Controversy: You Think Love is Easy?

For the sake of getting my philosophical writings out of my notebook and onto the computer, I hope to transcribe and elaborate some of the debates I've been having with myself, Papa, and the general public.

Here's to the first of several entries about love.

We were having a question and answer session at youth group about homosexuality, and my thoughts were still reeling before I tried to go to sleep. So here are some rationalizations of mine, both written that night and further considered as I type, sprinkled with the debate at youth.

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Homosexuality--how do we as Christians explain why it is wrong? Because "the Bible says so?" Yeah, great, but why? Why does the Bible call it wrong?

A good friend brought up the point that he can't imagine how God could judge someone based on how they were born.

Paul tries to defend this kind of answer towards the beginning of Romans while he talks about predestination and God choosing whom He loves based on what colonists called sovereign will. While I can't really understand Paul's answer, I'm hoping to look into it more once I get my hands on a Bible commentary for Romans.

Our panel of pastors and in-house-missionary replied that everyone is born into sin, because sin is permanent in this life until Christ's return revolutionizes everything, and everyone has a different weakness which can develop into a chaining habit of sin.

Then the good friend said that gays don't choose whom they are attracted to, just like he doesn't choose to be straight. To which our panel answered that virtually no one chooses to sin. They just do. I rationalize this as follows: I don't consciously say to myself, "Yeah, you know what, I am gonna break God's law by taking that candy bar, and I don't care that I'm sinning. I want it, so I'm doing it."

In fact, I think very few people consider their actions as sin; instead, they justify them or label them less offensively. If we really thought about our wrong actions as sin, I think we'd be less likely to do them. Think about it. Just that word sin. Kinda makes me shiver. Instead I'll think about stealing as a "bad action God will forgive anyways." Yeah, gives me less of a sickening, convicted feeling in my gut.

The panel replied that while few, if any, homosexuals say to themselves "You know what, Imma try hitting on my own gender and have sex with that person and see how that goes," they do choose to entertain those thoughts, then act on them, just like straights choose to survey that hot person then jack off or have sex with him/her. In which case, the brief thoughts are not entirely the problem nor are they necessarily the sin; running with those thoughts instead of making each thought and action captive to Christ is the real issue.

Thinking about this homosexuality issue brought me back to my next big thought--unconditional love. The way I see it, homosexuality is sexual immorality just like cheating affairs, masturbation, lust, and so on. The reason I think it's such a battle between opinions boils down to love versus lust, both of which are tied into our inherent sin natures and our spiritual rebirths.

Love is meant to be unconditional no matter what relationship setting you put it in. Romantic, parental, friendly, family, whatever. Love is corrupted, however, as soon as we're birthed from the womb. Even after we are reborn, love struggles against lust--the flesh, the sinful man we leave behind yet hounds us. Because we're human, we confuse the two, serve two masters, "love" impurely, whether we "love" ourselves and masturbate, "love" others and have sex with them, or "love" our fantasies and create idols, all of which are mentally fed further through different media: porn, erotic literature, movies, or even our own strange thoughts. Pick your poison.

I think the real issue across the board, homosexual or heterosexual, is this wire cross. We rarely, if ever, love each other, no matter the relationship. We almost always hold grudges, become impatient, selfish, controlling, jealous, and fall prey to our deceitful hearts. (Which, as another youth group member brought up, even if we love the Lord our God with our whole hearts, Jeremiah tells us our hearts are incredibly deceitful; thus, we may even "love" God without realizing.)

If we can't even fathom the love Christ had--has--for us by dying on our crosses for our sins when we nailed Him there, spit on Him, and mocked Him, how do we expect to love each other? I think most of our relationships, romantic or not, are founded on lust, the "natural," sin-natured, twisted version of love.

But as Christians, I feel every once in awhile our true God given heart shines through, and we love inexplicably, unconditionally. But most times, the sin nature bites back, and now our "love" again becomes self-centered.

So how do we correct this? What do we do? Well, here's to finding those answers, practicing what we preach, and living in love instead of lies.

I feel like our society needs a serious makeover regarding love. Love is not always sex, nor is it always happiness, sunshine, and ponies. Love is frickin' hardcore. Take it or leave it, fight for it, step up to the plate; it'll change you, grow you, and REVOLUTIONIZE you. I mean, come on, Love is even in the word revolution. It's backwards, but how fitting since that's our perception of it.

What do you think?