On Love
February 3, 2017 8:44 PM   Subscribe

 
I truly appreciate this. Even before the election, I was nervous about all the "love trumps hate" signs and so forth: love isn't a weapon, not unless you're in a Saturday morning cartoon. It's worth believing in the way that science is worth believing in: because it doesn't need you to believe in it. Credo quia absurdum est, kind of a thing.
posted by Countess Elena at 9:02 PM on February 3, 2017 [1 favorite]


Thank you for posting this
posted by not_the_water at 9:51 PM on February 3, 2017


Thank you.
posted by pt68 at 10:17 PM on February 3, 2017


There's a bit from the Bible I've always held as my favorite. Note that it is also fantastically effective with religious extremists – you've got to use it at the right time, though. Like now, when hate is being spewed and every "reason" to divide, separate, and shout chaos is being emphasized. When it seems like every language is being poisoned by a philosophy that boils down to "f--k you, got mine."
1 Corinthians 13 (International Standard Version)

If I speak in the languages of humans and angels but have no love, I have become a reverberating gong or a clashing cymbal. If I have the gift of prophecy and can understand all secrets and every form of knowledge, and if I have absolute faith so as to move mountains but have no love, I am nothing. Even if I give away everything that I have and sacrifice myself, but have no love, I gain nothing.

Love is always patient;
    love is always kind;
love is never envious
    or arrogant with pride.

Nor is she conceited,
    and she is never rude;
she never thinks just of herself
    or ever gets annoyed.

She never is resentful;
    is never glad with sin;
she’s always glad to side with truth,
    and pleased that truth will win.

She bears up under everything;
    believes the best in all;
there is no limit to her hope,
    and never will she fall.

Love never fails. Now if there are prophecies, they will be done away with. If there are languages, they will cease. If there is knowledge, it will be done away with. For what we know is incomplete and what we prophesy is incomplete. But when what is complete comes, then what is incomplete will be done away with.

When I was a child, I spoke like a child, thought like a child, and reasoned like a child. When I became a man, I gave up my childish ways. Now we see only an indistinct image in a mirror, but then we will be face to face. Now what I know is incomplete, but then I will know fully, even as I have been fully known.

Right now three things remain: faith, hope, and love. But the greatest of these is love.
posted by fraula at 5:41 AM on February 4, 2017 [10 favorites]


Thank you for posting this.
posted by gt2 at 8:13 AM on February 4, 2017


I was raised a fundamentalist christian but left that behind me 13 years ago, when i became an adult.

It has been difficult for me to ignore or reject the parts of scripture or religion that I've been seeing lately. That christianity is a religion of compassion.

I've also felt drawn to explore more deeply my Jewish heritage. I'm half jewish but never give that much thought. My predecessors have been rabbis, preachers, artists, and philosophers. I think I'm almost ready to look past my interpretation of text as deist, in scripture and writings, to see a broader, more loving interpretation. Maybe soon. Not yet, though.
posted by rebent at 9:46 AM on February 4, 2017 [2 favorites]


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