What's love got to do with it?

Tina Turner coined the phrase “what’s love got to do with it,” and from the basis of her song, absolutely nothing. Love to many, maybe to most is an end all emotional connection that overshadows everything and eclipses the very sun that shines.  Love is as defined:  A profoundly tender, passionate affection for another person or a feeling of warm personal attachment or deep affection, as for a parent, child, or friend.

Is that all that love is, a feeling of affection based on attachments, an often fleeting emotional connection that comes and goes as the winds of a passionate evening?  Love is so much more than the simple definition above and much more then the simple explanation of the recent Supreme Court decision.

“No union is so profound than marriage, for it embodies the highest ideas of love, fidelity, devotion, sacrifice and family….”  Justice Kennedy

I apologize for pulling the religious card here but without Charity love is only a base emotion, a fleeting feeling of passion and connection.  Without Charity as its foundation love is nothing more than the opposite of hate.  Charity is the pure love of God, a transcendent emotional and spiritual connection that clarifies what love is and how it works. 

Charity is: the benevolent goodwill toward or love of humanity,

A generosity and helpfulness imbued spiritually within an individual especially toward the needy or suffering or in my words Christlike.

Love is important and more love would be a great thing to witness in this world filled with hate and discord, divisions and dissidents.  And I proudly agree that love is the right of all people, all sexes, all races and all religions.  What I do not agree with is the demeaning and corruption of the word love.

 Same sex couples can love and I would never deny that privilege, but I do want to unequivocally state that the level of love available in most non-heterosexual couples will never attain the foundational principles outlined by God, as he loves his children and exemplifies that love for us as we love, teach and sacrifice for our children. That is called Charity of which love is a part. 

Again let me be perfectly clear.  Same sex couples can love their children and can develop deep and abiding emotional connections with each other but to be God like and charitable one must, and I emphasis must, put aside the things of this world and follow the words of His son (mat 19:3-7) Therefore a man shall leave his father and his mother and hold fast to his wife, and the two shall become one flesh’?

This is not about love, it’s about Commitment, Charity and Obedience.  Love without commitment is not love, its passion and sex only.  Love without Charity is selfish and self-serving.  Love without Obedience is hopeful but without foundation and without a strong foundation that love cannot endure.

You may think me insensitive or even cruel in my attempt to explain and in some way deny your “love” au contraire mon fraire, I am neither. Despite your initial reactions of hate and exclusion let me say something simple and guided that I hope will bridge this widening gap of discord between those that favor marriage only between a man and woman and yes to the exclusion of those of similar sex engaging in this holy and highly sacred covenant. 

I love my wife and children not just because of love but because what Justice Kennedy alluded too, sacrifice (I understand sacrifice and your sacrifice, but misplaced sacrifice means nothing) and what he failed to mention, Charity, with the deep understanding that without Charity what good is sacrifice and without sacrifice there really can be no love….So I’m happy for your love for each other but maybe it’s time to start thinking about how deep that love really is in relation to our commitment to God and to each other?