How Do I Love Thee? More Importantly, Why?

Some thoughts on love

My grandmother had a little heart-shaped pillow hanging from her rearview mirror. It was a gift from her late husband, my grandpa. On the pillow were the words: “I don’t love you because I need you, I need you because I love you.” It was always one of my favorite trinkets Grandma had, because it made me think about all the things it means. Today it makes me think about my love for God, and His love for me.

God does not need us. I know that’s not a great revelation, but sometimes we still forget that. God can do anything without involving mankind at all. He could save a life without surgical intervention and move a mountain without TNT. But God loves us so much that he wants to have a relationship with us. He designed mankind to be close to Him, to walk with Him and talk with Him, as Adam did in the Garden of Eden before the whole serpent and fruit debacle. Since the Fall, sin has kept us separated from God yet He continues to make a way for us to get back to that place of closeness. He sent His Son to die so the veil that separates us could be removed forever! So why are we still so far away from the original design? One word: pride. The same pride that made Eve believe that eating the fruit would give her knowledge equal to God’s makes us believe that we can do life on our own. It makes us believe that we can figure out the universe and everything in it without the God factor. It makes us believe that coincidence is the supreme dictator of life. And yet, in all our stubbornness, God continues to love us enough to include us in His ultimate plan.

I have told many people in my life “I love you”. I’d like to think that most of them were for the right reason, specifically an Agape love that brings my heart to care deeply for my fellow man. I would be lying if I didn’t admit that I have used those words for the wrong reasons, too. I have used them to try to hold on to people and things that were not good for me. In other words, I tried to force myself to love someone because I thought I needed them.

Through the years I have learned that truly loving someone is not something one can do out of need, obedience, or belief. We all have those family members that are so crazy they’re almost toxic. You know the ones. At family reunions everybody talks about them under their breath and in corners where they think nobody can hear. Inevitably someone pipes up with, “yeah, but we have to love so-and-so, because they’re family.” I do think there’s a certain bond connecting blood relatives, but when love is forced, it is immediately obvious that it is not a product of the heart.

This is why it is so difficult for me to understand how unbelievers can say that someone loves God because their parents/church/society tells them to. I can honestly say that my love for God is as genuine as the love I have for my husband. I don’t love Scott because anyone told me to, or because I think I will benefit from it. I love him because he is what he says he is, and he has proven his character again and again. He does not judge me from my oh-so-imperfect past, but loves me for who I am now and who I can be tomorrow. When I mess up, he doesn’t hold it against me (for too long, anyway). He reminds me of what needs to be done and helps me get back on track. He is always there, rooting for me to succeed, and he keeps loving me no matter what. That is how God is, and that is why I love Him so much. Sure there may be benefits for living a life close to God, but that is never the motivation of pure love.

I have always said that I look to Scripture because it has more wisdom than I ever will, so I invite you to read what Paul had to say about love. It is a passage commonly used in weddings – we used it in ours – but it goes so far beyond that. God IS love, and we are His bride. With that in mind, read these words:

1 Corinthians 13
1 If I speak in the tongues of men or of angels, but do not have love, I am only a resounding gong or a clanging cymbal. 2 If I have the gift of prophecy and can fathom all mysteries and all knowledge, and if I have a faith that can move mountains, but do not have love, I am nothing. 3 If I give all I possess to the poor and give over my body to hardship that I may boast, but do not have love, I gain nothing.
4 Love is patient, love is kind. It does not envy, it does not boast, it is not proud. 5 It does not dishonor others, it is not self-seeking, it is not easily angered, it keeps no record of wrongs. 6 Love does not delight in evil but rejoices with the truth. 7 It always protects, always trusts, always hopes, always perseveres.
8 Love never fails. But where there are prophecies, they will cease; where there are tongues, they will be stilled; where there is knowledge, it will pass away. 9 For we know in part and we prophesy in part, 10 but when completeness comes, what is in part disappears. 11 When I was a child, I talked like a child, I thought like a child, I reasoned like a child. When I became a man, I put the ways of childhood behind me. 12 For now we see only a reflection as in a mirror; then we shall see face to face. Now I know in part; then I shall know fully, even as I am fully known.
13 And now these three remain: faith, hope and love. But the greatest of these is love.