being frank

What’s Love Got to Do with It?

One of the great songs from 1984 made memorable by Tina Turner. In it, she opines that love is but a secondhand emotion. As a former lyricist, I found that to be a great line in the context of the song’s message. As a perennial thinker, it opened my mind to a wide variety of interpretations. We profess love for a great many things, from ravioli to rugby. But what is it that we are in love with? Is it an emotion, a person, a thing, a notion, an idea, a passion or a feeling? One of them came to the forefront this past week as I was having a conversation with a very dear friend of mine. The subject? Religion. Now if you’re concerned that this missive may be a bit too doctrinal for your tastes, please keep in mind this simple fact: The one thing that makes life a delicious banquet is that in order to enjoy it, you need to savor the sweet with the sour; the unappealing with the salubrious.

From the vantage point of religion, people claim to love God (or Adonai, Allah, Hari or through a host of other names) along with Jesus, myriad saints, prophets or angels. I am not addressing the veracity or recognition of any deity or virtuous entity; that is a conversation you need to have with yourself and your maker. What I am addressing is to whom or to what we profess our love. And how that love (whose essence may be ethereal or pious) is to be reconciled with the nature of who we are as individuals.

I must admit that I initially felt woefully inadequate to address this topic. The knowledge required for this seemed a bit above my hair line. But I realized that these are essential questions we should all ask ourselves when searching to justify the righteousness of our love. Whether we profess it to a deity, our spouse or even a good friend, we should understand what it truly means to love before declaring our love. I know that I experienced that first-hand with my beloved; transformational falls woefully short in expressing that miracle.

So let’s get back to religion; let’s look into the matter of loving God. Out of respect and understanding for the cultural and theological ramifications of using any given name in particular to identify a deity, I will simply refer to them as the Supreme Being.

Without dipping my toes into any canonical pool, professing our love has always been steeped in the matter of faith. Faith, in general, is based on our ability to believe in someone or something through a spiritual or emotional conviction (or connection) rather than empirical evidence. Now when it comes to love between us mortals, we do have a certain amount of facts or tangible proofs that help us accept that love exists (and I will not be addressing the validity or honesty of said facts.) But when it comes to loving the Supreme Being, we do that solely on the strength of our faith through spiritual convictions. What helps us arrive at those convictions (in this writer’s humble opinion) is our belief, understanding and acceptance of those virtues and moral principles ascribed to the Supreme Being and how they, in turn, show their love for us. I’m taking a very broad road here for the sake of brevity; how the Supreme Being shows their love for us is a topic for another day. Suffice it to say that when I look at an imposing sunrise or delight at the wonders I see all around me in nature, I am aware that something far greater than I is showing a great deal of love for us all through these amazing gifts.

So how do we profess a deep abiding love for the Supreme Being? They’re not here in the physical sense where we can demonstrate our love. But loving the Supreme Being intimates that they are omniscient and therefore capable of seeing, sensing and understanding our love for them. But while in the fervor of this love, should we not reciprocate its meaning, purity; its implied ethos? Can we love an all-knowing, loving and benevolent Supreme Being while harboring feelings of hate, derision or contempt for other human beings? Do we love the Supreme Being solely as the omniscient entity who created and protects us, or because of the beliefs and precepts that they stand for? Do we love out of devotion, fear or a sense of indebtedness? What is the purpose of our love? Granted, there is the argument of free will; the Supreme Being’s never-ending ethical test to see how well our human nature functions on its own when given the job of watching over a very big cookie jar unattended. The very essence of our human nature implies that we could (or should) be able to do the right thing when taking into account what we’ve been given and what is at stake. Again, a topic for another day.

So the matter of loving the Supreme Being comes down to the manner in which we exhibit that love for everything and everyone around us. It should be manifested with kindness, openness, respect, admiration and unflinching devotion. We love the Supreme Being by exemplifying what they stand for and do for us. And by us, I mean we as individuals. That is because loving the Supreme Being is a personal act; a private act. It is a relationship you enter into willingly and with the notion that you want to extol the beauty and virtues of that relationship with everyone you meet, and with respect and caring for everything that the Supreme Being gave us. If you think about it, that’s the way we should love one another as couples, partners, friends or even at its most elemental level, as one human being to another.

That very dear friend of mine with whom I had that conversation about religion was exceedingly patient and kind with me as I rambled on regarding how I saw faith and the manner in which I address the Supreme Being in my life. That in and of itself, was an act of love; a godly love that epitomizes the very nature of how the Supreme Being loves us, and we love them in return. This friend of mine exemplifies that love with his family, friends and everyone he meets. You cannot help but love a person like that; and that is yet another way in which the Supreme Being shows us the value and appealing nature of love. Through actions, understanding, patience, faith and gratitude; the same intrinsic principles that all of us regardless of faith, social standing, race or gender wish to experience. I am deeply honored to say that I have numerous close friends who typify these traits, and a few of them are not religious at all. And that is one of the enduring mysteries regarding the Supreme Being, They give us the gift; the understanding of what love is. It’s not a secondhand emotion; it’s a firsthand experience as to the sanctity, uniqueness and obligation that is love. Encapsulate this in the manner that my dear friend does each day: Using it wisely, sharing it honestly and demonstrating it to everyone he meets everywhere.