all we need is love...

i was recently taken by a couple of my friends here in noho to a church called bel air presbyterian on tuesday night. its this group of 20 somethings that meet and its called the foundry. breath-taking building, great worship, fun people, and a message out of hosea. anyway, i got back and read this in the notes of my bible:

we live in a world awash in love stories. most of them are lies. they are not love stories at all - they are lust stories, sex-fantasy stories, domination stories. from the cradle we are fed on lies about love.

this would be bad enough if it only messed up human relationships - man and woman, parent and child, friend and friend - but it also messes up God-relationships. the huge, mountainous reality of all existence is that God is love, that God loves the world. each single detail of the real world that we face and deal with day after day is permeated by this love.

but when our minds and imaginations are crippled with lies about love, we have a hard time understanding this fundamental ingredient of daily living, "love," either as a noun or as a verb. and if the basic orienting phrase "God is love" is plastered over with cultural graffiti that obscure and deface the truth of the way the world is, we are not going to get very far in living well. we require true stories of love if we are to live truly.

hosea is the prophet of love, but not love as we imagine or fantasize it. he was a parable of God's love for his people lived out as God revealed and enacted it - a lived parable. it is an astonishing story: a prophet commanded to marry a common whore and have children with her. it is an even more astonishing message: God loves us in just this way - goes after us at our worst, keeps after us until he gets us, and makes lovers of men and women who know nothing of real love. once we absorb this story and the words that flow from it, we will know God far more accurately. and we will be well on our way to being cured of all the sentimentalized and neurotic distortions of love that incapacitate us from dealing with the God who loves us and loving the neighbors who don't love us.


so check out hosea. we probably don't read it enough.

love you,
curtisraymondshideler