Aye

So I be in Missouri. With a ton of awesomesauce peoples. They're currently playing a video game. Er, no, I mean card game. Heheheheh. But anyway.

I arrived a couple days ago and things have been pretty much uphill from there. I'm no recovered sinner or fixed fool or whatever, but I'm learning and changing a bit here and a bit there.

Hmmm. I felt like talking a lot more, somehow, before I went and read a few dozen pages of Dear Blank Please Blank, Taste of Awesome, and I Waste So Much Time.

Buuut, I think I can still do it. Here's the deal. Not a big deal, but a change in my understanding of the world, I guess. On the topic of hate.

Yeah. Nice way to introduce something, eh. I'm a genius that way. Regardless, it happens that I chatted rather lengthily with Chad (campus minister at the University of Minnesota). Things happened in that time that might not have happened otherwise. I postulated and spoke and conjectured and guessed, and we got somewhere.

Here are a few of the things we came up with:

First, hate isn't really absolute. That is, hate isn't a yes or no. It's not on or off, it's not yes for one thing and no for another. The current culture's view of hate can be described that way, though. Hate as Jesus uses the word isn't exactly the same. It's comparative, but so much more meaningful. When Jesus says hate (I'm specifically thinking of the instance with his mother/sister/brothers thing. You know the one. Or don't.), he means that by comparison to those he'd come to give his life for, his family could only be considered an afterthought.

It's hard to really get, I think, but it's a way of understanding it, I guess, given our rather limited knowledge and understanding of everything. Jesus helps us understand things through parables, for instance, and when he uses the word hate, I guess it could be called hyperbole. He's saying it larger than life, bigger than it really is, but, at the same time, and very importantly, absolutely truly. God never lies and if we listen to his word and separate it from our selfish, sinful understanding of the world, we will truly understand the things God wants us to, if not now, then soon, if not soon, then later.

The same really applies to love, except the opposite way. True love is absolutely unselfish. No part of true love can benefit the lover because that's what love is - self-sacrificial. Moreover, love isn't true unless it is, indeed, sacrificial. If a billionaire gives away a million dollars, it's no big deal. He/she's got tons of dough left. If, however, the same billionaire were to give away everything they owned, reducing their net worth to zero, they would be loveing (this, of course, assuming they directed the said funds in a manner that both didn't benefit them, but did benefit others.

Also, it's important to note that, in some degree, every human being on the planet does hate everything and everybody else in the world. This is a very wide-reaching and absolutist statement, but, again, hate by definition doesn't have to be absolute in degree, but merely in...er...what do you call it. Preference? The direction in which the hate is directed. It's universal.

In an opposing manner, love is UN-universal, except for Jesus'. When we love someone, even when we give our lives for them, there is something in it for us, and that's what makes our love...insufficient, I guess you could say. Regardless of how hard we try (and perhaps because of how hard we try, actually), we can never love selflessly and utterly self-sacrificially. Only Jesus can do that.

So I guess when Jesus says we must hate our family (mother, brothers, etc), we're called instead to love others without prejudice or restraint, specifically in the instances when we can't get anything at all in return.

Which never really happens. At the very least, we feel good about ourselves and what we've done when we've loved someone.

Wow, that makes me feel sorry for Jesus.

I guess I'll sleepinate this computer before it dies and Gabriel consequently kills me.

G'night, weirdos.


!Noah!