The meaning of love

Depeche Mode once sang the words:

"Ive read more than a hundred books, Seen love mentioned many thousand times, But despite all the places Ive looked, Its still no clearer its just not enough, Im still no nearer the meaning of love."

If you find the rest of the lyrics on the internet, you can see that singer Dave Gahan was obviously searching for the meaning of love...that is, afterall, the name of the song.

Love is one of the most commonly used words I know. Used to describe feelings towards friends and family, to a piece of music you like, something you eat or drink or even drive. I could go on for along time. Yet, while this word is so commonly used, why do we see so little of this 'love' in the world today.

It seems that love is something we create to make us feel better in the situation we are in. Having said that, I am not discounting love between freidns and family, or to something that genuinly touches your heart. In fact, to some extent, I disagree with what i've just written! However, somewhere in there I believe there is some truth.

The fact that love is used to describe so many things really does begin to detract away from what it really is and really means. Maybe, the love that one feels towards the homeless is compassion, which is possibly an aspect of love, but not love itself. The love for a film could be the way it has made you smile and connected with your emotions during those few hours.

We search for love in many different places, to appease our many different desires. Everything we do in life is essentially us trying to calm our desires to feel wanted by another person, to joke and to laugh, to feel security, both physically and financially etc. Do all the apsects of life that we strive to find and live out come under the concept of love? If we found true love, everything would be okay right? I mean, thats all we really want at the end of the day?

My friend Jack recently leant me a book by Andrew Wilson called Incomparable: Explore the Character of God (by the way, if you have read my last, I doubt it would surprise you if I told you I was a Christian!) Anyway, this books, as I just typed, is about God's character.

I opened it up flicked the chapater entitled "God is Love". I won't spend ages typing on this, otherwise I may just end up typing the chapter, but the jist is that God doesn't just love us, and give love to us, but he is love. 1 John 4:8-10 says:

"Whoever does not love does not know God, because God is love. This is how God showed his love among us: He sent his one and only Son into the world that we might live through him. This is love: not that we loved God, but that he loved us and sent his Son as an atoning sacrifice for our sins."

If this is true, how can we know true love if we do not know God? We can have glances of it, we can feel wanted, we can fuzzy. But it isn't love. Those things don't last. God does...

This theory is obviously going to have his critics, but you can't judge a persons character unless you truley know him. So you can't pass judgement on God's love unless you make the effort to know him.

So, if God is love, that I presume that means everything will be fine as we see it if we know God? I'm not sure if that is true. Being a Christian certainly hasn't madfe life a breeze for me. But God being love, and knowing God's love you can start to see what it really is. It is the humble, sacfrifical nature of allowing the death of his son for ours sins, it is the underlying assurance and hope he puts in our life, it is the fact that we know that someone does care for us, even if it seems as if knowone else does. God's love certinaly isn't flashy, but it is true, and it is constant and everlasting.

Andrew Wilson says that trying to describe God's love is like trying to rugby tackle a snooker table. You can give it your best shot, but ultimatley it is far to big for you to get oyur arms around it. So I think i'll stop there.

However, if I were to meet Dave Gahan and tried to exaplain to him my understanding of love I would probably say that while he does feel happiness, he does care for others, and others care for him, while he may feel warm when he recieves a hug from a friend, all these things are not love. They are other feelings, that are elements of love. But not true love. That can come from knowing God, who is he is, how he views us, and what he has done for us.

The eternal question...

A few things were made aware to me this evening, which lead to a few thoughts...I'm sorry if this isn't the most coherent blog, it is quarter past three in the morning, but hopefully it will make some kind of sense.

It seems we are forever trying to understand where we, as humans, came from, and how the world was created.

There are various theories, from creationism, big bang theory, to the idea that we are living inside some kind of larger being, much like microorganisms live inside ourselves.

Science is often used to disprove the christian God, but surely science can only exist if there is a God.

One concept that is difficult to get your head round is the idea that there is an eternal God who created the world. Often we can't fathom the concept that there is an eternal creator who created the world. Indeed, who created God? If we went down that route, it wouldn't work. Because whoever created God, had to be created, and in tern they had to be created, so it is a never ending circle of creation of a God that created the next God, who finally created the universe and the earth. It would mean that there had to be a start. So time had to be created at some point, which is an idea that I just can't get my head round. As time had to be created somehow, and if nothing existed before time, then time wouldn't have been created! Anyway...

Therefore there must be eternality (not sure if that is a word...) in any theory of how the world was created. For the big bang to happen, there must either have been eternal matter, that had existed for, well, eternity, that at one point created the bang at the given moment in time. Or there must have been an eternal creator, or God, created the world, quite possibly using the make up of the big bang to create the world.

I'm not great on science, but I'm sure it has been proven somewhere at some point that the gases used to create life from the big bang is possible. I think it is perfectly possible that God used these gases, this matter, to create the world, because he knew that combination created life as he intended.

In terms on which theory is right, basing it on our human understand of creation in this day and age, I heavily lean towards God, a creator. In fact, I more than just heavily lean. I am certain. In order for something to be created in the world today, it must have human interference, or else nothing will be created.

If the big bang happened without the interference of a creator, then why did it that at that point in time? If the eternal matter that was there, was always there, which is must have been for it to be eternal, then why didn't the big bang, happen before? Therefore would be no control over the reactions of these gases or these matters. Therefore, the surely must have been a creator who knew how these matters worked, and what they could be used for, and was for creation. The creator had to have control over these matters in order for them to be used to create at that point in time.

So, it does boil down to eternal matter, or eternal God? Science is great. Science explains mechanism, but it doesn't prove life.