I know, I'm the slowest reply-er in history. This wedding planning stuff just plain sucks. If Phil ever pops the question, tell him you want to go to Vegas and do it Britney Spears style. It's just easier for everyone.
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Lies, I think our main point of difference here is coming down to symantics. I think we're using different terms in regards to the same idea. That being said, though, there are some things I definately disagree with you on. That'll come later . . .
Can you really say WHY you love her? Take me for example, I don't know why I love my boyfriend, I just do.
I have to divide where I agree and disagree with you here on where attraction meets true LOVE. No, I cannot say exactly why I was first attracted to The Lady or why she first caught my eye. Sure, she's blindingly beautiful, intimidatingly intelligent, and one of the genuinley funniest women I've ever met. But you and I both know that attraction is more than that. It's emotion, it's chemical reactions, it's animal instinct. However, I CAN say excatly why I love her. In fact, for our one-year anniversary, I made a little heart-shaped box and filled it with 200+ reasons why I love her, each piece of paper describing a small reason of her persona that makes me love her and want to spend the rest of my life loving her. I know it in my heart AND in my head. And I would be quite uncomfortable doing all of this wedding planning if I couldn't love her with both.
This is one of the ways that I think our society has jacked up their view of love. I think one of the reasons marriage is failing so badly in our country is because people have relied too much on "love" to come from the heart and not the head. Too many Hollywood movies where the couple throws logic and wisdom to the wind to frollic off into the sunset of infatuation. Too many songs on the radio seeping into our minds the false teaching that all we really need in life to feel happy is one more shallow relationship. And we come to where we are today. Men and women frustrated, bitter, and angry at one another because the "feelings" of infatuation have worn off, and the bare bones of love aren't enough for them. They've been so indoctrinated into believing that love is all heart that they can't even recognize it any more when the emotions die down.
Example. I was talking with a friend of mine a couple of years ago. She was venting her frustrations to me over how her boyfriend was planning their engagement and future wedding so "logically" and "systematically." She complained about how love was supposed to be about feelings and emotions, and his method of using his head was "killing her." Now, once the emotions subsided and we could talk rationally, it turned out that this guy was simply using common sense to plan out finances, job-situations, etc. to make sure they could set up their future family in the best possible situation. She wanted them to just run off on a whim and get married in secret. It boiled down to the simple fact that she wanted to get married a lot sooner than he did. And based on the facts on both sides, I had to advise her to stick with HIS plan, not hers. Love is a gift from God, and it entails more than just emotion and feeling. It encompasses the head, the heart, the spirit, the soul, the hands and feet and guts and everything else in this crazy shell we live in. It encompasses all that we are. To limit love to just the heart is to diminish what love is supposed to be. It's asking for love to come from a small percentage of who you are instead of all that you are and all you will be. Basically, this is a long way of saying that you're supposed to know WHY you love someone (and I mean LOVE, not just attraction), for true love needs reasoning and logic just as much as it needs romance and emotion. Love needs all of you.
That being said, I can't in any sense limit myself to believing that the things that are important to me became important to me just because I've reacted in a pre-conditioned way to outside stimuli. That's insulting to those things that I care about the most. I love them and they love me for a REASON. For reason comes from my mind, and reason is part of who I am. To love them with all of me, I must love them with reason. Anything less requires that my love for them is nothing more than a shadow of consequences. And quite frankly, I can't accept that.
We need reasons for loving those around us. When times get rough or The Lady has found a way to make me upset, I need those cold, hard reasons to remind why I stick through this relationship when it gets difficult. Reason is the anchor that holds our love together when the storms continue to rage around us. Reason is the rock upon which our future family can stand strong throughout the changing seasons. I need reason, and the fundamental aspect of reason is CHOICE. I choose this or that because it makes the most sense to me. I choose because reason guides my thought process. I may not choose to be attracted to The Lady, or U2, or God for that matter, but I surely choose to love them. They have all given me ample reason to do so and have proven themselves worthy. My emotions are obviously connected to that choice, but it's a heck of a lot safer to let your emotions follow your head than let your head follow your emotions. If I choose to love or not to love, my emotions will eventually catch up.
Also, Edwards, having an aswer for everything, would say that if you were to break up with your fiance, she was never that best "thing" anyway. Kind of like how people would try and make you fell better by saying "oh, she wasn't the ONE for you anyway..."
Oh, c'mon. That's not even good logic. That's a dog chasing its tail and getting satisfaction out of a mouthful of fur. I don't even have to break this argument down. I think you're smart enough to see the problems with this one. Edwards is simply covering his own butt by begging-the-question.
BTW, totally off topic, but I was thinking the other day about when the last time was I visited Grand Rapids. It was last year when the Dead Sea Scrolls were exhibited at the Public Museum. Did you get a chance to see that? Oh, man, what a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity. I was so glad to have been able to see them. All of my Hebrew professors were extremely jealous. (Oh my, that makes me sound like a huge nerd.)
Anyway, I've got to close up work again. We seem to be spiraling around this one theme, and I haven't even gotten to my major problems with Calvinism yet! Oh well, maybe next time.