Monday, August 31, 2009

Blinded by love?

Just a random thought.

I was walking past a sign today, I don't remember what the whole sign was about, but it contained the phrase "love makes you blind".

Does it?

It's a weird concept. I know what it means, but isn't it kind of antithetical to what we would want to believe?

We say love (in it's purest form) is the highest of virtues, biblically, it's one of our main goals, God uses "love" to describe himself, Paul waxes lyrical about it, and almost every page of the scriptures are saturated in it. Songs have been written from the beginning of time about it.

Surely love does the opposite of blinding. It's only in love that we are actually able to see. Without love, we are blind.

If what we call "Love" causes us to no longer see (flaws, problems, sins, etc), then is it really love? Or infatuation, idolatry?

4 comments:

Tim said...

Hmmm. Interesting question. I think the problem is this: Some people consider forgiveness a flaw and a fault, and would consider the fact that when you love someone, you're prepared to forgive them and overlook their mistakes blindness. Forgiveness is at the very heart of love, after all.

Bridget Macfarlane said...

"This is one of the miracles of love: It gives a power of seeing through its own enchantments and yet not being disenchanted."
CS Lewis.

Nope, I don't reckon love is blind at all. It just makes us able to handle the icky bits.

Bridget Macfarlane said...

And as to your last comment, yup, I reckon you're probably right. Experience as well as logic points that way.

Jenni said...

I was going to say something similar to what Tim said. Love doesn't cause blindness, but it does help with the ability to forgive. Yourself, someone else, it doesn't matter. Maybe that's often mistaken as being 'blind'... when you love someone, sometimes it's easy (and maybe equally hard?) to forgive and forget.