Love Can Make You Sin…

We’ve all done it (at least it makes me feel better to think that we have), and my singinest sister (Heather Lynn) is a master at it -and it is messing up the lyrics to a song. I’ll leave the humorous anecdotes for others who are more witty than I. My discovery wasn’t all that funny in any way – made less so by the fact that my discovery was made alone – mostly it made me feel like more of a dolt than usual.

A sort of eclectic song that’s been in my play list since 1988, “Breakfast in Bed” which has probably been remixed and re-done 10 different times caught my attention yesterday. I’m most familiar with UB40’s version but the song showed up again on the soundtrack of 50 First Dates a few years back too. Anyway, it’s a sinful sort of song which has a hurt fellow running to the arms of his some-time lover for “breakfast in bed” where she tells him, “you don’t have to say you love me.” The original was written with different words – but UB40’s rendition ends the little chorus with “…love can make you sing…” I actually had always thought that the lyric was “…love can make you sin…” So, I was wrong … I guess it’s “love can make you sing” not “sin” but no matter that my epiphany was based on a mistaken lyric.

I started thinking … love can make you sin? Isn’t that a strange thought? Is it valid? I guess it depends upon how you define love (not to mention how you define sin). In the moment that song was playing yesterday – it just seemed like a profound idea to share with my up-and-coming children (2008 is the year Sierra becomes a teenager). The idea that true love can never make you sin – not when it is properly understood and properly placed. The Greatest Commandment is to love the Lord our God with everything we are and have – that is true love. Acting out that sort of love cannot lead to sin. He loved us first and He is love – and there is no law which stands against love. If that’s true then … the practice of true love cannot possibly lead to sin.

If we find ourselves stepping into sin it cannot be on behalf of love. If we call it that, we are deceived – or simply using a word to describe something other. The same thing that inspires a definition as given in 1 Corinthians 13 cannot also inspire one to sin, no matter the circumstances.

I suppose this is all semantics. But I guess I fear that young folk (since I no longer qualify as one) find some comfort in justifying their promiscuous dalliances by claiming love. I want to at least remove that comforting justification. Call it what it is: attraction, desire, lust, self-seeking, pleasure, infatuation, but stop short of calling it love if it causes you to sin. And really, not even with young folk – but with whomever might follow the missives of the heart when the heart itself can be the most deceitful of things.

Anyhow, seemed as though I needed to slap some thoughts up in cyberspace – might as well be these. It’s true, Love can make you sing! (too bad the characters portrayed in this lyric aren’t practicing true love).

Tags: Church, Music