No attempt at a witty opening today. We're full tilt. Did you know that love is a choice? It's not just this mystical thing out there that "the universe" stirs in your heart for particular people in your life. Can you imagine if you actually didn't have any control over whom you love? Yea, it would be so dumb.
Let me throw a definition at you. Voddie Baucham is the first man I have read that gave me a definition of love that I could sink my teeth into. Love is a choice, accompanied by emotion, that leads to action on behalf of the loved. The thing I love about this definition is the acknowledgment of emotion, action, and thought working together to bring about this thing called love. This all makes sense right? You have thoughts. You have feelings. You have actions. You think about or view someone a particular way, you feel things about those thoughts, and then you make choices about how your going to act toward that individual. Voila...love.
I get it. That's a very simplistic framing. But here's the deal. Sometimes, not all the time, its that simple. If you are a Christian, there are contexts in life that you do not have permission to stop loving someone. That sentence is probably a hot take to some of you. Get your hackles up? Good. Here's the problem. Love is a thing we do that is accompanied by feelings. It's easier to do the thing when we have good feels. It is much harder to do the thing when we have bad feels. Duh. Who on earth has good feels for someone ALL the time? Tres vato's got big love and good feels for each other all the time. But there have been plenty of times that I wanted to throat punch one of them. I say throat punch because i'm much smaller than them. Anyway, feelings are God given and are meant to give flavor to our relationships. Not direct them.
A good man or woman loves directionally. I think it's helpful at times to think of things in this way. Love directionally, meaning, you just aim it at who God tells you to aim it at. Lol. Like a care bear shooting your love star. Point it at your spouse, children, and church family. It's a non-negotiable. I mean, you can choose not to love them but it's sin. Did Adam just tell me to shoot my love star like a care bear? Yes.
We don't like that though. We don't want to be told what to do and we damn sure don't want to love someone that is underserving of our love or give us good feels. The truth is that God tells you who to love and how to love them because you cannot be trusted to make the right choice on your own. Sting a little? Piss you off. Good. You are incapable of consistently over time making the choice to love the right people in the right context because your "heart" will lead you astray. Period. You will let sinful thoughts and feelings toward YOUR people fester in YOUR heart and the bitter darkness of those thoughts will swallow the light in you.
Grim thoughts
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