{"id":16487,"date":"2022-11-15T21:55:45","date_gmt":"2022-11-15T21:55:45","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/iamsignificant.ca\/?p=16487"},"modified":"2022-11-16T00:37:33","modified_gmt":"2022-11-16T00:37:33","slug":"love-is-why-it-matters","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/iamsignificant.ca\/home\/soul-significance\/love-is-why-it-matters\/","title":{"rendered":"Love Is and Why it Matters"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

What is Love? <\/strong>

A warm, exhilarating, passionate feeling? Make no mistake, love can sometimes be experienced with these emotions. But as anyone who has truly experienced love can tell you, it can also be experienced as sorrow, grief, fear, and pain. Sometimes, love is the hardest in the mundane of seasons – when the thrills of fiery passions subside and the lull of the day-to-day drones on. Love feels very different in this season – it looks like fidelity (faithfulness) with lots of grace. The experience of love includes a spectrum of emotions, but love is not, in and of itself, an emotion.

When people of faith talk about love, they might go to 1 Corinthians 13:4-8<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cLove is patient, love is kind. It does not envy, it does not boast, it is not proud.  It does not dishonor others, it is not self-seeking, it is not easily angered, it keeps no record of wrongs.  Love does not delight in evil but rejoices with the truth.  It always protects, always trusts, always hopes, always perseveres. Love never fails. \u201c<\/p><\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n

Some may quote John 3:16: \u201dGod so loved the world that s\/he gave…\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Or  John 15:13 \u201cNo greater love than this, a person who lays down their life for their friends.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Each of these is rich and wonderful, but each describes what love does<\/strong>, not what love is<\/strong>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I think the distinction is important.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The way we define what \u2018love is\u2019 informs and shapes what love does.<\/strong>   <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Sometimes, what we generally accept as the loving thing to do (with the best of intentions) can, in fact, be unloving. When we start with what love is,<\/strong> it helps shape the ways we choose to love.  It helps us avoid counterfeit kinds of love, behaviours and ideas that aren\u2019t loving at all.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Examples of counterfeit love might include \u201cI hurt\/beat her for her own good.\u201d \u201cSpare the rod, spoil the child.\u201d  Caustic judgment and condemnation under the cover of \u201cSpeaking the truth in love.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

For many of us, these are pretty easy to identify, but some are a little more tricky.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Justice can be a form of love … until the advocacy\/expression of that Justice takes the form of anti-love – (retributive) violence (in its many forms). When we act unjust (retributively) in our pursuit of Justice, we are not loving. This is a clue that the value (Justice) has become unanchored from love. \u00a0 In the Love Milieu, the end never justifies the means.\u00a0 In the Divine Milieu, Love is both the means and the end.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Life is messy. Loving well is hard.  Sometimes, even our best examples of what love does aren\u2019t enough to inform and shape our love in every moment\/situation.<\/p>\n\n\n\n