If I Loved You

Time and again I would try to say all I want you to know. -Oscar Hammerstein

It's about definitions. Elmer Gantry aside, love is not the morning and the evening star. This is a good definition, one of many to be found in this particular source:

"Love is patient and kind; love does not envy or boast; it is not arrogant or rude. It does not insist on its own way; it is not irritable or resentful; it does not rejoice at wrongdoing, it rejoices with the truth."

This is the ideal. Do I fall short? You know me. Do I repent of my failure? You know that I must.

Though the implication seems to be that I must set aside my faith to affirm yours, I do not believe for a moment that this is your intention. You are well aware of the proof texts that condemn what you have chosen. Do I condemn you? Even if I were so inclined, I well understand my moral inability to cast any stones whatever.

Simply put, it's not my job. As one with the inborn ability to choose that which you desire, you must consider carefully the choices that you make and then live with the results. This is true for all of us.

A wise man once noted, "Our choices have eternal consequences."

The truth of this frightens me. I believe in God. My faith is founded on revelation. How can I believe anything other that what God has revealed Himself to be in his word? 

And His word commands this:

"...have mercy on those who doubt; save others by snatching them out of the fire; to others show mercy with fear, hating even the garment stained by the flesh."

I love you. I pray for the day when you too will "rejoice with the truth."