The Case for Love

What is love?

I just watched "The Case for Christ" again and something in the story made me think.

Lee Strobel, whose life the movie is based on, is interviewed in the bonus features segment of the Blu-Ray and he said he started out being a skeptic and then becoming a cynic. I can understand how skepticism can lead to cynicism and how that might pervert our view of people but it does not have to.

Cynicism can in extremis lead to, a rejection and loss of faith when we only see the bad in people. But seeing only the bad in people is to be superficial. And seeing someone else as bad is inherently a comparative exercise. They are bad because we hold them to a standard. But what is the basis of that standard? Where do we stand? Where do we want to stand?

If we understand or try to understand why people are bad, it is more likely to lead to acceptance. If we understand that we are all in the same boat, that we are sinners, then we no longer judge. We accept that we cannot save ourselves, and God teaches us the only way is love. Love is I think the ultimate expression of compassion. We are compassionate because we empathize. We know what the other person feels, how he feels. We know because we have been there. So when someone is bad, we understand. We do not accept their behavior, but we can accept them. Love is the ultimate expression of that acceptance.

Therefore of all the complicated arguments you can find out there about faith, the real test of faith is love for others. I don't mean loving others with the expectation that they love us back. That's nice, that's a bonus but it isn't really love in the purest sense. That's the modern concept of romantic love. I am probably paraphrasing one of Timothy Keller's sermons brilliant sermons here - he says that kind of love is really about finding someone who will worship us. In other words, it is conditional. We love that person because they love us the way we want. And which is why people fall out of love - we find that person no longer loves us the way we want.

But pure love, the type of love God has for us, that in the movie is said to be the only reason why Christ sacrificed himself for us. There is no other conceivable reason. Pure love is when we do something for someone undeserving. Only God can do that in the most accurate sense - why? Because He is the ultimate judge and in His eyes we are all sinners and undeserving.

And we on the other hand have no right to decide who is deserving of our love. So in the great simplicity of His commandment, we are called to love everyone. If He could love all of us, the most wretched of us, then we must love each other.