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[An excerpt from Rob Bells newest book "Sex God"...]

Love Is... Love is handing your heart to someone and taking the risk that they will hand it back because they don't want it. That's why it's such a crushing ache on the inside. We gave away a part of ourselves and it wasn't wanted. Love is a giving away of power. When we love, we give the other person the power in the relationship. They can do what they choose. They can do what they like with our love. They can reject it, they can accept it, they can step toward us in gratitude and appreciation. Love is a giving away. When we love, we put ourselves out there, we expose ourselves, we allow ourselves to be vulnerable. Love is giving up control. It's surrendering the desire to control the other person. The two - love and controlling power over the other person - are mutually exclusive. If we are serious about loving someone, we have to surrender all of the desires within us to manipulate the relationship. So if you were God - which I realize is an odd way to begin a sentence - but if you were God, the all-powerful creator of the universe, and you wanted to move toward people, you wanted to express your love for the world in a new way, how would you do it? If you showed up in your power and control and might, you would scare people off. This is what happens at the giving of the Ten Commandments. The first two commandments are in the first person: "You shall have no other gods before me. You shall not make for yourself an image ... for I, the LORD ..." But starting with the third commandment, someone else is talking: "You shall not misuse the name of the LORD your God, for the LORD..." The rabbis believed that this is because God was speaking directly to the people in the first two commands, but they couldn't handle it. As it says in the text, "They trembled with fear. They stayed at a distance and said to Moses, 'Speak to us yourself and we will listen. But do not have God speak to us or we will die.' " So, the rabbis reasoned, the switch in person is because Moses gave them the remaining eight commandments. Just God speaking is too much to bear. If you're God and you want to express ultimate love to your creation, if you want to move toward them in a definitive way, you have a problem, because just showing up overwhelms people. You wouldn't come as you are. You wouldn't come in strength. You wouldn't come in your pure, raw essence. You'd scare everbody away. The last thing people would perceive is love. So how would you express your love in an ultimate way? How do you connect with people in a manner that wouldn't scare them off but would compel them to want to come closer, to draw nearer? You would need to strip yourself of all the trappings that come with ultimate power and authority. That's how love works. It doesn't matter if a man has a million dollars and wants to woo a woman, if she loves him for his money, it isn't real love. If you were an almighty being who made the universe and everything in it, you would need to meet people on their level, in their world, on their soil ... like them. This is the story of the Bible. This is the story of Jesus.

posted by Benjamin @ 16.7.07