Somebody to Love

Truth is still truth no matter whose mouth it falls out of. Had Hitler stood up and proclaimed, “Berlin is the capital of Germany,” he would have been right, and to argue with that fact just because Hitler said it would be asinine.

Every last human being is fashioned in the image of the God who spoke the universe and everything in it into existence. As a race we’ve fallen a long way since then, and the bruises incurred by that fall are many. However, the stamp of the divine remains etched into every human heart. A human being can no more remove his humanity—his God-reflecting humanity—from himself than a bird can substitute his hollow bones for marrow-filled ones. It’s simply not within the bird’s ability. Even if his wings are broken.

So, it should come as no surprise to find truth popping up in all sorts of odd places. When it does, hold fast to it. Discard the rest, of course. But let’s not be throwing any babies out with the bathwater.

Freddy Mercury sings a song that gets a lot of play time at our house. It’s called “Somebody to Love.”

Here’s a snippet of the second verse:

I get down on my knees
And I start to pray
Till the tears run down from my eyes
Lord, somebody, oh somebody,
Can anybody find me somebody to love?

What a fascinating question. You’d think he’d be praying and crying to find someone to love him, right? Isn’t that what we are all ultimately after—someone who will truly love us? Yet, that’s not what Mr. Mercury wrote, and I admit his question has really made me think.

I can’t say what Freddy was thinking when he wrote this song. He was known for being intentionally obscure and letting his fans interpret the meanings of his songs to their own liking. In that very spirit, I’d like to put in my two cents.

What if receiving love is only step one to true joy? What if recklessly giving that love away is the second and final step? What if we’re not meant to be love cul-da-sacs but rather love conduits? What if the Dead Sea is a real-life parable of the person who only receives good things and never gives those good things away? And what if Freddy Mercury, a fallen man created in the image of his good and loving Creator, knew it as sure as he knew his mother’s face?

To discover love is to immediately wish to be able to give it all away. Otherwise, you haven’t really encountered love. The reason is that love is transformative. It turns whatever it touches into a channel specifically designed to get everyone else within reach as wet as possible. “Love” that doesn’t do that isn’t really love. We may call it that, but it’s not that. Once you’ve tasted how good it is to receive love, you not only want to receive more yourself, you want to be a person who’s able to give others the same life-giving water.

We were designed to work this way. Some of the key components may have broken on us through neglect and misuse and abuse, but when love rushes in and fixes those parts and we begin to function as we were made to function, we are suddenly toasters who make perfect toast every time. And I can’t think of anything happier than a toaster that makes perfect toast, that is, that fulfills the very purpose for which it was designed.

And when you’re drinking from the source, the source of one who is the definition of love, you couldn’t plumb the depths of that spring if you tried for a thousand lifetimes. So there’s no risk in simply letting it flow through you.

Perhaps that’s why Freddy Mercury was looking for somebody to love. He wouldn’t have been content only finding somebody to love him. Perhaps we’d do well to listen and join him in praying for people that we can love, too.

May your search prove fruitful.