Redefining Love

So I've been reading this book called Love Is an Orientation...and it pretty much rocks. I came to a chapter titled "reclaiming the word love: measurable unconditional behaviors" and I was just in awe over it. The book was written by a man, andrew martin, who has the desire to bridge the gap between the christian and the GLBT community. Though he is specifically talking to this relationship I think if you read it and just take a step back you will see a new way for love to be handled between any group of peoples/individuals.

Here it is:
There’s a fourth ideal that gets overlooked, an udeal that is not based on sex: Its OK to be yourself before God and not conform to any of the other three ways that seem ideal to the outside world. {referring to the GLBT community and the Chrisitian Community specifically}. The fourth ideal communicates God’s acceptance, validation, affirmation and unconditional love in meeting people as they are, where they are. … It’s an ideal focused on an identity in Christ rather than behavior – straight, gay or celibate – as the judge of one’s acceptability.(102-103)

One summer evening, I was reading an interview with Billy Grahm’s daughter. She was telling some of her fondest memories about her dad and recalled one time in particular, when the Graham family was attending a rally in support of President Bill Clinton after his sex scandal was made public. A reporter asked Billy Graham, ‘Why are you here supporting this man after everything he has done to this country?’ Reverend Grahm’s answer was succinct, powerful and true. ‘It is the Holy Spirit’s job to convict, God’s job to judge and my job to love.
…It’s not the job of the Christians to convict the GLBT community. That’s the Holy Spirit’s job. It’s the job of Christians to love the GLBT community in a way that is tangible, measurable and unconditional – whether we see our version of ‘change’ happening or not.
That realization has led to my new definition of love: tangible and measurable expressions of one’s unconditional behaviors toward another. My experience has revealed that in the minds of the GLBT people, the word love has been rendered conditional: ‘I will love you if I see you do…,or act like…, or sexually change…” Someone can say the words ‘I love you’ until that person is blue in the face, but it will not matter one bit unless there are measurable, unconditional behaviors attached to those words. My friends, my wife and my family will know that I love them not because I say so but because I show who I am to them by what I do for them.
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What do these thangible, measurable and unconditional behaviors look like? They are a nonjudgmental safe place – an environment that fosters a trustworthy relationship with someone else. Love is a walk, a hug, a dinner, an ear, a fun trip- all free of the condemning and ostracizing that the GLBT person ‘knows’ is coming from Christians. This type of love says that no matter who you are, no matter what you do or no matter what you say I have your back, and I refuse to give up – whether or not there’s ‘change’ – because my Father [referring to God] will never give up on me.
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The Bible is full of stories that teach us how to love, instead of just giving us instructions on how to verbally communicate love. Love is to be an action – not a word. Love is recognizing the power of Christ to do what we could only imagine, like physically going to him with the faith of a Roman centurion – greater than all other faith in Isreal. Love is stepping outside the boat to meet your Savior by walking on water, when every ounce of your body is telling you otherwise. Love is boldly pouring expensive perfume on Jesus’ feet when indeed, the poor could have benefited from the money of its potential sale. Love is cutting a hole in a roof and lowering your crippled friend to Jesus when there are no other accessible means to the one who can heal. Love is a poor widow dropping all she has – two very small copper coins worth nothing – into God’s treasury with no guarantee she’ll make it another day. Love is stepping out of all cultural norms to help a beaten-up man lying on the side of the street, despite the fact that his culture despises yours. And love is being the first one to drop the stone because you know your life and sins are no less than any other.
The one thing all of these examples have in common is that they’re acts of love around Jesus, not acts of Jesus himself. We have the power to counterculturally love through our tabgible, measurable and unconditional actions louder than any words could ever be spoken – as Jesus is ever presently there with us in the fay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender community.


**can't you just imagine a world where everyone loved this way?**