Love

This was a speech I competed with in my senior year of high school.

In his article “The Hunger of Humanity” Aaron Pluim said,

Love. We all crave it. We were made for it, and if we don’t receive it, some essential part of our hearts undoubtedly fades away. To love and be loved are not just innate desires, they are life or death needs.

In North American society and culture where looking "Calm, cool and collected" is considered an asset, the need for love is often believed to be a weakness instead of appreciated as a quality of one’s humanity―made in the image of the God who loves. And so, ... one can put on a mask that asserts to others they, "Have it all together" in an attempt to hide their cavernous inner hunger to be treasured, understood, held, heard ... loved. Whether one is successful at hiding their eternal heartache for love, the fact remains: We all desperately crave love, to give it and to receive it. (Pluim, pars. 10-11)

When we stop and think about relationships as presented in that quote we can see that there is something wrong with our current system. That is why today I will be talking about the importance of love and relationships in our everyday lives. As we consider this we will be asking ourselves three very important questions: "Why is love so important?", "Why are afraid to love?", and "How can we conquer our fear of love, so that we may not only give but also receive love?"

Let's start with the first question, why is love so important to our lives? The best way I can think of to answer this question is through a story I once heard. At my church there is a man who runs a ministry to homeless kids in Boulder. One day this man came across a young lady, and he did what he normally does with any teenager, he gave her a hug and started talking to her about her life. He chose to witness to her through his love. A few weeks went by and he saw the young lady again, but this time she had friends with her. When he went over to give her a hug, she introduced him as her "spiritual mentor", but the strange thing is that he hadn't been trying to preach to her, he had just been showing her love and compassion. But through this act he was able to change her outlook on life. That is why love and relationships are so important. Mother Teresa exemplified this when she said, ""Being unwanted, unloved, uncared for, forgotten by everybody, I think that is a much greater hunger, a much greater poverty than the person who has nothing to eat."" Within each and every person is a hunger to show love to others, and to feel loved in return. Relationships are extremely important to us, and when we don't have those connections we begin a downward spiral into loneliness. Loneliness is a terrible poverty, and is rampant in America. The National Institute of Mental Health estimates that approximately 9.5% of adults living in America suffer from depression, and I believe that is because we are failing to make meaningful relationships. We are adding to that poverty, by not reaching out and connecting with other people. Relationships are the most important aspect of our lives, and when we fail to make them we become broken people.

Now if we recognize that love is the most important aspect of our lives, we are presented with a very difficult question, why are we afraid to love? I believe that as humans we recognize the value of love in our lives, so why don't we make these connections? It is because we have twisted the meaning of true love. In his article "The Danger of Love" Ben Swain answered this question saying,

It’s the same thing that has wounded God's heart: The sinfulness of man. Each of us has sought to give our love to someone only to have it unreturned, taken advantage of, or betrayed.

Often we are betrayed by ourselves, allowing what we thought was our expression and reception of love to be twisted into a sweet looking poison that destroys our own soul. So we respond by keeping our love to ourselves and building walls to keep people at a "safe" distance.

... We isolate ourselves from having to give any of our own heart away and protect ourselves from ever being in a position where someone can hurt us. We respond by doing what we were not created for: Existing outside of love." (Swain, pars. 3-6)

Allowing ourselves to be vulnerable, to be weak, is the hardest thing for us to do and that is what true love is. However, our current view of love is a grotesque form that goes completely against true love. The ultimate source of love is God. He defined what it is in 1 Corinthians 13 saying, “"Love is patient, love is kind. It does not envy, it does not boast, it is not proud. It is not rude, 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."” (New International Version, 1 Cor. 13.4-13.7) Does this passage match up with what our culture says love is? No it does not, in any way, shape, or form. We are told by the media that love makes you fulfilled, completes you. This focus of love is completely on yourself, but we can see that pure love is not self centered, its focus is on the other person's well being. Our hearts have been broken by what we call love, and that is why we are skeptical of relationships.

This leads us to the last question presented, "How can we conquer our fear of love, so that we may not only give but receive love?" The answer is simple to hear, but hard in practice. The first step is to acknowledge that our current portrayal of love is completely wrong. Once we do that, we need to turn to the ultimate source of love, and that is God. We need to see ourselves as Christ sees us, and that is abounding love and grace. We are all fallen people, so it is especially important to realize that we are going to stumble every now and then when it comes to rules. We also need to realize that others are going to fall into the same trap, and that is when we need to extend love and grace. When we mess up we need to learn from our mistakes and turn to God's grace. After we turn to the amazing love that God offers us we can start tearing down our masks of pride, hatred, anger, and depression. I am not saying that any of these things will not come back to haunt us, but in order for us to reach out, we must start removing them through God's help. Through His strength we can conquer anything. What we have shaped ourselves into is a distorted view of how we were created to be. Without the demolition of these walls our attempts at love will be futile. Only after we do this can we start giving and receiving love while building up our community. Relationships will hurt, community will fail you, that is inevitable. But when we realize that there is more to our lives than hiding we can start opening up to the world around us. When we feel weak we can always draw upon the love that Christ presents to us, and only then we can start making vital connections.

Today we examined three of the toughest questions presented to our culture and through all of this we have seen why love is so important. We have also seen how our fears keep us from reaching out. Finally we examined how we can reach out to others around us. We must stop our hiding behind walls and get our hands dirty. Relationships are hard, time consuming, and painful, but that shouldn't stop us. In one of the closing chapters to Blue Like Jazz, Donald Miller presented an idea that dislodged my way of thinking. He said,

We value people, ... We invest in people, ... Relationships can be bankrupt, ... People are priceless, ... All economic metaphor.

... The problem ... is we think of love as a commodity. We use it like money. ... If somebody is doing something for us, offering us something, be it gifts, time, popularity, or what have you, we feel they have value, we feel they are worth something to us, and, perhaps, we feel they are priceless... With love, we withheld affirmation from the people who did not agree with us, but we lavishly financed the ones who did. (218)

This economic metaphor must go. We need to stop withholding our love from others and start to make relationships. How much longer will we continue to destroy other lives simply because we don't want to give out love to those who don't agree with us? As humans we depend on others being there for us, helping us, guiding us, and caring for us. If we start to build up a community in which we can actively participate we will have those people there for us and we will be letting others know that they are cared for and loved. We will be filling that essential part of in all of our hearts that thrives on relationships giving us longer more fulfilling lives. That is why today I encourage you stop hiding within yourself, and start to make the most important connections that you can ever have, those made in love. Don't expect to be perfect, and don't expect that you won't mess up. You will, but that is okay, live in a life of grace. Remember 1 Corinthians 13? In the last verse we are told, “"now these three remain: faith, hope and love. But the greatest of these is love.”” (1 Cor. 13:13)