Christian Love and Evil

First, let me say--I love comments. Please comment--if you agree or disagree. Discussion is wonderful--what better way to know more truth than to open-mindedly discuss with others? In the comments it was asked: why do we need "Christian Love" and where does evil come from?

The answer to both of these questions, in my opinion, revolves around one major issue: humanity's selfishness.

First to say, Love that doesn't know Christ is flawed, and is never really love. At its best it is a twisted version of the authentic. Love without Christ is ultimately, without exception, about yourself. Its about satisfying your desires for whatever it is that you cling to in the name of "love". For a truly great experiment in examining humanity's version of love, read C.S. Lewis' Great Divorce. I've read it/listened to it...oh, at least a dozen times now--and each time I see a little more clearly how manipulative we are when we speak of love that is seperated from Christ.

Why is Christian love unselfish? Because--its author, its model, its King gave up Himself when there was nothing to gain but love. Christ loved when we could not even comprehend what that meant. Paying the price in Himself, He enabled us to be redeemed...more importantly--He gave us an example of what real love looked like (selfless, sacrificial and stronger than Hell itself in its joy) and then bizarrely told us to follow His lead.

That's why Christian love is necessary. Its the only real love there is--certainly its the only love that would ever offer us anything other then torment and destruction.

As for evil...perhaps you can already guess what I am going to say...evil is selfishness. Its putting our will before God's--chosing our preferred, lesser good, over the greater good offered to us by our creator. In so doing, we exalt ourselves to a position we were never intended to occupy--deciding what is our best good for ourselves--and we sin against God. As we do this...the lesser good that we cling too (and it IS a lesser good--evil only exists as a perversion of the good--in itself it is nothing) that good becomes an evil thing, not because the good that originally attracted us is wrong--but because we have undermined God, using our freewill to chose our way before His way, we have destroyed the very thing we would have given up heaven to keep for ourselves.

Think of a bubble. Everybody, as a child, loved bubbles. They're wonderful, beautiful magical things. Every kid wants to reach out and grap that mysterious floating ball...and the instant you try to close your hand on the bubble, the bubble disappears. The only way you can handle a bubble is by using the Bubble Wand--any other approach and the bubble is gone. So it is with any good that you try to hold onto when it is outside of the will of God.

Sex. Money. Power. Love. Fame.

No person who has achieved their ends when pursuing one of these things for itself has ever found satisfaction. But those who try to impliment the ideals of Christian love into their life...if and when any of those lesser goods come into their lives--they discover the joy that those good bring, and as they were satsified merely to love God and live the life that His love leads us towards, their satisfaction cannot be shaken.