What Is Love? (Baby Don't Hurt Me)

Melbourne. The city that never sleeps (due the amount of coffee everyone drinks)

So, one of the activities that we run on the YMT at most school ministry days is a reflection activity called 'The Real Me'. What happens is we give the kids a bunch of personal questions and ask them to reflect on these questions, followed by discussing their thoughts in small groups. These 'small group' discussions have the ability to go in two completely different directions; the kids will go incredibly deep with their sharing, or they will be awkward turtle silent.

Now, depending on the feel of the small group sharing, I'll usually ask the kids if there were any questions that they found particularly hard to answer, and usually, I get the same question unanswered by a majority in the group: 'What does love mean?' So, what will happen next is the kids will then look on at me with the expectation that I should be able to answer this question. Now, to be completely honest, I have absolutely no idea about what 'love' means. But I never get around to telling the kids this. I'll just smile back at them and reply with 'I would love to give you the answer, but that would be cheating. Why don't you tell me what YOU think love is'. The kids will then come back at me with 'We don't know sir'. (Now, this usually pisses me off, because the one thing I hate about ministry days is being called 'sir' They could call me 'dickhead' for all I care, just as long as they don't call me 'sir'.) Anyway, I then ask them to just wing it, and tell me what they think love is. This then usually leads on into an awesome discussion on thoughts and opinions on love.

So, during the last two ministry days, I've been compiling a list of what the kids in my small group think 'love' is. One of the days was an all boys group, while the other was an all girls group. This is what they had to say:

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• 'Love is someone you care about' 
• 'Love is an expression on self-giving' 
• 'Love is when someone knows the real you and accepts and likes you for who you are'
• 'Love is when you love someone'
• 'Love is sex'
• 'Love is a word used to describe many different yet pleasant emotions. For example, I don't "love" my family the same way I "love" my girlfriend. And I don't "love" my girlfriend the same way I "love" footy. And I don't "love" pizza the same way I "love" my mates. And even though I "love" my mates, I'm not gay.' <-- I loved this one, could not stop laughing

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• 'Love is something that has a trustful, caring, and honest nature'
• 'Love is giving someone the power to destroy you, yet trusting them not to' <-- This blew me away, I was stunned. I asked the girl how she came up with that, and she told me that that she got it of a MySpace layout. I in turn asked her what she was still doing on MySpace.
• 'Love is an open and honest way of expressing yourself'
• 'Love is "like" on steroids'
• 'Love is something that you need to work at to maintain'
• 'Love is an expression of self-giving'
• 'Love is... I don't believe in love' <-- This was not a shock for me to hear, because I had heard this response many a time. I asked the girl why she didn't believe in love, and she replied with:
• 'Love is the word a guy uses when he wants to get pussy' <-- Now, throughout my 8 months on team, I have heard a handful of similar responses. I could feel the hurt in the girl's voice, and see the sadness in her eyes. For a moment, no one said anything, and then another girl backed her up with:
• 'Love is a fiction technique directors portray in movies. It is a genre. There is no such thing as "love" in the real world. "Love" is just a way of describing a worthless relationship which some people choose to falsely believe are "special".

Now, I had no idea how to reply to these two comments. But I could tell that both these girls had experienced emotional pain through having their trust taken advantage of and made broken. In the end, I chose not to reply to their comments. There was probably nothing I could say to these girls to make their situations any better. I had only known them for 4 hours. Yet, while there was nothing I could say, there was something I could do. Not just for those two girls, but for all those kids. I could continue to be a witness of having experienced Christ's love, as well as showing these kids respect and kindness, and in a sense,  just loving them.

Now, its been a couple of days since I met these kids, and I'm pretty sure I'll never see or hear from most of them again. But they will always be in my prayers.

Something I find really beautiful about YMT school ministry days is how we'll usually never get to see the impact we had on the kids post-reflection day. Yet we keep on going, never stopping. We don't get to experience the fruits of our ministry, yet we continue doing God's work, because we love it.

Just before I peace out, I've got one more thing to say. I've started reading my first C.S. Lewis book. Everyone is always asking me to read some of his stuff, so in order to shut everyone up with their recommendations, I've decided to read 'The Four Loves'. Why this one specifically? Three reasons:

1. This blog post was about "Love"
2. The next Melbourne iSTAND Weekend theme is "The Four Loves"
3. Its the only C.S. Lewis book I have

Anyway, peace out my readers. And when I say 'my readers', I mean you Sam, my one-and-only reader. SHOULD anyone else be reading this for some strange reason, peace out to you too!