic force caused him to be attracted. He promises to “love” this woman until that mysterious force switches off that attraction. The woman reciprocates with a similar promise. That’s really meaningful, isn’t it?
How can we give a marriage meaning? Do we throw a little intention at the process? No, we DUMP all of our intention into it. The man swears before God and assembled humans that he will sacrifice DAILY for that woman as long as he has breath, Even after body parts sag. Even after she is unfaithful. Even after horrible disfigurement. Even after mental illness, physical ailment, and a total collapse of memory. And the woman swears the same for him. If they keep these promises through their daily choices, then THAT’S marital commitment; that’s love.
“So it’s conditional?”
Yes. All decisions are conditional. You can promise to love someone unconditionally, but can you keep that promise? A 50%+ divorce rate in the US indicates that we can, but it takes a ton of effort: Effort most are unwilling to give. The secret to perpetual love is daily sacrifice through a daily decision to continue loving. I’m not talking about a maternal instinct toward a child, or a tingly feeling in the nether regions toward another adult. I’m talking about laying down some portion of one’s own self as a sacrifice to another up to and including the ultimate sacrifice.
Again, let’s visit the cosmic force that most people imagine brings “lovers” together, and then sweeps them apart in an endless parade of serial monogamy, or, what the heck, serial polygamy. We call it “unconditional love,” but what we’re really doing is blaming its conditional status on an external force we made up in our heads. This pretend force allows us to believe that we are free from the responsibility of our own decisions.
How much more meaningful is a love that is willingly given by conscious choice every day? A love that we admit is conditional, but that we honor daily by giving up our own wants and desires for the sake of another, swearing again and again that no matter the condition, I will love you by choice over and over and over and over? A love that says, “If I stop loving you, it will be MY choice, not the whim of some cosmic fairy tale, and I choose DAILY not to give it up?”
