“Every transgression that I have made, you have answered with a hypocritical judgement. No one can live up to your self-righteous standards. Do you have any idea how it feels to wake up every morning, knowing that you’re going to fail in the eyes of the only person you’ve ever loved?”
I love good quotes. That one comes from Smallville. It was a TV series that aired for 10 seasons, depicting the early life of Superman. I’ve recently become a fan. I find myself notating a quote from nearly every episode. While most of the writing on the show seems to have a biblical reference, at least in my opinion, that quote stuck out to me. I thought about it for days, long after watching the episode.
LOVE. Something everyone wants to obtain, but all may not truly understand. The character in the show, Lana, was making it apparent that the person she spoke those words to, Clark, did not love her. They’d been keeping secrets from one another. And if a mistake was made, the other person forgave with their words, but not with their actions. How many of us do the same? With our friends? Spouses? Children? We are so quick to recite 1 Corinthians 13:4-8 (Love is patient, love is kind…) to describe love, but it seems those verses have become more of a cliché than actually reality.
What struck me, is that I’ve been guilty of the exact thing Lana accused Clark of! There’ve been instances in my life when someone would hurt me, even if in a miniscule way, and I’d be quick to cut them off from my life completely. I’d used their transgression to turn my heart into a block of ice where it becomes nearly impossible to penetrate. I pushed almost everyone around me away, only to be left alone. The hurt, pain, and shame that I felt, began to turn into fear. The truth was that I feared love, but still desired it.
I was desperate to love and for someone to love me, but still couldn’t grasp its true meaning. Love is constant forgiveness. Love is vulnerability. Love is waking up every morning with the intent to push one’s own desires and wants to the side, for someone else. The bible calls it ‘dying to self’. The moment I heard those words uttered on Smallville, I had to fight tears from falling down my face. It reminded me of what love IS, by stating what love is NOT.
Sure, love is certainly attainable with another person. I won’t deny that. I can’t deny that. I see it all around me. I’m surrounded by marriages so full of love, they make The Notebook look like What’s Love Got to Do With It. Not only within marriage, but within families and friendships as well. There is a longing to go above the love a person may have for themselves, to ensure the happiness of another. There is sacrifice. There’s even a chance the love may not be reciprocated. But to love, one has to take that chance.
How is something like this even possible? How can a person truly come to love another? The answer put quite simply - Christ. Christ is love. Many times throughout my life I’d hear someone say how a person can’t love if they do not know God, because God is love. Or a man can’t love me until he loves God first. I believed it. But it wasn’t until recently, thanks to Smallville again, that the light bulb turned on inside my head. It all became so clear.
When Christ came to earth, He left His seat on the throne in Heaven to become as His creation. He became dirt. The bible says “God gathered dust in His hands and breathed the breath of life to form man”. He did this for one purpose: to die. Crazy right? Makes no sense. Why, do you ask? I thought you’d get it by now. LOVE! Because He loves mankind. He gave His life, His blood literally poured out, as a sacrifice on our behalf. Even after His resurrection, where He showed Himself to hundreds of witnesses, He’d be rejected. But still, to this day, He shows grace to His people.
When I think about my life and the decisions I’ve made, it makes me cringe with shame knowing the Lord loves me the way He does. The fact that God became flesh, did not take away from His Godliness, so He knows the depths of our hearts. The things we are too ashamed to say aloud. The things we are too afraid to admit to ourselves. He knows the depths of our existence, our every thought. Yet He loves us, forgives and accepts us, just as the filthy beings we are.
Now that I can somewhat grasp that concept, I have a better understanding of what love is. Christ was the ultimate example of love. To love means to be like Him. Once a person knows Christ and has accepted Him within their heart, only then can they be capable of reciprocating love. To show grace when a loved one doesn’t do as expected. To forgive and wipe the slate clean as if the transgression never happened. To accept a person, fully and wholeheartedly, regardless of their past. Even to sacrifice a life, if necessary, for the sake of someone else. That’s love.
