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Love From a Backward People
While in Canada, I listened to a radio program about a book written on the subject of love from different cultural perspectives around the world. What I had read about what love is, and is not, in the Bible is actually the perception many people have in countries that we would consider a little less civilized or “metropolitan” than ours or at least culturally inferior.
This perspective was from an East Indian couple that had been married for 50 years and were interviewed at a wedding for young relatives whose marriage was arranged:
“Americans look at the wedding day as a finished mansion, new paint, great new fixtures, new furniture, polished floors, perfect yard, ect. It is perfection. Years latter in their marriage they look at the mansion as an ageing worn house that needs much work. It needs much rehabilitation to try to recapture the newness of the beautiful mansion they once had. They want to recapture the beauty of that lost love, rekindle that original elusive mansion (or passion) they once had, the passion of their youth. Indians look at the wedding day as a vacant lot. From that vacant lot you build your mansion over many years. You never quit adding on to it. You build for strength and beauty a lasting testament to real love which is proven over long periods of time.” (If this is done you never want to go back)
When asked If she loved her husband on her wedding day the wife responded; “Loved him? I didn’t even know him!”
The biblical truth about love is that love is not primarily a feeling or emotion, but an action. The feelings are proved true by consistent action. A wise man said in relation to love that you “act yourself into a better way of feeling rather than feel yourself into a better way of acting”.
Americans bring a good deal of emotion and passion to the wedding day but sadly far too often that passion isn’t enough to carry them very far. The passion and feelings are like a short term drug. When the original effect wears off… what then? Have you just fallen out of love? No. You never knew what love was! Love is doing difficult things in difficult times no matter what you feel. Love is sacrificing yourself when there is no apparent gain to be had. Love is the product of years of sharing and caring. Love is proved not by words or emotion or gifts but by the product of your actions through adversity and beyond.
So, who then is more civilized? Which culture is truly backward?
I Corinthians 13
1 Though I speak with the tongues of men and of angels, and have not Love, I am become as sounding brass, or a tinkling cymbal. 2 And though I have the gift of prophecy, and understand all mysteries, and all knowledge; and though I have all faith, so that I could remove mountains, and have not Love, I am nothing. 3 And though I bestow all my goods to feed the poor, and though I give my body to be burned, and have not Love, it profiteth me nothing. 4 Love suffereth long, and is kind; Love envieth not; Love vaunteth not itself, is not puffed up, 5 Doth not behave itself unseemly, seeketh not her own, is not easily provoked, thinketh no evil; 6 Rejoiceth not in iniquity, but rejoiceth in the truth; 7 Beareth all things, believeth all things, hopeth all things, endureth all things. 8 Love never faileth: but whether there be prophecies, they shall fail; whether there be tongues, they shall cease; whether there be knowledge, it shall vanish away. 9 For we know in part, and we prophesy in part. 10 But when that which is perfect is come, then that which is in part shall be done away. 11 When I was a child, I spake as a child, I understood as a child, I thought as a child: but when I became a man, I put away childish things. 12 For now we see through a glass, darkly; but then face to face: now I know in part; but then shall I know even as also I am known. 13 And now abideth faith, hope, Love, these three; but the greatest of these is Love.
Love, Dennis