Theology Of Love 21

 Back love is really desiring someone's highest good.  hen I was connected with Youth With A Mission, it was commonly understood that.  Yes, a lofty statement, that, and somewhat abstract.  Of course, it can be anyone's guess just what really is someone else's highest good.   I suppose that was also meant to be understood as meaning whatever could help that person come close to God, or live their lives as fulfilled Christians.  But, I don't know. During my time in YWAM I had my bellyful of Christian leaders purporting to understand just exactly was my higher good, and their noble intentions of moving heaven and earth to see that I got it.  

Except...

None of them really knew squat.  They were all young, mostly Americans or American influenced (and who isn't?), impatient, judgmental, and quite immature. they were also fundamentalists, but fundamentalists so they weren't really at all well-equi8pped to deal with the splinter in someone else's eye, given the size of the two by fours that were jutting out of their own sockets.  

Now let''s check and compare with the famous Love Chapter by none other thn St. Paul the Apostle, 1 Corinthians 13:

13 If I speak in the tongues[a] of men or of angels, but do not have love, I am only a resounding gong or a clanging cymbal. 2 If I have the gift of prophecy and can fathom all mysteries and all knowledge, and if I have a faith that can move mountains, but do not have love, I am nothing. 3 If I give all I possess to the poor and give over my body to hardship that I may boast,[b] but do not have love, I gain nothing.

4 Love is patient, love is kind. It does not envy, it does not boast, it is not proud. 5 It does not dishonor others, it is not self-seeking, it is not easily angered, it keeps no record of wrongs. 6 Love does not delight in evil but rejoices with the truth. 7 It always protects, always trusts, always hopes, always perseveres.

8 Love never fails. But where there are prophecies, they will cease; where there are tongues, they will be stilled; where there is knowledge, it will pass away. 9 For we know in part and we prophesy in part, 10 but when completeness comes, what is in part disappears. 11 When I was a child, I talked like a child, I thought like a child, I reasoned like a child. When I became a man, I put the ways of childhood behind me. 12 For now we see only a reflection as in a mirror; then we shall see face to face. Now I know in part; then I shall know fully, even as I am fully known.

13 And now these three remain: faith, hope and love. But the greatest of these is love.

Yes, Gentle Reader, they do seem to be talking about two different things here...