Love is the true purpose of our human existence. Love is our origin and our destiny. Love is what nurtures us. Love is our deepest desire. Love is what sustains us along the arduous path. In love we grow; in love we are perfected and become who we are. Those who experience authentic love experience an amazing and unshakable joy, even amidst the hardest circumstances. Those who experience a lack of love languish, even when others are eager to help and heal. Devoid of love, human existence becomes meaningless and miserable.
But what is love? That is the real question.
Many people across the spectrum would agree with the statements I just made about love. Whether male or female, young or old, believers or unbelievers, conservatives or liberals, most of the people that I meet would like their life to be about love. Even the most jaded or cynical, beneath their façade, are protecting a tender heart that desperately yearns for love but is too terrified to seek it.
If virtually everyone believes that human existence is supposed to be about love, why so much misery and brokenness? Why so much confusion and chaos? Why so much polarization and hatred? What has gone wrong with the world today?
We have forgotten the connection between love and truth. It is impossible to abide in love if we do not also abide in the truth. “Love rejoices in the truth” (1 Corinthians 13:6).
We’ve all heard those famous words of the apostle Paul, repeated at so many weddings: “Love is patient, love is kind. It is not jealous, is not pompous, it is not inflated…” Perhaps we are so familiar and so sentimental in hearing the words that we tune out by the time he speaks that crucial phrase: Love rejoices in the truth.
Love and truth are inseparable. Love is only love if it is ordered to the truth. If we are living a lie, love will not last.
“What is truth?” The words of Pontius Pilate echo through the centuries. We live in an age of relativism. We delude ourselves with the notion that we can create our own truth. We think we can make life mean whatever we want it to mean. This was, in fact, the original diabolical temptation to the first humans: “You will be like gods…” (Genesis 3:5). Each of us faces that decision at each moment. Do I open my heart in receptivity to all that is true and good and beautiful? Or do I assert my own ego, grasping and seizing and controlling, creating my own version of reality? Relativism has given so many people just the leeway they need to indulge selfish desires or avoid doing the difficult thing. Pope Benedict XVI aptly exposed it as the “Dictatorship of Relativism.”
Truth and goodness and beauty were once delighted in and pursued by the greatest human minds. Whether philosophers or poets, architects or astronomers, many of the intellectual giants of the ancient and medieval world yearned to give themselves over to the truth. The more they did so, the more they perceived a mystery that was beyond their own limited experience. They saw themselves as stewards, not masters of the mystery.
The truth is objective and transcendent. We do not “create” it, even though our human creativity may unleash a deeper experience of it. Rather, “conversion” is a much more suitable word. If our hearts are sincere and receptive, truth or goodness or beauty will sometimes break through like a shaft of light. We discover that our approach has been incorrect or incomplete. We let ourselves be changed.
Or perhaps we don’t. Perhaps we harden our heart and stay the same. That is where misery and chaos and destruction enter into the human story.
Relativism is a threat to the truth, which means that it is ultimately a threat to love and to human flourishing. In this blog I will call upon my expertise in philosophy and theology to reaffirm objective truth.
However, I will also talk extensively about the subjective dimension of truth. Knowing the truth is one thing; internalizing it is another! Most of us can relate painfully to the experience of Paul: “I do not do the good I want, but I do the evil I do not want” (Romans 7:19). Like him, we have much need of the healing and integrity that Jesus Christ brings.
The truth is not relative, but it most certainly is relational. Love and truth are inseparable. God is love, i.e., God is an eternal communion of persons in relationship. We have been created in God’s image and likeness. We are destined to see God face to face and become like him. Therefore, we will only discover the full truth of our human existence in healthy relationships with God, self, and others.
Like so many today, I have experienced a great deal of brokenness in my own heart. My intellectual and spiritual beliefs have not always matched up with my emotional or physical experiences. I have received much healing in Christ. With help from some great friends, he is teaching me how to abide in love and truth. Therefore this blog will also share personal lessons learned.
Abiding in Love and Truth. That is what each of us truly desires. It is the exhortation that Jesus offered us the night before he died. He proclaimed himself to be the way, the truth, and the life. And he called us to abide in his love as branches on the vine, bearing fruit together in him.
I look forward to sharing more soon.
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