With vs. Through

    Earlier this week MJD preached a sermon entitled "What if I don't love Jesus?" As I reflect on it and talk to several people who heard it, I'm amazed how each person has taken away something different from it, which can be attributed to the fact that several points were made. 

    However, I have unabashedly been sharing that I do in fact love Jesus. But there is a difference between loving Jesus and being in love with Jesus - a point that was perhaps not as clear during the sermon. 

    To me MJD was saying that we need to avoid being in love with Jesus to the point where it harms our relationships with others, however as I reflect on these words through the lens of my experience I have to pause. Way back in sophomore year of college I started to develop several mantras that have stuck one with me - one is the domino effect of love. Our love for another should prompt us to do something bigger then we should ever do on our own. And that love between two people should spread like a row of dominoes falling or a wildfire. This has become more then a mantra for me, it is the truth, and I have seen it in all of its glory and beauty ever since. 

    Let's apply that to what MJD was saying. I believe that I can love more fully because I love Jesus. Together, we can do something that I would never be able to do on my own. I also keep thinking back to Ben Lowe, who I met earlier that day, and how he was teaching us that Christian values love and actions come from a different place. That does NOT mean that people who do not love Jesus cannot love people, but it just means that it is different. And in the case of my own life I see that the more I love Jesus the more I can fully and authentically love others. 

    Perhaps it all comes down to the "with" vs. "through" argument. I'm not that great at grammar, but I believe these are prepositions (feel free to correct that assumption if it is wrong). When I am in love "with" someone, I am infatuated. It is all about me and that person, creating a very contained and self-centered love affair that has very few benefits, if any at all. But when I love "through" I am taking something between two entities and making it something bigger, far reaching, and powerful. It is also different then loving someone "with the love of Christ". Here it comes form a place of attempting to model, even if we have never felt that love ourselves.  I love through Christ. This is different in both in sentence structure, meaning, and effects then being in love with Christ. It is unfortunate that we lump both together under the category of "loving Jesus". A point I wish the sermon would have made clearly.