Here's the problem with the whole Redeeming Love thing:

Michael is perfect. He has no flaws. He has no faults. He has no weaknesses. He has no sins.

Yeah, I get that it's an analogy for God and his love for us. And in that sense, it works--he is perfect, we are awful. But as a model for romance and love between mere humans, it's false, unfair, cruel even.

The thing is, that the unconditional love, boundless grace, total acceptance, endless endurance, only work in one direction. It's a one-way street. So, if a girl, redeemed by his incomprehensible love from horror, suffering, prostitution, despair, and evil, runs away and sells herself back into prostitution again, sleeps with his brother-in-law, then she wants (deep down) to be forgiven, chased down, pursued relentlessly, forgiven totally, still loved as if it had never happened, understood that she is broken, and flawed, and sinful, and afraid, and human...given another chance...and another...and another...and another, until she is overwhelmed by the sheer power of his love. And I get that. I so do. BUT--where is the grace for him, if he is not perfect? The man gets no grace. He can never be flawed. He can never make mistakes. He can never show weakness. He can never fall apart, no matter how great the trials that he must endure. Not if everything he loves and values in life has been taken from him. Not if he is, for a time, lost, and confused, and heartbroken, and crushed, and dead in all but biology. Not if his heart has been broken again, and again, and again, and then the one woman he has ever met who made him believe that she truly loved him gives up on him, abandons him, betrays him, rejects him, is cruel to him. Not even if his precious daughter, his beloved little girl, his best friend, has been murdered, and he is overwhelmed and crushed with grief, shock, guilt, and despair. There is no grace, no understanding, no forgiveness, no unconditional acceptance, for him. If he is not everything exactly she needs, exactly when she needs it, he is cast aside like last week's trash.

Women say they want unconditional love, romance, passion, tenderness, sweetness, poetry, humor, honor, character, courage, kindness, beauty, truth, true love, eternal devotion. But all they really want is a good resume and a strong dose of indifference.

Vir sine feminâ bonum non est

 Here's something I never thought I'd do:

Well, two things I didn't expect, really. Yes, that's who you think it is in the pictures. No, we're not back together. We did have a wonderful time, though. 

Once, a girl bought me a book. And said that this was what love looked like to her: what she needed; what she longed for. And apparently, judging from the popularity of the book and the movie which recently was made from it, among women, more than a few share her feeling on the matter. It was a fiction based on the Biblical book of Hosea. I read it. I got it. It made me cry. I tried to live up to it. Turned out, though, in the end, to be just fiction. 

Here's what true love looks like to me. True story. 

How I feel, when I look out at the world we find ourselves living in.