Where is true love to be found?

The Lonely Flower

I remember asking myself the same question as I was driving down the road the blasting Haddaway's "What is love?"  followed by Black Eyed Peas "Where is the love?" Eventually a remix of Haddaway's song came out titled "No love". 

I didn't have an answer then, and I began to suppose it must not exist. 

Now I realize that as Western culture begins to drown itself in moral relativism, it is really inside of our culture where the love doesn't exist. I mean how could love exist in a morally relativistic culture? I import my meaning of love into the word, the wife-beating husband imports his meaning, the nihilistic philosophers claim it doesn't exist, Freud thinks its sex, Plato thinks its the ultimate good, Buddha thinks its a destructive self-inhibiting attachment, Rudolfo Anaya thinks its tolerance, so where is the true meaning of love?

What do I mean by the true meaning? I mean true as in, that which conforms to reality. Where is the love that is really real? Can I taste it, touch it, smell it? How will I know its real? How do I measure it?

Is love a profusion of chemical reactions to sexual arousal? Is it found in the ecstatic pulsations of sexual intercourse? If so is love nothing but oxytocin, dopamine, and serotonin? Then why do we love things we've never seen or touched. Am I sexually around by my dog, but still we pour out our love for it? Would your love for your dog be considered real love? Is there more than one type of love? Or is love universal in this sense, just varying in intensity with the objects of my affection? Which begs another question, do I choose what I love, or its not up to me?

Is love a verb, is it a noun? Is it only the action of showing affections, or is it the feeling of having affection?

One thing everybody seems to agree on is love hurts. Why does it hurt then? Is it the chemicals? If it is the chemicals then why do we spring to life when our lover returns? Why are hurting love songs so "sad and slow". Is it the harmonics associated with depreciation of neurotransmitters in the brain?

Is love the backend of the belt of a wife-beating man? Is it absolute loyalty, obedience, and respect to your spouse? Is love then oppressive, lacking freedom or choice? Why then do many women in domestic abuse cases drop the charges? Why then do women linger around disloyal men? Why then is love exclusive? Then is it intolerant? Is Buddha correct then? Is love really "evol"? Is that what's really real?

Rather than simply write an article about where true love is not found, as many Christian's often do. I want to write an article of where true love is found, which everyone at large wants to know.

True love will never be found in a relativistic setting. If everyone is allowed to define love, then all of a sudden, love is an exclusive personal experience, containing its own meaning that the person gives it, and is not something that can be recognized. On the contrary love is intrinsically bound to charity, that is sharing. How do we measure that? Do we simply look at something and then call that love, thereby doing what we hoped to avoid, that is importing our own meaning into love? Yet still our minds want an objective reference point, a springboard, a measuring tool from which to say something is love. What universal factors can be seen about this ideal?

Love is personal. Rocks don't love. Humans and mammals love, because love is a conscious activity.

Love places "value or significance" into someone. 

Love carries affection towards someone. 

Love's affection results in action.

We can say we love something, but usually we mean that as an extension of our love for another. 

True love doesn't place significance in non-living things, beyond their value as an extension of love as an expression of another person.

Why doesn't true love place significance in non-living things, because they are not personal, incapable of relationship, because love is a conscious activity between persons.

Love is exclusive to that which you place significance into.

This is the most difficult thing for our culture to accept. Love is limited in who the love is being poured into. If someone says they love everyone, does he or she mean that places "value and significance" which correspond to carrying affection, and then puts that into action, is the same as the love he or she has for his spouse? So this individual, in order for his love of everyone to be non-exclusive, would have to act equally for all. Otherwise your love is exclusive, because you only have sex with your spouse, and you don't share your bedroom with everyone else. In a "tolerance" view, this love is all-inclusive in that all combinations of sexual partners are acceptable, because it would be unloving to exclude anyone. How absurd! Not only is there physical limitation set by natural order but also emotional limitations, which would prevent you from being absolutely fair across the board, therefore excluding some, while attempting to be inclusive. No wonder true love is no where to be found in the culture at large, because of the fallacy of inclusion! We have not realized the exclusivity of love, and particularly that of who we invite into our bedroom. Is this an advocation for monogamy? Of course it is.

Let's just look at "romantic" love right now. We can argue for different types of love in a different piece. So if love is about one pouring affection into another, why does it seem non-existent, we do this all the time, don't we? Yes because there is another marker of love! 

Love has to be self-less. Wow, what a brain tease, one has to lose their self motives in pouring out affection into another. But as we look around we see a world inundated with a self-seeking love. 

Like my picture's, like my body, like my eyes, like my fears, like my style, like my car, like my life. 

That's not love, and we know it. Yet this is the affection we give to others. We demand to win something in return like an investor.

Our love has become a contract. 

We hold each other hostage in our relationships, "If I give you more of my body, you must give me more of your affection and attachment." "If I do A, then you must do B." 

A lot of times these things are unspoken. But you see the hurt and the tears well up when the terms of the agreement are not met. Then we think, "Communication must the problem." Can I just say, that the problem is deeper that just communication.

Now here comes the tie breaker; the reason we don't see perfectly true love in this world, is because we as humans simply don't have perfectly true love within us all of the time. We want eternal love, we want self-less love, we want an enduring love. Someone who can put up with us even when we mess up. Love without secrets, love that keeps hoping, love that protects and nurtures its own.

But these things are impossible if you have selfish ambition. We want this kind of love, but we don't want to give it. How can you overlook and forgive someone if your motives coming into the relationship was simply to receive true love, and you carry this contract mentality. You see in a contract, if you break the agreement, it is no longer binding! But the love we seek is never-ending. We want the love that lasts till death, we just don't want to give it. 

Recently Jamie Varon published a thought provoking article called "This Is How We Date" in which she critiqued to covetous culture of our generation when it comes to dating. She writes how we constantly compare our relationships with each other through social media because our primary concern is not the relationship anymore, its ourselves. A lot of people are talking about the truth about the culture of love we have here in the West. Can we simply just excuse ourselves because we don't know the truth? I don't think so.

I think the real reason we don't want to give this steadfast, keep-going, persevering love, is because it requires so much sacrifice. The abandonment of self is the utmost priority in this love. You have to set aside your needs and wants and tend to others. It means you may not be glorified. It means you will suffer loss, emotional, physical, mental loss. 

Now its up to you to answer the question, is it worth it? I can say unashamedly, it is.

Where is true love to be found? 

"In this is love, not that we have loved God but that he loved us and sent his Son to be the propitiation for our sins." 1 John 4:10

The sad reality is that God came into the world, and we showed him our love by crucifying him.

Yet true love is seen at the cross in the sacrificial work of Jesus on our behalf, and if God so loved us, we also ought to love one another.