Queer as Faith is a weekly column by Nathan Gunter.  Unconventional and thought-provoking, Nathan writes as a gay Christian struggling to live authentically in the real world.

Want more Queer as Faith?  Visit our QAF archive.

Week 4:
Love's Language

We throw some words around a lot.  Christians are especially guilty of not knowing what anything means or how it works in the world before saying it, and because Western culture built itself up (or tore itself down) from a Christian perspective, in our world we tend to make up our own definitions without knowing what we're talking about.

Redemption is a good one of those words.  We talk about Redemption Day (and for some reason that phrase can still elicit fear with me), we redeem coupons and sing old hymns about "The Glorious Redemption" (one from my grandparents' tradition).  We don't stop to think about redemption until we've seen the worst in us transformed into the best.  We don't stop to map its geography until we find that we are walking its path.  It is only when we learn that by His wounds we heal and are healed.  Then, and only then, does a word so weak, so full of human failing and riddled with human misuse, become powerful.

But the one that really bugs me is love.

The word love bugs me.  The Greeks knew enough to have multiple words for love.  They took the time to discriminate between eros and agape and philia.  We don't bother to do that, and as a result, I think our view of love suffers.  Maybe I've been in one too many philosophy courses, or maybe I'm just bitter ("That's Debra!").  But I think that our vision of love is important.

See, because I think that God shows us a clear vision of love in the story of our own redemption.  In Scripture we see a love that is passionate, that is jealous and holy, that will burn away all the virtues and vices of those with whom it comes into contact, that regards neither the words or the deeds but loves the person.  This isn't the pithy kind of love that says "I love you" and then goes about its own business unchanged and unchanging.

This is a love that knocks down the door to the Temple, turns over bargainers' tables and trashes our convenient and profitable and completely safe versions of devotion.  It is a love that, like the Father in Luke 15, lifts its robes, throws off all attempts at decorum, and with tears streaming down His face, runs to meet us when we are still a long way off.  It is a love that cracks its back on a slab of wood, that spends the better part of a day nailed to a two by four, that acts not out of feeling or fear but out of pure devotion, pure promise.  We know by this example of love that the pure in heart do, in fact, see God.

This is not the love of a pop song.

This is not any kind of love we've ever seen on film or television.

This is not a love that's all about puppies, sunshine days, and happy feelings.  It is the love that sees who we are, who yearns to embrace us, and who takes any measure necessary to do so.  It is a love that is true.

You see, unconditional love is not blind.

Love sees and knows everything we do, are, think, feel, and cannot accomplish.  It knows our reasons and our reactions.  It embraces us not because it turns a blind eye, but because it is the kind of love that has power over death.

God speaks to us not in the language of our culture, but in the language spoken by Jesus on the cross.

And yet I can't figure out what any of this means for the people I love.  I can't love my family, my friends, and (when/if I ever have one) my partner in this way without an encounter with the Spirit of the God who invented and who is this kind of love.

Comments? E-mail Nathan or discuss this column on our message boards.