Lode Baptist Chapel
All You Need is Love
MY BROTHER got married last year, and as the happy couple were leaving the
ceremony this old Beatles hit was playing in the background. "All you need
is love" - but is this really true? My wife has just completed a PhD
thesis which looks at the writings of sociobiologists like Richard Dawkins,
some of whom deny that love even exists. They say that everything we do is
ultimately selfish - even if it has the appearance of being loving.
But history is strewn with people who have showed us what love is - for most of us we don't have to look much further than our parents. They may not have been perfect, but while we were growing up there were probably countless selfless and sacrificial acts made for our benefit. I doubt we always recognised them at the time though - love isn't always the soft and fluffy thing that we often make it out to be.
One of the best definitions of love that I've found was in the book 'The Road Less Travelled' by the psychiatrist M. Scott Peck (it's a book I'd highly recommend). He described love as "the willingness to extend oneself for the purpose of the spiritual growth of another". This man wasn't a Christian at the time, but he recognised that at our core we are spiritual beings. He also realised that love isn't about giving people everything that they want - sometimes love involves the word 'no'.
Children will often say to their parents (about all of the things they want you to buy for them) "if you loved me, you'd get it for me"; or with regards to the rules that you set them "if you loved me, you'd let me do whatever I wanted". But as parents, however, you know that in the long run you have the best interests of your children at heart, and the knowledge that such actions will help children to develop characteristics like patience and self-discipline. You know, also, that rules are generally put in place in order to protect the child - indeed, as a parent, you are likely to do whatever you can to save them from harm - even to the extent of sacrificing your own life, if it were necessary.
Whilst this sort of love makes sense in the relationship between parent and child, some people struggle to see God's love for us in the same way. A God who doesn't always give us what we want (no matter how hard we pray), a God who shows us a way to live which, in the long run, will help us grow and keep us from harm. A God who sacrificially gave his life to save us and to show us the full extent of his love, and a God who longs, like a mother, to pick us up and embrace us when we fall. Just as parents don't ask us to pay for the love that they give us, God's love is also free and unconditional - open to all who ask to be adopted as a child of God.