Two cents away. :)necessaryspaceMarch 25 2007, 01:26:39 UTC
**Can you sacrifice without emotional affection (and by affection I mean finding that person endearing in some sort of way, however slight)? Yes. So can you love without affection? I think so.**
And this is where it gets tricky in trying to define love. Emotional affection is flimsy and if we only loved based on that ... well, we'd all be much more ill-behaved people. :) It's too human of a description. I guess what I'm going at is a 'pure' form of love, though I'm not sure I can put it into words. For example, having this huge sense of love for a despicable person. As in, you act out of love by not verbally attacking them, but you also act out of love by not hating them.
For example, I read this true account of this man who was robbed. The robbers ran up to him, and he knew their intent, and he refused to do anything but love them. Even when one slugged him, all he had in his heart was love. That love wasn't dependent on their behavior -- it was self-sacrifice, because he was sacrifice what we would call a justified sense of hatred to go for something higher.
So when I read of someone saying they're loving as Jesus does because of their actions, but their tone indicates that they don't care for the person or hate them or whatever ... I see that love as 'missing' something. It's only loving on a surface/physical level, because it's about the action. It's not loving from the heart. The guy who was robbed loved from the heart. He refused to have any heart action except love for the robbers. The action love is a lot easier than the heart love, because it many ways, the heart love is what forces us to change/grow. And that's what I see Jesus saying in the Sermon on the Mount, when lusting in one's heart or hating a brother. He's saying, "Look, it's not enough to just *act.* You've got to be alert for things on the inside." Many don't seem to want to go after the 'inside,' and just settle for the outside actions.
And this is where it gets tricky in trying to define love. Emotional affection is flimsy and if we only loved based on that ... well, we'd all be much more ill-behaved people. :) It's too human of a description. I guess what I'm going at is a 'pure' form of love, though I'm not sure I can put it into words. For example, having this huge sense of love for a despicable person. As in, you act out of love by not verbally attacking them, but you also act out of love by not hating them.
For example, I read this true account of this man who was robbed. The robbers ran up to him, and he knew their intent, and he refused to do anything but love them. Even when one slugged him, all he had in his heart was love. That love wasn't dependent on their behavior -- it was self-sacrifice, because he was sacrifice what we would call a justified sense of hatred to go for something higher.
So when I read of someone saying they're loving as Jesus does because of their actions, but their tone indicates that they don't care for the person or hate them or whatever ... I see that love as 'missing' something. It's only loving on a surface/physical level, because it's about the action. It's not loving from the heart. The guy who was robbed loved from the heart. He refused to have any heart action except love for the robbers. The action love is a lot easier than the heart love, because it many ways, the heart love is what forces us to change/grow. And that's what I see Jesus saying in the Sermon on the Mount, when lusting in one's heart or hating a brother. He's saying, "Look, it's not enough to just *act.* You've got to be alert for things on the inside." Many don't seem to want to go after the 'inside,' and just settle for the outside actions.
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