Love costs

Atonement is not an accountant's trick.  It is not a kindly overlooking; it is not a not counting of what must count if anything in heaven or on earth is to matter. God could not simply decide not to count without declaring that we do not count.
But someone might say that, if God is God, he could do anything.  Very well then, God would not decide not to count, because he would not declare that we do not count.  And yet God's "would" implicates and limits his "could."  The God of whom we speak is not, in the words of Pascal, the God of the philosophers but the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob.  He is the God of unbounded freedom who willed to be bound by love. - Fr. Richard John Neuhaus, Death on a Friday Afternoon


There's this lingering, insidious concept, that has been around for centuries but has thrived in a new way since the sexual revolution of the 1960's.  It proclaims the superiority of free love, unhindered by petty jealousy and possessiveness, which knows no boundaries.  It suggests that any restriction on our expressions of love are an adulteration of what love should truly be.

What it calls love is really selfish hedonism, and it ignores a fundamental truth: the central requisite characteristic of love is the willingness of the lover to be bound by it.  It isn't that love costs the lover his or her freedom of choice; rather, the lover subjugates his or her freedom of choice to what best benefits the beloved.

This is not to say that, in human relationships, love makes the lover a doormat.  It is usually not best for the beloved for that to be the case!  But the simple fact is that, if love is to be worthwhile, to be treasured, it must be way more than feelings without cost.  Love's value depends on what the lover is willing to invest in it.

It isn't that I couldn't decide to cheat on, or in some other way stop loving, my wife.  Rather, I can't do so without altering the fundamental nature of who I have become, without being unfaithful to myself in the process.  Likewise with God's love.  But God's fundamental nature is infinitely less fickle than our own!