Confessions of a Selfish Twenty-Something and Conviction from and Unlikely Source

A couple months ago, I decided to take on one of the greatest challenges of my life. I took on a boyfriend.

Yesterday, as my fella and I were having a fairly serious discussion (over an amazingly deep-fried lunch), he said something that I have thought to myself about a bazillion times since we started dating-- "This is so HARD!" He was trying to communicate an idea to me, and finding as I often do that an idea that seems so simple in my brain refuses to come out of my mouth in words that make sense to the other person. He also said recently, again voicing my own thoughts, "Sometimes I feel like you bring out all my worst qualities."

Not exactly romantic, but so true it's not even funny!

Just when you think you've got your flaws and personality quirks fairly well under control, God throws another person into your life equation, and suddenly x (you) no longer equals y (perfection).

I think this is especially true in romantic relationships. My theory is that this problem is compounded by the fact that the rom coms train our gullible little hearts to focus on all the things we are to receive from a significant other, and seldom bother to touch on the things we're going to have to give up for the sake of caring for that person. Or the things that we are really going to have to work hard to attain. One thing I'm realizing about myself: having to give things up or work harder than I want to in order to reach a desired end makes me impatient and frustrated. Then I start taking it out on other people. Then in addition to being annoyed with another person, I get ticked off at myself for being such a selfish brat.

Then I start P.M.S.ing and just cry like a spoiled baby over the whole situation.

Worst qualities anyone? Who knew this would be so HARD!

Thankfully, God likes to send conviction, perspective, and encouragement from the most unlikely sources, just at the exact moment we need it. The following is a note written by my cousin Jake last night, and was just what I needed to hear and be reminded of. I know it's a little long, but I truly, truly hope you will take the time to read it; I promise it will be worth your while. Enjoy.

On Love: the Heart of the Matter

by Jake Miller

What is love?

Besides being the title of a song by Haddaway, it is a whole lot of things… and there are a lot of thing it is not. I guess the reason I’m writing this note is because I’ve learned a lot about love and what it is/isn’t in the past year or so, and so I have compiled my insights for you, o lucky reader, to digest and mull over. I hope you find at least some of this useful or at least thought-provoking.

Fist off, I’ll start with the simplest definition of what I think love is: caring about someone else more than you care about yourself. Let that sink in for a moment… if that definition is true, the word itself should not be applied so flippantly, i.e., “I love chocolate.” This is just a minor annoyance to me, but it does cheapen the word.

For a more complete definition of what love is, read 1 Corinthians 13. Or, the whole Bible for that matter… it’s one big love story to each one of us. But, in that specific chapter Paul shows what love is and what love isn’t. In order to spare you the condescension of writing it out or assuming you know nothing about it, I’ll just proceed to explain my idea of it in light of that passage and other more general things in the Bible. If you haven’t read that passage recently, you may want to sneak over to your Bible or an online one before moving on in this note.

Read it yet? Ok, good (yeah right… I bet you didn’t read it recently until NOW if at all). Moving on…

The expanded definition of love that Paul outlines in 1 Corinthians follows my simple definition nicely in a similar way to how Jesus summarized the 10 commandments: love God, love people (paraphrase). If you’re loving God and loving people, you won’t be able to break the 10 commandments by the very nature of them. It’s like being told to draw a rectangle and by drawing a square, you have it all covered by the nature of what the requirement is. Bad example, but it shows that one logically follows the other. In any case, if you care more about someone else than you do about yourself, you won’t be impatient, unkind, envious, boastful, mocking, selfish, angry, spiteful/vengeful, or any other negative adjective. If you truly love someone, if you truly prioritize them, it means you’re always trying to protect, always trusting, always hoping, always pressing on for the sake of the one you love. Ultimately, Paul says love never fails… but he’s talking about the real love that we can’t get from anywhere else besides God.

The funny thing about that is that God is love. Above and beyond all of his other characteristics, I think this one defines him the most while all others fall to second place in who he is, what his being and character is comprised of. He created us, he created all of our beautiful surroundings on earth and above it for us to enjoy and point us back to him (for our own good, he calls us to himself), and when we rejected him he fought back for our sake. He thought we were too important to him to let us go and be apart from him forever, so he made a way for us to come back to him. That is the story of the Bible, the love story of humanity. God proves his love for us by sending us his own son Jesus, in essence caring more about us (as humanity and even as individuals) than he did about himself. He sacrificed himself for our sake because he knew we need it and cannot ever find real fulfillment without him. That’s how powerful he is… for us, in us, and through us.

This is demonstrated in other places in the Bible, all throughout it. The Psalms are full of love, and even the prophets are messages of love from God. If we screw up, we need a wake-up call and some discipline because God knows we need to be pointed in the right direction again (himself) and he needs to get our attention often through uncomfortable means. But, this is because God loves us in a very special way, as the husband figure to the church and the lover of our souls. The marriage relationship is described by Paul as the husband sacrificing himself for his wife, placing her needs above his own and looking after her in every way. In return, his wife is to submit* to him and respect him, caring for him too. I put the * next to “submit” because I think the term needs explanation: I believe submission is not a place of disgrace or powerlessness, but a place of trust and obedience because of the love given to her by her husband. For you see, I have another theory: trust is the reciprocal of love.

All relationships, no matter what kind or intensity, are built upon love and trust (or the lack thereof). If someone truly loves you, you trust them. Trust is you saying “I accept your love and believe wholeheartedly that you have my best interests in mind” while love is saying “I have your best interests in mind and I put you first.” In 1 John, perfect love is described as being so powerful that it drives out fear… this means that perfect love leads to perfect trust and therefore perfect submission to what God has, even if we don’t understand it. That kind of perfect love is so powerful that it overwhelms the heart, infects the soul with trust so deep that David wrote his legendary Psalm 23. Even while in the midst of a life where death was looming over him along the way, he was secure and knew he was safe. This is true power, and this is true relationship.

This love is a fierce love, a love that fights for its beloved. This kind of love stops at nothing to show itself to be true, no matter the cost to itself. This love won’t blink or hesitate if it requires deep sacrifice, even death. This is the love that moves mountains, destroys obstacles, conquers armies. This is how we are “more than conquerors” if we are truly in love with God, and if we receive (trust) God at his word then we are capable of living out our love powerfully to each other too… but do we?

Even assuming we have this true relationship with God, how many people have it with each other?

This brings me to where I can actually start saying what I want to say in this note… that I’m so saddened to see a shallow, meaningless “love” in this world. Even among Christians, it is a rare find when you meet a couple who is deeply invested and would give anything to protect each other. It seems that “everyone has a price” that is too much, that it just isn’t worth it after a point. If the muscles weaken or the beauty fades, the deal’s off. Where’s the love? I see shadows of it, fake posers who are all emotion but have no heart.

I think the ultimate problem is selfishness. We all want what’s best for us, and we’re all trying to have the best. We don’t like to put our lives in anyone else’s hands, and we don’t want to cede ourselves to anyone else. We don’t want to commit to others, and we don’t want to entrust our truest deepest hearts to anyone. Yet, this is what we must do, both with God and with each other… especially in romantic relationships.

Real love is an effort and it takes strength. Shallow, selfish love… that is the cheap, quick-and-easy way out. Nothing hard about it, because it’s all about you in the end. But here’s some free wisdom for you: nothing worth doing is easy, and nothing easy is worth doing. Anything worth doing is worth doing completely, while anything not worth doing isn’t worth doing at all. If you’re going to love, make it the real thing, people! Don’t cower out and take the easy, doomed-to-failure way. In the end, you’ll only be unsatisfied even if for a while it seems to work. Sooner or later, it’ll all break down. If love is easy, you’re doing it wrong. There’s a reason why the real thing is so hard though...

Love, if it’s the real thing, lets go of everything to gain just one thing… the other person. Nothing else matters to them, and that’s the way it should be. Instead of people trying to take from one another in relationships, only being concerned for themselves (deep down, ultimately), each of us should only be concerned with how we can give to the other. That way, it’s almost like a contest of which person can give to the other more. If both people are living like that, truly practicing their genuine love… there will be no fear, only the deep trust. There will be no wanting, no needing of anything or anyone else. The reason so many people are unsatisfied in their relationships today, the cause of so many breakups and divorces is… ta-da!

Selfishness and lack of the actual kind of love we are meant to have.

There are no fights if there is love. Have you ever gotten murderously mad at someone who is willing to ready to give their life just to protect you? I think not… or if you have, I pity you and you might just be a sociopath. Please don’t be sociopathetic… just learn how to trust (receive love). I believe you cannot truly love until you have learned how to receive love, and the only love one is actually capable of giving out is that level of love which has been received. If you can’t trust someone’s love very much, you are incapable of loving very much. If you trust all the way… you can love all the way.

Again, this kind of love is so amazing it’s hard to even imagine sometimes. We as humans literally cannot even grasp it, at least not in its truest form, from its ultimate source. I believe that those without first having a true relationship with Love (capitalized means “God”) cannot give that true love to others. I know that if we are receiving that kind of love from God, we don’t have to try to leech it from others, instead only worrying about giving from our overflowing cups. If we’re really living in the Love, we can’t give love out fast or deeply enough to others because we are constantly in a state of “so overflowing and beyond full that we’re drowning in it” kind of love from God. We need to submit ourselves to Him and receive the love he wants to give us... only then can we live a meaningful life. Here’s some free wisdom: life is only as meaningful as you make it meaningful for others.

Here’s a fun thought: “they will know we are Christians by our love.” It should be obvious and the envy of everyone who lacks it. Our lives should be noticeably different because we have a different source of life than those without this kind of love, and we should be true witnesses to what our true God truly does.

The Bible is a love story, and it is written just for us. God loves us enough to fight for us, and we need to fight for each other. The Bible is full of redemption and rescue, and so as part of our love we ought to lay down our lives for each other… not only be willing to die for someone, but be willing to live for them too. To be honest, it’s a kind of love that few can handle it seems… and I’m just trying to get there myself too.