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Cetera is an avid reader and friend of the Tree House, and an occasional commenter.  He currently resides in Wyoming, having given up on Colorado after ten years and deciding to move his family to a more politically friendly state.  He has been thinking through some basic principles inspired by his Christian faith and the Spirit, and has prepared a series of posts for our encouragement – timeless Truths worth thinking and talking about. This is the second in a series of five posts. Previous posts are linked at the bottom of the page.

What is Love?

f0295911-bd3d-4da0-8288-b0ec85de58b7_zpsfb69a377-1If we proceed from an initial conclusion that we are to love both God and each other, how do we do so?  What is love?  First Corinthians tells us love is the greatest thing there is.  That is all fine and dandy, but what is this thing called Love that we are called to be, to espouse, and to do?
Again, the quotes I selected previously (John 3:16, John 15:13, Mark 12:30-31) suggest the answer.  Love is not an emotion or a feeling.  Love is not something passive.  Each passage involves action.
Spend some time with young children, and you will come to appreciate their points of view and marvel at the occasionally phenomenal and intuitive insights they have on life.  They cannot explain love, and they cannot describe it, but they can tell what is and is not love, and they can certainly name examples of love in their lives.  If you ask, they will tell you that they love their parents, or that their parents love them.
In a religious education class I taught with my wife a number of years ago with a bunch of fourth graders, I asked them about love.  They believed that saying you loved someone was a primary example of love, as was hugging them, or patting them on the back.  Several even believed that being obedient was part of loving their parents.  I asked if, instead of children, their parents had robots instead, and the robots would always say “I love you,” and give their parents hugs and be obedient and keep their rooms clean, would those robots love their parents? Each of them said no.  They could not explain why, since all the forms we talked about were there, but they said it was different.  Something that they could not explain but that was a part of them, and was not a part of programmed machine who did those things by rote, was responsible for love, and without that something there could be no love.
Those children were correct.  What is missing is intent.  Love requires an Act of Will.

Acts of Will

f34a0977-e603-4e36-900c-b034bf22f435_zps72de9e60-1Love requires an act of the will.  So what is an act of the will?  It is a choice, a decision, and an expression of one’s entire being.  “You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul, with all your mind, and with all your strength.”
This is how God loves us, and how he desires each of us to love him.  Life is about learning how to love like this; how to open ourselves and make a supreme act of will, consciously and with full knowledge, to love God back with our whole beings.  God’s plan is for each of us to be in union with him through Love, an act of the will.
This is the point, and it is to this goal that we are called.  There is a catch, however.  With love being an act of the will, it can never be forced.  It cannot be by default.  It must be chosen freely, and expressed individually.  Therefore, we must have the capacity to choose to love God, which results in us also having the choice to not love God.  Without this choice, we are no better than the robotic children programmed to behave in certain ways, going through the motions, but exhibiting a hollow, empty facsimile of love.
This act of will is not easy to achieve.  It takes a lot of work, and a lot of practice.  It seems completely unnatural to us, and we have a great many distractions that make an act of an individual’s entire being very difficult to conceive of and certainly difficult to pull off.  We have disagreements with each other, we hurt each other, and we constantly have roadblocks to understanding and loving each other as children and heirs of this plan and promise.  So how do we practice this, and how can we exercise our spirit and train ourselves in this ultimate expression of Love?

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The war in Heaven was over this plan for us, and over God’s implementation of this plan.  Satan does not agree with it, and does not believe it to be possible.  He wanted to force everyone to conform to God’s desire and obtain the glory for doing so.  He points out our great many faults, and indeed in Revelations is standing in Heaven accusing each of us of our failures before the Throne of God.  (Revelation 12:7-10)
In a lot of ways, Satan is correct.  We don’t do very well at this.  For the vast majority of history it has not been understood what it is we are trying to do, and what the goal actually is.  We gain a little ground here and there, and lose some ground often, and once in a great while someone will come along and be blessed with greater insight and revelation, and it gets communicated haphazardly out to the faithful in pieces and parts.  However, God doesn’t seem to be too picky.  He’s judging us not on how well we follow the plan, but on our intent to follow the plan.  He judges us on our acts of will, imperfect though they may be.
Using a football analogy, we’re born on one goal line, and we’re trying to move the ball and score a touchdown with our act of will.  It is nearly impossible for us to do so, but God is pretty generous.  If we can move the ball just two yards, he’ll figure out a way to get us the other ninety-eight yards and across the opposing goal line.  He’ll carry us if he has to, or move time and space to bring the line closer.  What matters is that we have picked up our ball (our cross), and are marching with intent towards the end zone.
Picking up that ball can be hard work.  Football players spend a lot of time training for it.  We need to train our spirit in the same way.  It is important to pray and to read scriptures as part of spiritual exercise.  It helps renew our faith, and often helps give us hope.  Both are gifts of the Spirit.  However, the best way I know to strengthen ourselves, our will, our ability to love, is to do charity.
In the next post, we’ll cover Charity and Forgiveness.  Both are acts of love, and acts of the will, and are important for spiritual growth and a functional society built on respecting individual rights.
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First Principles, Part I : Why are we here?  What is our Purpose?

 

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