I have found the secret to life.

I am currently watching Pete O'Toole and Sophia Loren in The Man Of LaMancha, and it suddenly occurred to me what the secret to life is. It may sound strange, but I think I have honestly found it. You may ask what I mean by this. Do I mean: 1) I have found the thing that brings motion and consciousness to an inanimate object; or 2)I have found the thing that brings happiness to a person's life. By a strange quirk, I mean both. The secret of life is: LOVE. No, this is no jest. In the first case, God brought creation into being because of love. And then brought redemption of that creation, which had been broken, through another act of love, that being Jesus on the cross. In the second case, what does one mean by happiness? Is it an emotion, a state of being, a condition, a feeling, or some combination of all these and more?

I think of all that love has done throughout the history of humanity, and also all that the lack of love has done, and can't escape the enormous power that it has. It can cause the person loving to totally change. Take for instance, a teenage boy and his first love. It will cause him to do, say, and think things that are totally out of character for him. Or an old woman, whose love of her grandchildren can allow her to perform great feats to protect them. Or the college student, whose heart is touched deeply by a man suffering from AIDS and suddenly finds himself going out of his way to help. Same thing with those touched by the images of starving children on the other side of the world or right next door. But it is not just the lover who is changed.

Let's consider the change in the loved. I thought of this as I witnessed the change in Dulcinea in the movie. The love of Don Quixote for her broke down walls that nothing else ever could. Look at Zaccheus in Luke 19. Jesus did not preach at Zaccheus, nor did He condemn him, nor shun him. Jesus loved him, in all the dirtiness of his sins. This love broke down the walls in Zaccheus that separated him from God. Or the woman at the well, the woman caught in adultery, or any number of others since. How many walls could be broken down, and enemies turned to friends, if we only truly loved one another.

But on the other hand, look at what a lack of love has done. Wars, genocide, persecution, oppression, and any number of other evils that have plagued this world. We claim to hate these things, but humanity seems that it can never get enough of them. Many who claim to want to stop these, end up using them for their own benefit. It is clear that love does not come easily.

How many people through the world over the last 2000 years have been brought to God by love. And I am not talking about the love that so many use to justify their mistreatment of people (“It's for their own good.”). I am talking about that unconditional love that makes one able to live and die entirely for another, be it God or another person. And true, unconditional love can only be felt for another by rising above ourselves, although usually we have to be pulled up by the grace bestowed on us by God.

And how many people have been driven away from God by Christians who know not God’s love and therefore could not offer it to others. Be it inquisitioners, crusaders, child molesters, church condoned slavery, or forced conversions or annihilations of whole groups of people. And it seems to be that the true love of God is shown by those on the receiving end of these evils, be it Booker T. Washington (I will let no man drag me down so low as to make me hate him.) or Gandhi(Whenever you are confronted with an opponent. Conquer him with love).

And in the end, if everyone who claimed to be a Christian, loved others perfectly as Christ loves us, then where would the evils of the world find a place to hide? Nowhere.

Pray for the day when this can be so.