It's complicated...
2025.04.28
Before you read this as me having a midlife crisis or a romantic pining over "the one that got away" or a long-lost love, take the time to actually see, read, and understand what I'm saying. Love is all, good and bad.
I grew up with the Western, Evangelical Christian interpretation of the bible and 1990s Disney. They gave a really warped, perverted, and incorrect portrayal of what love truly is. They paint love as only positive, happy-go-lucky major-chorded songs played with plucky instruments, full of harmony, smiles, dandelions and sunny days. Real love, actual love, true love, involves darkness, despair, minor cords, dissodence, negativity, and heartbrake. It can be requited with closure and unrequited with no katharsis. And by love, I want to clarify I mean all types of love, not just that romantic bull that we overemphasize in our culture.
I want to point out that Christians quote 1 John 4.8, then 1 Corinthians 13.1-13, leave it at that and call it a day. We don't want to entertain even the slightest thought that God could possibly do or make evil and darkness, as that undermines our whole concept of God being incomprehensibly good and saving us all through Jesus because "he loves me so." There are mental gymnastics used to paint God as a hippie good deity and the devil as some anti-god nightime darkness incarnate, an evil force that God and God's forces have to wrestle with. That dualistic concept is blatantly Zoroastrian. It's all laughable apologetics.
To a Christian, if we dare even think that God created evil, it makes the bible a bundle of contradictions. Why in the world do we continue to push this? It makes God weak because he can't encompass all things, since evil is off the table. It makes a devil equal with God, a God that created it. It makes God a walking contradiction and a poor creator. It brings up the problem of evil and how God can't and won't do anything about it to solve this mess of a world he made. It also twists Jesus into something he never was and shows God as literally incompetent.
But the bible makes it clear that God created light and darkness, as well as good and evil. God created the universe as it is, even with all the chaos, and it was good. God allowed and even told his people to do detestable and horrid things. God has had his servant spirits/angels harden people's hearts and minds. God declares the outcomes of all things, and everything works to the good of those that love God. All means good or bad. It includes light and darkness, peace and turmoil, righteousness and sin, ad infinitum. And anyone who's actually lived knows that love is not that hippie Disney bullcrap either.
Following with this ridiculous misinterpretation that love can only be the good things and that dopamine rush, Disney paints love as this "happily ever after" with no more problems, turmoils or strife. The heroines and heros are desperately alone, find each other, then there's no more fighting or drama once the movie's over and they beat the villain. What a load of bollucks. There's a reason why people are lonlier than ever. Mix Disney's flatulant lies with the internet, we get a good reason why.
I've been alone and together. I've been a lover and a husband. I've been a son and a father. I've been an enemy and a friend. I've been a mentor and apprentice. No matter the role, no matter the title, there is love. Each of these are different types of love that feel different but function the same.
The feelings are from the rush of chemicals. They all are but an aspect of love. Love needs intent for expression. Love happens through a channel of expression. Love manifests through a medium of expression. Love is experienced as the entireity of that expression.
When my parents loved me, they had the intent for me to feel that love. They found ways to express that through things, thoughts, words, and deeds. They used things like letters, family videos, bragging, getting me gifts, leaving me a legacy, simple words, hugs, being there whenever I needed them, and wanting to fight others for my own happiness and preservation. Love was not just that feeling of dopamine. It was shown, heard, felt, touched, and experienced. Even today I learn of how much they truly loved me.
With my wife and family, I intend for them and I to feel love. I do the same as my parents did. I show love to my wife by getting her flowers and things. I tell her love by saying how much I love her and how great she is as a wife, cook, lover, housekeeper, friend, and mother. I make her feel love by hugging her, giving her skin-to-skin contact. I learn her love and teach her by studying her mind and way of learning and mine, then help bridge the gaps and differences we have. I look away from other women so the majority of my eyes are spent on her, even when she's not around. I share things with her so she's not left out. My love for her takes so many forms that you'd never think that love could be that, but it is. Then there's the feeling, after my intent, the channel it travels on, and the medium it manifests with. I do the same with my son, just like my parents and my wife.
I've learned a lot from my experiences and NDE accounts, regardless of being an evolved trait or evidence of something more. If there is one thing, remember that love is the goal of life. Love endures and doesn't die. It involves being accepted and rejected. It continues regardless of that. Love involves some of the worst and darkest parts of us. It works out for everything's good in the end. It is a path as much as a concept, a thing as much as a verb.
Love isn't ever about yourself, it's about others. Understand the difference and work to ensure others can feel love. When one is abandoned, take them in. When one is despised, give them your hand. When one is fallen, help them back up. When one rejects you, do all you can from the background for their own good, including letting go. When one harms themselves or others, be firm and correct them. When one is toxic and uses you, leave them. We learn love so we can share love. We are called to be like Jesus, who put his ego and self aside so he could be the very image of God. We are to be the very image of God. We are to be Love.
Evangelical Christianity and Disney lie about love. It's good and bad. It's all things. It elicits positive and negative emotions, behaviors, and responses. It's something nurtured and involves friendship, loyalty, lust, trust, and so much more. It is just as deep as it is shallow. God does all these things, and God is Love. Love is all, good and bad.