The Truth Will Set You Free

Conversation, continued ...

Let me see if I follow. You are trying to insinuate that there are no earthly reasons to be positive about love?

Or at least reasons that are merely of the physical realm and that are merely of sight.

Your argument is flawed on several counts. First whatever love is to you may not be what it is to me. For me love is that which moves, excites and satisfies me physically and sensually and with feelings. And sure we change, and we grow older, and our sexual needs change too, but it was love while it lasted. And when it comes to a natural end, you just move on, and seek another one. And the reasons I am positive about my kind of love is like what you said about the sun rising. That I found someone yesterday is my reason and my assurance I can find another again tomorrow.

I have absolutely no problem if you want to redefine love. And if whatever you just said is all that you are seeking then we can stop here. And then also whatever my reasons for believing in Matthew will be are entirely irrelevant and unhelpful to you.

Wait I have not finished.

What else is there?

I know I need sex. There may yet be more to it. Maybe then I do not know what is love, but then it does not matter too.

How so?

You used broken marriages and extra-marital affairs and adulteries as reasons to have no faith in human efforts at love. I can choose to see it as a half filled glass and not a half empty one. I can also quote you marriages that worked and where the two parties indeed love each other through thick and thin, sickness or health, under both are dead.

Yes but that's what you see.

And further these couple don't need to believe in God either. It is like gravity again. Anyone in the world sees and feels its effects and accommodates to it, even babies. They don't need to know about gravity to respond and behave appropriately.

Precisely. And that is why we can have this conversation. I have said this many times. What's true is not a matter of your belief, but rather what is true is true, regardless of your beliefs. So if there is a choice about what to believe is this: either conform to truth or reject it, and damage, if not, condemn, yourself. So unless you deliberately reject reality, we do indeed know a lot of things, including love.

But that proves my point doesn't it?

Namely that you can seek what you don't know?

Yes.

Sure you can feel and respond to the effects of gravity, but if you do not know physics and Newton's law, you cannot build aeroplanes and rockets and overcome its effects, and to become free from gravity. In other words if you do not know what a thing is you cannot do something about it.

Sure I can.

Yes you can, just as you can do anything about anything, but surely you cannot expect what you do to be effective, can you?

Can you be hopeful or positive about someone's effort to go to the moon when he is not a rocket scientist? I certainly would not be positive at all about what he does. (Not unless he learns from his failures.) You can continue to be, but speaking truthfully, what you are doing is self-delusion and not being positive.

You can do anything you want about flying to the moon, like throwing stones at it, creating and chanting magic words, or invoking spirits and so on. But unless you understood concepts like escape velocity and rocket engines, whatever you do is likely to be hilarious if not absurd and an utter waste of time.

So what then are the "Newton Laws" for love?

Love is God's gift. In Matthew, I didnt look for it. I can and was living life without it. But God put him into my life, and turned it upside down. I know there is love, but I am neither positive or negative about it for myself. I am contented with myself - which is not to say I don't get horny, and that's a totally different matter. Love on the other hand is not a trivial nor a casual matter. It is life changing.

It is so hard to submit myself to reality and truth. I do not want to curtail myself from hoping and dreaming.

But you submit to the impersonal and blind laws of the land with no qualms and no angst, why is it so difficult to acknowledge God, who says he loves you?

If there is a thing to be positive about, it is this: that you can continue to dream, but if you really want to fly to the moon, it also can be done, but first you must get up and learn about gravity. That is truly being positive.

And that is also the meaning of the truth setting you free.