"What is Love?...baby don't hurt me"

Yes, for those of you who recognize the song...it is very cheesy song associated with an equally cheesy movie. Michael Jackson died, as abruptly as that sentence. And today the interns and adult staff went through abuse training. Now at this point you might be asking what is the connection between the two: I would be if I weren't the person writing this post. Michael Jackson did not have a pretty childhood with an abusive father (I got this from a better source than Wikipedia) and not much of childhood. The famous Wacko Jacko pulled some crazy stunts in his life, including living with a monkey, making his home into an amusement park, and changing his face surgically to improve his looks. Coming from a house where what he did was not good enough, where abuse was prevelant, I wonder how much of Michael Jackson's life was dictated by his search for love and acceptence. I wonder if his view of himself could never let him be a content person. I wonder if there was a dark and earnest method behind Jackson's madness. I will never really know but I still feel sorry for the man.
Abuse happens and it affects millions of people every year. Today we went through the manual that New City has for abuse. When you really think about, it is startling and perverse that such a thing must exist. The policy is something that we must know, but that it must exist really sucks the joy out of a room.
Abuse manipulates a correct understanding of love and acceptence towards something unhealthy and unwholesome. An abused person never leaves uneffected out of the other side. I never cease to be amazed at how humans justify the greatest evils under the name of love; how we manipulate what should be treasured above all things into a degenerate mire of hopelessness and pain. We trade a heated house for a thin whisp of a blanket to shrug off the cold of winter, no wonder we can be so cold on the inside. Most abused people say nothing, just go one living their lives, seeking love and acceptence like the rest of us. The terrible truth is that humans seek what we know...
What do we do? Against the pain of our definition of love is the light of the Resurrected Jesus. His love is neither comical and shallow like Disney, lustful like pornography, twisted and egotistical like a manipulators, but gentle yet stern, accepting yet always seeking for our changing growth, and burning like a fire while healing like cool water. The truth of the Gospel is that God teaches us to love truly in a world where the word means anything. This issue is complicated, usually painful, and never ceasing. We need to pray that the Love of God perseveres in our own life because I am sure that in my life I will come across many people who have undergone some form of abuse. Perhaps this summer, perhaps in the years to come. I am sure that I will meet many people who abuse. I pray that I have the wisdom to teach love to both, and the ears to hear the storm that lays behind the whispers. Amen.