Many Beyond Blue readers commented on this beautiful and lyrical response from Marquos on the message board of my “Dear God: The Holy and Not So Holy Family” post. Thanks for this, Marquos.

As you might suspect I am an insecure, self-centered person desperate for praise and validation … a frustrated, undisciplined writer, unable to focus enough to put it all together.

I am often ruled by my dysfunction and beat myself up often. [The dysfunction] turns arrogant and self abusive.
But I am at times peaceful these days because I have found that God truly does love me and if I really work at being mindful of him, I function and feel so much better. It is not in asking him to be with me, for he always is (yet I still beg him to be). It is in my removing the barriers I place between me and him.
Arrogance and self-centeredness destroyed my marriage more than my wife’s not understanding or appreciating me. I would say to all looking for a way to make a better marriage, lay out your heart to your mate, risk being rejected, you will probably be wonderfully surprised at what happens, Be subordinate to one another, which is what Paul really says (Ephesians), serve one another, which is what Jesus says. Out do one another in showing honor (Paul, Romans), and “over all these, put on love, the bond of perfection” (Col 3:14, truly Pauline).

1 Coronthians 13 is still a beautiful hymn to love, no matter its psychological origins, and to say “do as I say, not as I do”, is an archaic understanding of the church, pre Vatican II, not at all in keeping with the church.

I have come to know and love in the past 20 years.
Love is patient, love is kind, love is not pompous, it is not inflated, it is not rude, it does not seek its own interests…It bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things. Love never fails.
How can this be wrong? Love is of God. The love Paul tries to describe, be it based on his faults or not, it is love.
Is it not what we all seek?
Sadly, unconditional love is only possible for God, for the trinity. We seem always to screw it up, sooner or later. But the kind of love Paul describes understands this, and still loves.
Be nice to one another, Isn’t that the first thing we are taught when we step out into the world, play nice?