Love does not boast

Ok, back to the whole love thing again.

Boasting: speaking with exaggeration or excessive pride, especially about yourself.

I can see two ways in which boasting damages relationships. The first is boasting about yourself. If you big yourself up, this is naturally going to come at the expense of others. The Bible often speaks of building others up, rather than building yourself up. Jesus gave instructions to be humble, and demonstrated this by washing his disciples feet--a task usually reserved for lowly servants. So bigging yourself up and boasting is liable to damage relationships, because it doesn't consider the other person. It's liable to lead to friction. After all, if I stand there saying 'I'm amazing, I'm amazing, look at me', I'm ignoring the basic point of love, which is caring for someone else, other than yourself.

The other way I look at boasting is like this: boasting about your relationship. I heard somewhere that one of the ways you know you're serious about a relationship is when you want to tell all your friends the tiny little details, but you don't, out of respect for the other person. Relationships aren't meant to be broadcast to the world. You love your boyfriend/girlfriend, you took them out to dinner last night. Great. But if you start talking about all the stuff you do for your boyfriend/girlfriend, or even just your friend, it's worth asking yourself: why are you doing all that stuff? Is it because you genuinely care about them? Or is it because it makes you look good?

Boasting is dangerous whichever way it's happening. It's drawing love away from the relationship and putting it into yourself instead. It's serving yourself instead of serving others. And this works when you're talking about the Christian love (agape) as well. True love, love that wants the best for others, does not want people to look at you and go 'wow, isn't she/he amazing', which is what the aim of boasting is.

Remember, God made you special, and he loves you very much.