While fights about truth and reality are all the rage right now, as identity politics forces its way into every nook and cranny of life, what possibly can I say that won’t add to the drowning pool of comment wars and hate mongering on social media?
What about the topic I have chosen for this blog – “Is there a wrong way to love?” – which usually includes an instantly, emotionally charged topic such as LGBTQ? Will this topic set off yet another firestorm of anger and hit-and-run insults? And considering that plenty of other Catholic channels have broached this subject, am I just looking to stoke flames of fury and cause more vitriol? Should I throw out my free speech rights as the tech giants above us increasingly silence conversations, ban people for sharing their perspective, and assume the role of ultimate fact checker?
My view on this: As long I have the means to share my perspective, I will keep creating blogs and videos that not only raise awareness about the topics I present, but will also be as well-rounded as possible in considering all angles to a topic.
And though my angle may not be fantastically original, I hope the questions at the end of this blog lead to more mature, exploratory type conversations that clearly distinguish fact from fiction, as well as objective truth from subjective truth.
This brings me to question I received a couple of weeks ago, and my comments in this blog mirror much of my original reply.
“If for argument sake I agree with the notion that your deity is love, then I see a dilemma. The catholic church (and quite a few other Christian denomination) clearly seem to think there are ways of loving wrong, like homosexuality, but if people can love in the wrong way, then how can you be sure that the love your give to and supposedly receive from your deity is not also wrong?”
My response:
I understand how that dilemma may appear — and I myself had a similar doubt in my atheist/skeptic years (though not assume everyone reading this blog is atheist). However, let’s first clarify how the Catholic Church views love, and then I have a few questions in return.
When we talk about the word “love”, and as a reflection of what God embodies, we must first look at how love is applied in various situations. For example, the love a husband and wife share with each other is based on a sacred union to be *one*. That is, the couple not only commits to honoring and cherishing one another, but also understands that the sexual union between the two is not just about pleasure, but also for producing children and building a family together.
Then there is the love that Jesus instructs all of us to show: to love God with all of your heart, all of your mind, and all of your soul. And to love your neighbor as yourself. And while this love also involves honoring and cherishing one another, it does not mean being in sexual union with our neighbors, friends, family, etc. In other words, love exists, with our without sex. Therefore, God remains the embodiment of love — as its first purpose is for us to be in spiritual communion with each other and with God.
What the Catholic Church teaches — and which is mentioned several times in the Bible, throughout the history of the early Church Fathers, and is still upheld to today — is that sexual acts between two people of the same sex are not how God intended us to become one together, to produce children, and to build a family. In other words, under God, the Church recognizes marriage as a holy Sacrament founded in the union between man and woman. This is a core of how societies exist in the first place, as there is no such thing as a purely homosexual society that can produce offspring. Sexual union and reproduction, as God intended, and as nature demonstrates across all forms of life, is based on a male-female union.
Side bar: Peer-reviewed, well-documented, longitudinal studies have shown correlations between sexual proclivities outside of monogamous, heterosexual relationships and increases in loneliness, depression, emotionally unfulfilling relationships, and sexual issues for people who hyper-focus on sexual acts and pleasure.
At the very minimum, reproduction has always required both male and female components to be in union. That said, how do we loop this back to love? Well, if we agree that love exists, whether sex is involved or not; and if we understand that the sexual union between a man and woman is rooted in being one together, or “two halves of the whole”, then expressing love in a relationship is not just limited to sexual attraction to certain body parts or hyper-focusing on the pleasure that comes from sex.
Meaning that if we remove the sexual act itself from two people of the same sex who have proclaimed they love each other, then that love becomes no different from Jesus’ command to love your neighbor as yourself.
This also means that conflating love with a wide array of sexual desires — as if they are exactly one-in-the-same — is more about serving a personal agenda than serving love itself.
Now, regarding the question, “How do you know that the love you feel for your deity, or the love your deity supposedly feels towards you is not also wrong?” — my answer: I base my love for God on also understanding that God is *goodness*. And because goodness is moral perfection in thought, word, and deed (see my video on this subject), I believe God’s love is based on his goodness — which thereby makes it a perfect love.
Which leads to my questions for YOU:
1.) Would you agree that some forms of desire, and which some people out there refer to as “love”, are not healthy?
For instance, is it appropriate for a 30 year-old female teacher to fall in-love with her 12 year-old male student and have a sexual relationship? Or with her 12 year-old female student for that matter? Or is that a wrong way to love someone?
If a father is in-love with his daughter, and she consents to having sex with him, is that morally right? Or is that a wrong way to love someone?
Or what if my good friend and his twin-brother have a sexual relationship with each other? Or if my male neighbor loves and sexually desires his female dog, is that a wrong way to love?
NOTE: None of the those questions are meant to be snarky. Some people truly believe there is no problem with the desires in those examples.
2.) If we put aside the Catholic Church’s teachings on love and sex, how do we determine which kind of love is right versus wrong? If we go only on subjective views of love, then doesn’t that mean all kinds of love and desire are the on the table? In other words, why would any kind of love and desire be excluded from what two consenting, or even coerced, people or creatures decide to do together?
3.) Would you agree that some acts (not just sexual acts) in life are objectively wrong? Or is life purely based on subjective feelings and experiences?
Feel free to share your thoughts!