Love and God

Ah, the question of religion and love.

I personally group religion and love into the same category: stuff you put your heart into. I see religion as a fundamental part of understanding life, and love as a fundamental part of living life. I feel that both are part of every human being, however differently they are expressed.

As for Christianity, I am a Christian. I am an Episcopalian, at that, and am therefore in the midst of a huge (and I’d argue, dumb) battle over who is more godly than who. I think it is overwhelmingly simpleminded to say that some form of love is wrong. Although, yes, child molestation is not a good thing, as it only really benefits one party and really destroys the other, forms of mutually beneficial love, true love, are so deeply ingrained in humanity that those who do not have them yearn for them. God is love – God is the feeling you have for your parents and your friends and your furry (or not as furry) friends. God is in the lust you have over your unrequited crushes. God is your “settle down” instinct. God is the feeling of comfort in an embrace. God is the happiness of the sun on your face and the solitude of nature. God is everything you love, everything that loves you, everything that brings you joy and pain, as well as being the tie that binds you to those things and people you love.

If God is the invisible cords between my parents that keeps them caring for eachother and in constant states of affection and support, then God must also be the bonds between many men I know who have, not through marriage, because we as a culture feel that that is a rite exclusive to those who happen to have God-ties to people of the opposite gender, committed themselves to eachother and who love, care, and support eachother. I see nothing wrong with this. As a body of people who can see God through vastly different cultures and different religious traditions, why can we not see God in these so called “alternative” relationships?

It seems to me that when people argue this, they always bring Jesus into the picture. What would Jesus do? Would he say “Oh, yes, you’re wrong for loving someone anatomically similar to you. My father didn’t mean to put love there”? Or “this is your fault, your wrongly lived life – you should fix it” by ignoring the love “tentacles” God created you with?

God knitted us together in our mother’s womb (where we were, just for reference, because some rather active love happened), knows our innermost thoughts and dreams, and created us exactly the way he wanted us (as God doesn’t make terrific mistakes, being all not human and creater of everything). If we are created perfectly, to be who we are, and God is the tie that binds us to everything we encounter, how can love be wrong?