Love. It covers a multitude of sins. It is patient and kind. It doesn't envy or boast. Love lays down its own life for a friend. Love isn't self-seeking. Perfect love casts out fear.
I.
A friend once described me as loyal. Spoken, as they were, during - to put it lightly - a rough patch in our friendship, I clung to those words like a drowning woman clings to a life raft. The world may have been falling to pieces around us, but he still thought I was loyal. He knew, even though I had betrayed him in every sense possible, that I betrayed him because I loved him. I haven't forgotten that description. Years have passed, and it still never fails that when rough times come, I strive above all to be loyal to those I love. One day not so long ago, that loyalty exposed a darker side of me, a side of which I had been unaware up to that point. A side that wounded in a vain attempt to protect.
I lay down my arms.
II.
During the summer of 2011, I stumbled across a blog called Experimental Theology. I started following it with considerable interest, discovering in myself a passion for theology that up to that point I had been somewhat unaware existed. Coming, as it did, in the middle of my master's program, I soaked up this blogger's progressive views somewhat thirstily, not agreeing with everything but loving the questions he raised for me. One link led to another, and by the time I moved to Georgia I was following a wide variety of progressive Christian blogs. These blogs dove-tailed nicely with the way I had been taught to think in my post-high school education. They reinforced concepts of social justice and open-mindedness that I found to be lacking in the Christian circles in which I had always run.
Slowly, but surely, I found myself perpetually angry. Angry that other Christians couldn't see the truth of all of the matters, frustrated at the close-minded doctrines, irritated with the lack of attention to historic detail, so over emotional arguments that didn't make logical sense. As I became more certain of what I believed, I was less amenable to difference of opinion.
I was falling, and lashing out at everyone around me as I did so.
I lay down my arms.
III.
He was angry. To him, I was a traitor. So much of our friendship had been based on our common commitment to finding purpose in single hood. And now I was no longer single, and he didn't understand. I became defensive. Attempted to convince him of the value of all relationships because of the value I find in mine. In that moment, I saw myself as if I were an observer from the outside. Having all the answers but none of the compassion. And I knew, then, just how wrong I was.
I lay down my arms.
IV.
I can be a loyal friend, win all of the arguments, and give all of the perfect advice, but if I do not do these things from a place of love, it is nothing. There is too much gray in the world to maintain any illusion of black and white. Opinions, while nice, are just that: opinions. None of us have any idea what we're doing or how we should live or what we should believe, and any claims to superior knowledge strike me as insanely suspect. Including (and most of all) my own.
But there is one absolute: love. If my actions are motivated by love, my opinions can be right, or they can be wrong, or something in between, and love will win.
There are so many things I don't know. But this I know:
Love.
I lay down my arms.
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