A Forbidden Love Story... [5/1/12]

Hi everyone! I will be filling in for kjoosaurus since she is most likely exhausted from travelling back to Vancouver today.

I had a difficult time trying to figure out what God really wanted me to write about today… And as I am writing this right now, I am still overwhelmed and perplexed by the topic he gave me.

Love. Love love love. Love? Love. L-o-v-e. LOVE.

Four simple letters, one short word, a simple syllable – yet, why is it so heavy laden with substance? I’m not sure about you guys, but whenever I think about this concept, I am so confused. I’m going to be completely honest with you all…

I sometimes wonder if I am able to love because when I think about love, I feel so blank. I want to really grasp what love truly means because my Lord and Saviour and Almighty God just radiates love out of every part and essence of Himself. He so loved the world that he died for us (John 3:16). Love. Love. Love?

I know this sounds really cliché, but what is love?

Maybe it’s because I’m a person who chooses to keep to myself about my innermost feelings and thoughts, but I struggle with loving others, and even myself. As I am writing this, thoughts are flooding through my head. Does this mean that I struggle also with loving God? What does it mean to truly love someone? To truly love myself? To truly love my Creator? Ah. I wonder if you guys can sense my frustration as I am trying to figure this out. God give me wisdom!

Let’s examine.. well, who else is better to examine than God himself? He IS love: “Whoever does not love does not know God, because God is Love” (1John4:8).  Actually, that verse just shook me a bit. Whoever does not love… does not know God… whoever does not love… whoever does not love… Do I love? How do I know? What is love?

Well, since I am utterly confused at this point, let’s set the obvious things straight:

God is love. God loves me. God loves the world. God has loved, is loving, and always will love. God is love.

God in scriptures has shown great displays of love. Especially in the New Testament when his manifestation of love came down to earth to fulfill his ultimate display of love. But actually, what some people fail to recognize is that God’s love story is not just in the beginning of the New testament, but it began before creation, manifested itself in creation, even carried on through the fall of man, throughout the times of the prophets, past Jesus’ time, to our time, to revelations and the end times, and what is amazing is that it will carry on through eternity.

Actually, I was talking with one of my brothers in Christ today about love, and romantic love between a man and a woman. It brought us into a deeper confusion about what true love means and how true godly love should feel and manifest itself. While watching a bit of a Korean drama, I realized that the world has so many predispositions and it overtly hypes up romantic love. What I got from the world’s perspective of love was that love makes you feel warm, fuzzy, nervous inside, it makes you go crazy, it makes you vulnerable, and ultimately, it hurts. Especially when it’s forbidden or hindered. (Forbidden love seems to be a recurring theme in many K-dramas, I noticed. heh..) Through this situation, the characters became miserable, relationships broke, and hurt was inevitable.

Is love supposed to hurt? Does it make the victims miserable? And by this I mean, true love – the kind of love that God designed us to have. I don’t know what I’m trying to get at. We just became more confused discussing all this worldly representations of love. But then I realized that this idea of forbidden love isn’t a concept so far off from God himself:

(This is an extract from my paper I wrote during the past year “Genesis of Forbidden Love”)

Not many look to the book of Genesis when in search for a heart-warming love story.  Often, people look at the famous account of Adam and Eve as a story of how humans have borne their sinful nature. However, a love story exists amid the serpent, the temptation, the fall, and the separation; perhaps the greatest love story of all. 

This love story is not between the couple, Adam and Eve, who actually encouraged and allowed each other to fall into sin. In fact, the love between the two is only a miniscule representation of the greater love that surpasses time and boundaries. This love story involves the Almighty Creator and His creations; the limitless love of God is made even more glorious through the fall His two creations, Adam and Eve, as written in the book of Genesis. His love for His creations becomes the beginning of a beautiful forbidden-love story, where a God who is so perfect (2Samuel22:31), so righteous (Pslams 116:5), so pure (1John 3:3) puts himself in a vulnerable position of loving the imperfect (2Chronicles 6:36), the unrighteous (Isaiah 55:7), the impure. It is through the fall of man and the introduction of sin into the nature of man that causes the separation between the Creator and His creations. Therefore, one can question: How can two entities, so incompatible in nature and circumstance, still be subject to love?

[…]God created Adam and Eve and had made them in his own image (Genesis 1:27) in order to love them and to have fellowship with them. This is evident when he walks with them in the Garden of Eden and has a direct relationship with them (Genesis 3:8). The one and only thing God did not want man to do was not to eat the forbidden fruit. However, man defied God and his command, eating the fruit; it was in fact, the serpent (or the Devil) (Genesis 3:1), which had tempted Eve to taste the fruit, and give the sweet-tasting poison to her husband Adam. When this happened, “the eyes of both of them were opened, and they realized they were naked” (Genesis 3:7). This is the fall of man, when the creations disobeyed the Creator and hid from Him out of fear and shame. God then clothed his beloved Adam and Eve (Genesis 3:21) and was separated from them. Although a God so perfect and sinless could not coexist with something that is impure and sinful, he still made a way for his love to reach his people.

[…]This ‘fall’ is rarely associated with a love story; in fact, there is a tendency for people to view it as a story of God’s righteousness where he condemns sin in both Adam and Eve. However, where sin is abound, God’s grace is more abound, according to the apostle Paul (Romans 5:20). Although man (through the temptation of the Devil) brought about the separation of God and man, God refuses to be separated from his beloved creations. One must note that something pure cannot coexist with impure sin; sin cannot exist in association to God. Therefore, in order to solve the issue of sin, God came to earth to sacrifice a part of Himself and to condemn Himself in the place of humans. Jesus Christ came in to the world to cleanse the sins of any one who believes in His self-sacrifice (Revelation 1:5). Although Adam and Eve brought sin into the world, Jesus cleanses this sin of man in order for man to be reconciled and to once again have fellowship with God. This is the ultimate story of forbidden love: one who is forbidden to love the other, under the given circumstances, sacrifices oneself in order to be with the other.

***

True love manifested in Genesis truly reflects what Christ said that day to his disciples: There is no greater love than to lay down one’s life for one’s friends (John 15:13). That’s exactly what God did, especially when love was forbidden between man and God through man’s sinfulness. Surprisingly, inside God’s love story, love does hurt, it does create pain, vulnerable victims, and distance; but we really need to note that it’s not because of God that suffering exists in this love story, but rather because of the sinfulness of humans that made humans go running away from the One who truly loves us. In God’s love story, there is a broken relationship, but I find it truly beautiful and amazing how He, by committing an act of the greatest love, mends the brokenness through self-sacrifice just to be with us once again.

A few days ago, I had a discussion with a few brothers/sisters about worldly movies and whether we as Christians should be watching them or not. We were engulfed in a deep conversation (which I hope Kjoosaurus will write about soon!) but today, I realized something after watching a bit of this worldly Korean drama. That God is everywhere, even reflected in the melodramatic, sappy, forbidden love affairs of this world that don’t glorify him (at first sight). These sentimental affairs reflected to me that this thirst for love and this pain of love that exists in the world can reflect God’s pain and His longing to be with us. All of us. All of his lost lambs. His children. All of his creations… His nations. He longs to be with us…

And also as a side note, for those of you who have experienced similar love affairs in your past and it still lingers and hurts today, it just means that you have been blessed enough to have had a taste of what God feels for his lost people! Rejoice in your sufferings (Romans 5:3) is the verse that pops in to my head at this time.

I realized I talked of ‘eros’ love which is love between a man and a woman, but what about ‘Phillia’ (brotherly) love between friends? This is yet another love that I struggle to understand completely.

I struggle to understand this and have been struggling for a while. I have been pleading with God to reveal to me what His true Godly love is and how I can have it and how I can make it a part of my daily life towards others, towards myself, and towards Him. I have a sister in Christ who displays love and truly loves those around her, and it clearly shows. She has shown others and me great displays of love and it is so evident in her caring actions, her words, and her smile. God works through her, and I long for this for myself.

At the end of this long blog, I am still struggling to understand love for others, myself, and my loving Creator. I realize that I have long ways to go in truly understanding God’s greatest commandment of all (John 13:34). But I do know this and it gives me great hope: We are made in God’s image. Therefore, it means that we are totally capable of loving the way he loves! And what’s more, we have the living Christ residing in us. Doesn’t that make us even more capable of truly loving as he did?

The brother in Christ from earlier told me this after a long discussion: “God is love, we are made in his image and likeness, and so we have love. But sin makes it difficult because it keeps us from being like Christ. But if we become like Christ, we’ll know how to love. We’ll start to live a life of love.”

Realizing this once again, I’m just overwhelmed at the power of his "Agape" (unconditional) love that overcomes all barriers. I do not want to continue muttering mere words confessing my love for God if I don’t truly mean or understand it from the heart. I do not want to continue godless and love-lacking relationships with my brothers and sisters in Christ. I DO want to become more like Christ though, because he is love, and through him all things are possible.

My questions about love are still numerous, and I have a feeling it will be this way for a while because love is such a huge reality that will only take complete manifestation when we stand in his presence at heaven’s doorsteps. I know I didn’t come to much of a conclusion about finding out about love.. but I hope you guys come to think about our God of Love a bit more just like I am. And I pray that through God, while overcoming and sanctification of sin, you can become more and more Christ-like and truly let it take over your lives. Love, that is.