Love - the greatest of all

A friend asked me the other day, "What is love?"

The first thought that entered my mind was that of finding a "romantic love". The next thought were the words to a popular song in the 80s that went like this, "What's love, got to do, got to do with it?" And last but not least, were the words of a wise university psychology teacher, who often repeated his theory that "love is not an emotion".

Is love something you can find or something you can feel?

I am normally not a religious person, but, believe it or not, I do hold onto certain principles, which I call bits of human wisdom, as truth. I believe that these truths, if learned at an early age, can be practiced and can help define who we are as a person. One of those bits of wisdom is an idea called love as it is defined in the Bible. It's contained in the 13th chapter of 1st Corinthians, basically a letter written by the Apostle Paul to the peeps that lived in a town called Corinth, thus they were called Corinthians.

I firmly believe in the truth that Paul was writing about. The basic thought he is trying to convey, as my feeble mind understands it, is that love is greater than anything else. He basically compares love to many other great things. These are things that were seen as great to the piously religious Corinthian type peeps and also important to many peeps living in this century. Here are a few of them. I'll use the words contained in the King James version of the Bible and try to define them in 21st Century American terms.

Prophecy - Foretelling the Future
Tongues - Ability to speak many languages.
Speak with the Power of Men and Angels - charismatic public speaking.
Knowledge - knowledge.
Feeding the poor - charity.
Giving my body to be burned - sacrifice.
Faith - a very strong belief in the an idea that can't be seen, but is true. When acting on the belief, actual results are obtained.
Hope - hope.

Wow, don't these all sound like great things? And yet, Paul tells the peeps in Corinth that these things mean nothing when they do not have "LOVE". And basically he tells the peeps that it is possible to have the qualities listed above and not have love.

So what is love? We're back to that again. Here is how Paul defines it. He uses a word called charity. We've redefined the word charity to mean, taking care of the poor, but that isn't what charity is. Charity is a pure love, the pure love of Christ.

If you are a Christian, you should listen up now, because believe it or not, being a Christian most likely does not mean having a strong belief in Jesus as most people define it today. If you are not a Christian, you can still have pure love and not have a belief in Christ. In other words, you can substitute the love of Christ to the love of God, or define it as pure love. If you are an atheist, I'm not really sure what to say to you, except that when you die, you will be all dressed up, but have no place to go.

Here are some phrases that can be used to describe this pure love. Again, the old English words translated into the 21st century.

Suffereth Long - ability to patiently suffer through hard times without complaining or cursing or causing damage to another human being, species, plant, or spouse.

Kind - respect for another human being, the golden rule, truly caring for another person, not being a mean son of a bitch even if seems like the right thing to do. And no, sometimes you do not have to be cruel to be kind, being cruel and being kind are opposites.

Envieth Not - when you see a person who has it better than you, you say to yourself, I wish I had all the stuff they had, or the beauty they have, or the wife they have, or the child they have. Basically you do not appreciate what you have but want more and more and are never satisfied. This is envy. If you do not envy, you somehow are able to be satisified with what you have and who you have in your life.

Vaunteth not Itself - Vanting basically means putting yourself high up on a pedastal so that everyone can see how great you are. Donate a billion dollars to an organization who builds a building dedicated to curing cancer and make sure it has your name on the front. It is like being a politician who constantly seeks coverage for himself in front of the camera. Sometimes they call this being in the lime light. A person with pure love does not do stuff like this.

Not Puffed Up - Not full of pride. This includes the falicy of righteous pride, which can be seen in every religion across the United States. It's a notion that somehow has infected our society and it goes something like this. If I am righteous, I will be blessed with riches. Therefore if I am rich, I am righteous. Nope, you missed the boat. If you have pure love, you will not be righteously prideful. In fact, you'd better think about coming down a notch or two or moving to a foreign country.

Does not behave unseemingly - Basically this means you do not make an ass of yourself. This can happen in various ways. If someone calls you an ass, you probably have been acting this way, so just take a look at yourself, and say STOP! And just quit doing that stuff. If you've been drinking too much or taking some kind of drug, this does excuse you from acting like an ass. So if you can't drink without acting like an ass, then quit drinking. It's that simple. Don't be an ass.

Seeketh not her own - Doesn't it seem like the purpose of our society is to gather up as many jelly beans as you can? I mean there are only so many and I'm gonna get my fair share damn it! In our case, money is the jelly bean. It's what peeps respect and it's what everyone wants. They'll scrape and save and steal and lie and do every damn thing possible to get as much of it as possible. I want it for me and it's mine and it's mine. And don't use the stupid excuse, "I'm doing it for my kids". Or "I want my kids to have every advantage possible". This is just another phrase that means "I seek after my own" which is the opposite of "Seeketh not her own".

Not easily provoked - Provoked can easily be linked to a word called offended. Let's see, how would that go? Oh yeah, Not Easily Offended. Amazing! So when someone calls you a name, it doesn't really bother you because you are filled with pure love. In fact, it doesn't really matter what anyone says, because it really isn't going to matter one way or the other, especially if it is directed at you as a minority or a lobby or a life style or a religion or a ... Just get over yourself!
I think this means we don't need to outlaw certain "offensive" words. I think it means that words don't really mean much, but what means most is having pure love.

Thinketh no evil - Remember the 3 monkeys that see, speak, and hear no evil? Oops, wrong again. It's not what you hear, see or speak that is the trouble. It's what you are thinking that causes the trouble. Thoughts come first. Before you can steal, you think about stealing. Before you can kill, you think about killing. Before you can invade the privacy of another, you've got to think about. Cut evil thoughts out of your mind and seeing, speaking, hearing will no longer be a problem. Acting on the evil thoughts will not happen if there are no evil thoughts in the first place. Where there is evil actions (smoke) there is evil thought (fire). Pure love starts with your thoughts. Fill your mind with the truth. Fill your mind with kindness. Fill your mind with good and there will be no room for evil.



Beareth All things - There are so many hard things to deal with in this so-called life on earth. For instance, God forbid, someone might actually make a mistake. And due to this mistake, someone else is put in a position to suffer from it. In fact, there are some peeps that walk around this planet constantly causing others to suffer. But that's okay, as long as it's legal. So I guess I'm getting a little off track here but what I'm getting at is . . . in one way or another somebody else is gonna cause you some bad times. The important thing here is not that you get through life without suffering bad times. The important thing is that you handle the bad times gracefully. You are able to grin and bare it. You are not walking around like a victim with blame at the end of your lips or an attorney in your hip pocket trying to obtain what you are "entitled" to. You forget about revenge or cursing a higher power, and get off you bum bum and try a little harder next time. Yes this is part of having love.

THIS BLOG WILL BE COMPLETED AT A LATER DATE.