Nov 7

Written by:
11/7/2011 5:37 PM 

 What is love? 

There is a song that was made popular by club-going characters played by Will Ferrell and Chris Katan on Saturday Night Live a few years back.  Sung by Haddaway, the song “What Is Love (Baby Don’t Hurt Me)” inspires people to mimic the ridiculous head bopping dance performed by Ferrell and Katan as they tried to look “cool” while enticing unsuspecting women at the club.  For some crazy reason, that song popped into my head this morning.  (Yes, I was doing the dance, too.) But at one point, the words echoed and I stopped to think about the question…what IS love?  Is love simply the absence of pain or the companionship of another person as the song implies?  That just seems to sell it short.  There’s more than that.  

As long as we’re looking at the club-scene as our object lesson, I was recently at the Wild Bull in downtown Kalamazoo.  (I don’t frequent there…it was a bachelorette party being held on the weekend of Halloween.) I sat there in my Roman garb and looked around at all the young women dressed in basically underwear, wigs, and the occasional pair of airbrushed wings. I watched the young men doing their best to grab the women’s attention. I felt really…really… 

...old. 

But I thought about what all these people were doing.  Yes, they were having fun…and I don’t want to sound like I’m condemning that…but I was struck by the feeling that so many people there were looking for someone to make them feel good about themselves.  They wanted someone else to provide what they felt was lacking in their own lives.  Some shallow definition of love?  Perhaps. 

I know a lot of people who are lonely.  They are single for whatever reason, and they acutely feel the absence of someone who will be there to love them.  It causes them to make bad choices…to look to other people to fill the void…to accept bad behavior in return for companionship.  I admit…I’ve been there myself.  It’s a desperate place to be. 

Let me talk to those of you who have been asking and want to know the answer to “What is Love?”   

God loves you and He wants you to know who you are in His eyes.  That’s the difference between God’s love and human love.  Our capacity to love as humans is limited.  We can love our spouse, our children, or extended families, but we love them through our own eyes.  We want them to somehow become compatible with ourselves.  I suggest that there is NO HUMAN out there who is completely compatible with you.  I don’t mean to sound negative, but humans are flawed, sinful, and limited. We can’t see or know everything about another person.  God, however, loves you and sees you as HE created you to be.  He knows you better than you know yourself!  He made you!  There is nothing about you that He doesn’t know and there is nothing about you that He doesn’t love. 

“What about my sin?” you may ask.  “What about all the crappy things I’ve done?”   

You know…He loves you.  Period.  He wiped those things away a long time ago.  He doesn’t even keep a record of those things.  Recently I heard someone say, “Think about the worst thing you’ve ever done.  God KNEW you were going to do that, and Jesus died for those things, too.”  If  you had the chance to see Jesus face to face, perhaps over a cup of coffee, would you be able to say to Him, “You know…I am grateful that you suffered that terrible, violent death to bring salvation. But, I’ve gotta tell you…it was inadequate.  It didn’t cover that one really bad thing I did.”  Could you say that? 

So…what is love? 

Love is God.  Love is that He knows you—better than you know yourself—and He cannot get enough of you. He loves you so much that there is not ONE thing that you could do that would keep Him from loving you. He wants to spend every minute of every day with you.   

It kind of takes your breath away when you stop to really think about it.