Love, sex and bling

A man of more wisdom and discernment than I once suggested that the things we hear the most about are the things we understand the least: peace, freedom, love, Saddam Hussein's weapons of mass destruction.\nWe talk ourselves blue-in-the-face trying to chase down each of these nebulous ideas and, when that fails, we talk some more.\nEvery politician has a solution for "winning the peace." Every political action league warns us our freedoms hang by a thread that those politicians are itching to cut. And Saddam's WMDs -- well, when they turned out to be less than nebulous, we stopped hearing about them.\nParticularly around the middle of February, it becomes clear the people who talk the most about love understand it the least. For example, every jeweler in Bloomington claims he has the key to love locked up in the front room's display case. Just give a jeweler a few hundred greenbacks and he'll unlock that bulletproof glass door and help you unlock all the love you could ever want -- at least until your next Valentine's Day, anniversary or when you finally decide to marry the woman.\nBut it's too easy to pick on jewelers; Tom Shane would probably starve if The Shane Co. didn't push that sentimental hogwash.\nNo, the jewelers sell sappy claptrap because we buy it. We buy it because we believe it, and we believe it because we don't understand love.\nThe most obvious symptom of our ignorance is how often we use "sex" synonymously with "love." Besides the expression "to make love," it seems like even a vaguely romantic movie has to seal the deal with sex (think "Garden State"). We wouldn't know that the man and woman are really in love without the Big Nasty.\nOr take this very newspaper: It was no coincidence that "The Sex Issue" of the IDS's INside magazine was published the day before Valentine's Day.\nSex is not love and love is not sex.\nNot to be outwitted by a highly determined and obtuse reader, I'll clarify what I'm not saying: I'm not saying that either sex or love is bad. I'm saying that if you use those two words interchangeably, then you don't understand either.\nJesus told us there is no greater love than a man who would lay down his life for friends. This is to say that the very essence of love is self-sacrifice. Every one of us is alive because a woman gave up her body for nine months; and unless you're a loathsome child, you recognize that to be the most tangible sign of your mother's love. Any child, wanted or otherwise, will demand the love -- willing self-sacrifice -- of his mother's body; how wretched to deny that love because it's inconvenient.\nLove isn't jewelry or sex. Love is selflessness for the sake of someone else, and if it's never manifested, it's meaningless. If at every opportunity you choose your own comfort and convenience, you must question whether you actually love anyone other than yourself.