Love

My oldest son introduced me to a rock band out of California by the name of Crosses, a side project by the vocalist from Deftones.  I was listening to the song, "The Epilogue" (which is quite good), and was struck by the humanity and underlying message of the song.  Basically, the vocalist was describing his time out with someone he loved.   What struck me was this, everyone, regardless of personality or personal history, wants to love and be loved. 
I started thinking about what this means.  As human beings, we are created in the image of God and therefore we were created to love and be loved.  But because are screwed up by sinfulness, the places we look for love are often wrong.  But this is not to say that these places are completely wrong.  People look to marriage for happiness, and they should because marriage should make us happy.  But they shouldn't look to marriage as the source of happiness.  People look to wine for happiness, and they should (the book of Proverbs speaks of this) but people shouldn't look to wine as the source of happiness or as a place to help them escape.  Examples such as these could be multiplied, but hopefully you understand what I am saying.
The reason people look to such a wide variety of places for love is because these places and things do contain shades or slivers of love/truth.  The problem is our fallen nature.  Because we are sinful, we corrupt the very things we use/create/manipulate as love.
The answer, of course, is the Eastern Orthodox Church.  It is here that God has given his Holy Spirit and called his people.  But again, even here, because the church is made up of sinful/stained/selfish people, we do/say/think wrong things.
Because the church is made up of fallen people, we don't do everything right, and this turns people away.  One would think that because the church has THE TRUTH, people would be flocking to us, but because we're sinful, they often don't.
People look elsewhere for two reasons.  One, people are sinful and cannot think or see clearly in order to rightly seek out perfection.  But two, the sinful people in the church say and do things that turn people away.
If we begin to approach life and the people around us, communicating unconditional love, we will see amazing results.  A successful life is all about love, but that life can only be successful when it is built upon a love for God within his church.