I recently attended a one day women’s retreat, where the speaker, Dr. Josephine Lombardy gave some insight on the topic “knowing perfect love”. Love, that 4-lettered word that arouses a host of complex feelings and responses in us, a word whose definition we are not even certain about sometimes. Hollywood has portrayed love as a mushy, fuzzy feeling complete with happy endings, nice music and sometimes, sparkly, magical things. While all these are well, they are also rather unrealistic.
On the other hand, there are skewed ideas of love in the other direction, where people think true love is when you passively accept all of the actions of your neighbor, without any consequences. How many times have Christians been accused of being intolerant, judgmental, and unloving because we say that abortion is wrong, or same-sex marriage?
The third option is that we are setting the bar too low for love. Dr. Lombardy spoke about perfect love. Where do we find the criteria for perfect love? Scripture is a good place to start:
In his first letter to the Corinthians, Saint Paul famously states, “Love 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.”
So, those fuzzy, warm feelings you feel for people are not always a good indicator for love because they fade. Doing what you want without thinking of the consequences to yourself and others is also not love. Doing things only when you will get something out of it is not love and certainly, abuse is not love. Most of this sounds like common sense. But I’m sure we can all think of a situation where we settled for less than perfect love. Whether in relationships, friendships or family interactions. WE are perhaps also sometimes tempted to give less than perfect love. So let us continue to strive to be saints and model the perfect love of Christ, in this time where the world is very broken, and only God’s love can heal it.
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