True Love.
In chapter 13 of Paul’s first epistle to the Corinthians, the apostle wrote that “Love keeps no records.”
Different scholars interpret that differently but the consensus is that when you love someone you don’t keep score.
I was therefore shocked to hear a friend telling me that when she was undergoing the process of a divorce – from a Catholic priest who left the priesthood to marry her no less – he even demanded to be reimbursed for the chocolate bars she has consumed when she was married to him.
He provided a detailed record, complete with dates and figures, right down to the last penny.
What an asshole!
If you love someone and you keep score, think of the nightmares it will cause you.
Parents will want an accounting of how much they have invested in their children.
And if you do costings on how much milk has cost you to raise your children, how do you measure the anxiety that comes with bringing up each child, how do you account for what the mother has to go through during her nine months of pregnancy? How do you put a value to that? And if a woman has three kids, how do you monetize three nine-month periods? Do you factor in inflation, for example?
And when you get angry because your kids are misbehaving then how much good behavior must they exhibit to make up for your “investment” in them? What is needed to balance things out?
The concept of unconditional love is beyond many.
It’s so easy to tell someone you love him; it’s so convenient to open your big mouth and regurgitate all those tired platitudes and clichés but true love is sacrificial, and demands nothing in return.
True love is not verbal diarrhea.
If you do not have that kind of love, according to Paul, then you are only a resounding gong or a clanging cymbal.
In other words, you’re just full of shit.