Spontaneous Love

March 20, 2009

Today's Reading: Deuteronomy 5-6 and Romans 2

For those of you who didn’t enjoy reading the Decalogue (a group of ten things) in Deuteronomy Chapter 5 might enjoy its summation in chapter 6.

“You shall love the Lord, your God, with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your strength”. Is it any wonder why that Jesus gave that answer to a man who asked him what the greatest commandment was?

I suppose this is what makes the gospel simple, and get so complicated. After all, is anything simpler than love? The answer is, heck yeah, it is. Because when you really look at it, love is a pretty complicated thing indeed.

Even movies have told us this. You might see a guy and a girl hook up, and everything looks great, but then life sets in, and the “boy meets girl” beautiful beginning quickly becomes an ugly curse.

I recently saw the film The Graduate, which dealt with Dustin Hoffman finding true love with Barbara Robinson. Unfortunately, Hoffman’s character, Benjamin Braddock, had experienced a huge batch of false love as he had a sordid affair with Barbara’s mother prior to their first date. Benjamin goes to Berkeley University just to be with Barbara, only she does not want him, and is seeing someone else. Eventually, Barbara changes her mind, but her parents, who have learned all of Benjamin’s history, want nothing to do with him. In fact, they arrange to Barbara can marry the other man she’s seeing.

Benjamin then makes a choice to pursue Barbara with all his heart, soul, and strength. That is, as much as he can and speeds to where he believes that she is getting married. He even pretends that he is a reverend over the phone to get the precise location. He drives until his car dies, and he just leaves it and runs to where the church is.

Sadly, he arrives there too late, and the groom has kissed the bride. Benjamin is behind a glass wall, and he bangs on it just to get her attention. She apparently wants to go with him, and together, they fight off the wedding crowd and flee to a nearby bus.

After they get on the bus, there is this one long awkward minute where the two of them realize that they really don’t know what to do next. I couldn’t think of a better way to end the film. While the wonderful feelings of love have ended, there is always the reality of life to deal with.

The sad thing is, this what most people think about when they think about loving God. They think about all the commitment that is going to have to happen to get involved with a relationship with God. Why is it that most people don’t think about the good feelings involved?

If we did, then none of us would have any trouble following the greatest commandment. To hell with the rest of the consequences of falling in love with God.