Loving the right way takes work, requires patience
With Valentine’s Day quickly approaching, love is in the air — on billboards, in television ads, store displays and the radio.
Many of us will buy flowers for our significant others or take them out to a nice restaurant. This time of year provides us with a nice reminder to let love abound.
But do we know what love really means? How can we know love when we see it?
Luckily, the scriptures provide a clear definition of what love is and is not:
“Love is patient; love is kind; love is not envious or boastful or arrogant or rude. It does not insist on its own way; it is not irritable or resentful; it does not rejoice in wrongdoing, but rejoices in the truth. It bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things. Love never ends.” (1 Corinthians 13:4-8, New Revised Standard Version
of the Bible)
Although these commonly-quoted verses may sound happy and cheerful, if we look closely we see that love is not always so simple.
It may be easy for us to be patient with our children because we love our own flesh and blood, but are we able to show that same love and patience to someone who holds different social views than we do? We typically have no problem being kind to our significant others, but are we able to extend lovingkindness to the coworker or boss we absolutely dread seeing?
We should not love only our relatives, the people we like, or those with whom we agree. We ought to love the whole of humanity.
Love requires us to do the hard work of periodically putting aside our own comforts for the sake of a greater truth. At times, love might make us uncomfortable; but it should not inflict pain.
Love will not allow us to disown family members because they are LGBTQ+. Love will not allow us to remain silent while Black and brown people are being killed by state-sanctioned and self-appointed police.
Love will prevent us from whitewashing Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.’s memory and from turning Black History Month into a sales gimmick. Love will prohibit us from supporting policies that further marginalize the poor and oppressed in our society.
Love does not appropriate. Love does not colonize. Love seeks justice rather than revenge. Love will not allow us to turn a blind eye to suffering.
Rather, love should propel us to action when people are hurting because love is empathetic. Thus, love urges us to put ourselves, our reputations, our money and our bodies on the front lines of justice.
This is the love Christ exemplified. The kind of love mandated in the scriptures has another interesting qualification: “love your neighbor as yourself.” This commandment is mentioned several times throughout the Bible (Leviticus 19:18, Matthew 22:39, Mark 12:31, Romans 13:9, to list a few). It implies that, in order to truly love others, we must learn to love ourselves.
Loving ourselves protects us against envy because if we are secure in ourselves we will not feel threatened by the successes of others. Loving ourselves also protects us against projecting our own insecurities onto others.
It is often said that we hate in others what we hate most about ourselves. Self-reflection (and a good therapist) allows us to heal from self-hatred and celebrate that each of us is masterfully designed by God. This will allow us to love wider and deeper.
Love is the most important aspect of life. It is more important than our possessions, skills, intellect and goals. Love is even more important than religion — because it is worthless to worship in our churches with no love in our hearts.
Love is not simply a warm and fuzzy feeling. Real love takes work. It must be learned. We must understand that it’s not who we love that really matters, but it’s how we love.
This Valentine’s Day, may we all learn to love with patience, kindness, freedom and truth.