"I love you" is a powerful statement. It's also used very exclusively in our society. A man saying "I love you" to another man is most likely mistaken as homosexuality... or at least that's what it looks like - I haven't actually done any research into this, but there's an amazing amount of stuff which you think is going to sound different than how it actually turns out when you do it. It's amazing how we believe the lies crammed into our minds. Nevertheless, this is at least one of those fears.
What is love, anyway?
- Love is not the same thing as sexual intercourse. "Making love" is not necessarily done out of love.
- Love has many types. Only one type is exclusive to a single partner.
- Love is not "Baby don't hurt me".
I have a rule I go by: You're my friend, therefore I love you. This is provided that you're my friend. The thing is, you can become my friend very, very quickly, as despite being diagnosed with Asperger's, I like socialising.
BibleGateway.com released a list of the most frequently searched passages on their site, with 1 Corinthians 13 being the top of the list. This is one of my favourite passages (Hebrews 11 is another favourite of mine, and so is 1 John 5 - I tend to like entire chapters). I prefer the GNB translation of this passage to the NLT translation (I have a full GNB and recently obtained a New Testament NLT at Easter Camp this year), so I may stick with that.
The first three verses of this beautiful passage are essentially "I can X, but if I have no love, then it's all worthless". The next 4 verses are a list of characteristics of love. The next 3 are about how love is eternal and quite a bit based around it. Another verse is about growing up, and the verse after that is about how what we see will be completed. It finished with verse 13 (GNB): "Meanwhile these three remain: faith, hope, and love; and the greatest of these is love".
Seriously, pick up a bible and read this passage. (The KJV refers to it as charity.) What are you afraid of, anyway: finding that it may be the truth? Or experiencing God's love?
There's a lot of "out with the old, in with the new" stuff. People start revolutions. The problem is, if there's no love, if people undervalue the fundamental love that should come with friendship, everyone starts feeling like crap and then society degrades because basically everyone in society gets depressed. Some people think that the solution boils down to "legalise it". The thing is, subjective morality kicks in when you're trying to be weened off what feels like the only thing you've got.
However, there are deeper issues that need to be solved. I will raise two points for two different reasons.
One is pornography. Porn is incredibly nasty. It just sucks you in. I came out of the other end and I want to see this thing banned. However, outright banning it isn't going to fix the issue. People who are addicted need help, and there's nothing stopping them from making their own porn for personal use or at least playing porn through their mind. They need the fundamental love that comes (or at least should come) with friendship. And, quite frankly, I say they'd need Jesus' love, too.
The other is homosexuality. I am bringing this up because I want to see fellow "Christians" deal with this issue properly, rather than simply say that it should be banned and it's immoral and stuff like that, because that's not fixing the problem. I've heard something along the lines of "love the sinner, but hate the sin" somewhere before. There's a difference between tolerance and acceptance. My approach would be to accept the person, but tolerate their sexuality w/o actual acceptance in the hope that one day there will be a change of heart and they will realise that love itself is much more important than sex.
Seriously, having sex without love completely misses the point of sex. Same goes for heterosexuals, too.
Some people seem to insist that homosexuals were "born that way". This is most certainly due to the point I raised earlier: when people feel like someone's trying to ween them off the one thing they've got, their subjective morality kicks in. Of course, another thing I could raise is that we're a fallen creation and pretty much born sinners, so the argument of "born that way" does not make for an excuse to continue.
Now that I am pretty much in rant mode and really quite tired, I think I'll end this post here. I just had to express some stuff.
