True Love

Finally, it’s time to end this series, which started here. Are young people capable of feeling true love? Is it possible? (Coincidentally, it also happens to be Valentine’s Day. That’s pure coincidence.)

Working off our definition of love, we’ve established that love’s perseverance is best shown through commitments. Are young people capable of making these commitments? Yes. Without a doubt, yes, young people through the ages have been capable of making commitments such as marriage at a very young age. However, there is a minor detail about the modern age that needs to be discussed.

What Is Love?

Continuing the series that starts here, it’s now time to try to work out a definition of love.

 

From the past posts, we’ve seen that love is most certainly not an emotion, nor is it something easy. We’ve seen that God’s version of love is incredibly perseverant. Now it’s time to synthesize both of these things with other aspects of love that the world has missed out on.

Love...

Alright, time to finish up the analysis of 1 Corinthians 13. This is part of a series, part 1 can be found here.

“Love bears all things…” Love will endure things patiently. Alternately, love “covers all things.” Love will cover up the flaws of another in order to “know no evil.” This doesn't mean that love ignores evil, though. It means that love will put it in the past. Love bearing all things is also a restatement of the fact that love is patient. The fact that this is restated is a huge commentary on that particular character of love. It will suffer quietly and with dignity for the good of the beloved. Once again, look to the Passion of Jesus. That was the highest form of love imaginable to humans, that the God of the Universe, who knows no wrong, would come to earth, humble himself into taking the form of a human, and willingly suffer and die in one of the most humiliating and painful ways imaginable. This is love bearing all things.

Love is Not...

This is part of a series. Part 1 can be found here.

Alright, after that brief little distraction, it’s time to return to our analysis of 1 Corinthians 13. We left off by saying that love is not jealous.

Love Is...

This is part of a series. Part 1 can be found here.

Now that we've addressed the little side point of the meaning of life, we can return to our discussion of love. Paul’s first letter to the Corinthians offers a very interesting commentary on love.

To Know, Love, and Serve

                Last time, we discussed what the Church can offer to people that they actually need, namely, a purpose. This time, we’ll discuss what it looks like when that purpose is lived out. There were three aspects of that purpose, to know God, to love God, and to serve God in this life.

           

What's the Point?

             This is part 5 of a series. Part 1 can be found here.

  Most of this series has been spent discussing the problem with today’s society. There is no true love to be found there. People are broken and longing for more. Society continually tries to offer them more. This more doesn’t work, and inevitably, those people end up falling flat on their faces, worse off than they were at the beginning when they had found the longing. They try to turn to what society tells them God is, this nice fuzzy feeling that they can turn to when they’ve had a bad day. This feeling leaves them just as empty as everything else society has turned them towards, and these people, longing for love, turn themselves away from the one thing that can heal them, the one thing that actually works.

The Empty Shell

This is part 3 in a series. Part one is here.

Last time, we discussed trends of young people drifting more towards orthodoxy as well as the decline of mainline Protestantism. As much as the adults in the world may try to deny it, there is a gaping hole in the hearts of young people. There is emptiness. There is a natural longing for something. This something can be filled in a multitude of ways, and the young people of the world have begun to experiment with these. The most popular ways of coping with this longing involve drugs of some sort. The natural longing of the human heart is the biggest reason for the drug epidemic in today’s world. If the government ever hopes to win the “war on drugs,” they have to eliminate the problem at its root- by filling the human longing with something. 

God is Love

This is Part 2 in a series. Part one can be found here.

Last time, I ended on discussing the new, strange shift among young people towards orthodoxy. What is this shift and why are so many people moving towards it? Orthodox Catholicism is very different from the shallow “God is love” theology that has been taught for the last forty years.

Young Love

This is Part 1 of a series of posts on this topic.

All throughout the media, there are television shows, movies, and songs that are enjoyed by teens everywhere. Most of these things have a common moment, a keystone in anything these days, in some way, the character/singer is confessing their love for another. This is happening for characters as young as approximately 13 years old. This always disturbed me, because two thirteen-year olds were confessing their undying love for each other, in the halls of their middle school. But is it true love?