The Love Of God, or, Why I Hate MySpace Ads
(The following is an excerpt from my journal. I sat down to attempt to write a poem reflecting on 1 Corinthians 13 and 1 John 4. This is what came out instead. I have editted out some of the more potentially inflamatory stuff. I’m not entirely certain why I’m posting this…)
Love.
Love is the centeral theme of the Bible. It is the point, the goal. God is Love. It is the first greatest commandment and the second. It is the higher way, more important than any spiritual gifting, power, or ability. It is the method, the message, and the means. It is te reason God sent us his son and the reason the son gave up his perfect life. It compels us. It never ceases, it will remain eternally. Without it we are nothing. Without it we have nothing. By it we can know God. Without it we do not know God.
What is love? (Baby don’t hurt me.)
By this we know love; that Christ own his life for us, and so we ought to lay down our lives for others.
How on Earth did we get from there to true love meaning a half-naked, greased up, woman back arched in a chiropractice nightmare pose, staring at us painfully (not longingly or sultrily) through a dime-a-dozen banner advertisement that annoyingly dominates the prime real estate of our myspace site? How is that love?
We have exchanged the most pivotal of human divine virtues for a pitiful, passionless, fleeting feeling that is biochemically no different from eating large quantities of chocolate.
We have burned this non-existant, digitally remastered pseudo-woman into our cerebral cortex through hours upon countless hourrs of Russian Roulette clicking curiously “ambiguous” links that we know full well, yet somehow still manage to deny, the fact that they will plunge us, pelvis first, into the seedy underbelly of the Internet that is created by the rapists and pedophiles who make millions off of our insatiable, throbbing, appetite for easy access eye candy that we don’t have the nuts to attempt to master.
And then we wonder why we have a hard time looking at our sisters, who possess a beauty that no amount of photoshop airbrushing could ever contrive, with pure eyes and pure minds; blaming a phantom no-dating law in the church for our inability to step up and become a man who has the vision, discipline, and financial backing to have the right to pursue one of the many, eligible, waiting, Proverbs-thirty-one-type women who surround us on Sunday morning.
We don’t know love, and we don’t know God.
Matt says:
“What is love? (Baby don’t hurt me.)”
That’s pretty inflammatory :)
As for the rest of it, even though I pretty much avoid myspace, thanks for a more general butt-kicking.
God does have some pretty amazing daughters. I gotta admit that even though I didn’t want to date/seek a wife that I hated that rule more than I did my boyish/sinful nature. I think for us to become a man that we have to do these things not because of some rule, but because at a heart level we’ve accepted this as what we want. Any of us could say that we love God more than things (or objectified women)… maybe its time we make our inside reflect our outside.
beautiful words Matt, I see and follow those links more than I’m comfortable to admit.
Wow, that is some good insight. I especially bonded with what you said at the end about how we men need to step up, be men, be responsible and pursue a Prov. 31 woman.
“blaming a phantom no-dating law in the church for our inability to step up and become a man who has the vision, discipline, and financial backing to have the right to pursue one of the many, eligible, waiting, Proverbs-thirty-one-type women who surround us on Sunday morning.”
Why do we view trusting God for other circumstances different than trusting Him for our future or future mate?
What does trusting God really mean?
Does God only want us to trust Him for some things and not for others?
If God wants us to trust Him explicitly, is it a “rule” or a trust/heart issue?
Whatever choices we make in life, we have to live with the consequences. When you get to the end of your life and look back, what do you want to see & how will you get there?
[…] This is a discipline I must engage in. I have been feeling the need for it very pressingly lately. To be honest, I’m on the verge of a melt-down, or so it feels. My mind racing faster and faster over different topics, and several large ones which are burning to be spoken about (you may have caught a glimpse of one a few days ago if you follow my blog.) […]