The first of the biblical 10 commandments is to love God with heart, soul, mind and the third is not to use His name in vain. I want to focus on what love and vanity are. For the topic of God is simple. If you believe he is there, why talk about someone as if he were not. If you don't, well why discuss something that is not there.
Love and vanity are also simple because if love is not there, there is certainly a lot of wasted emotions and effort in a relationship.
Love songs are meaningless if you don't feel love. You can do all the things that refer to love or wish you could love someone through romance, seduction and pursuit but it's hard to tell if love is there especially when hormones take over. At the point you suspect that it's a lie, the most intimate moments that inspired can seem repulsive. So many stories exist about misguided love.
The commonality between love and saying meaningless things is this. Real intimacy and real love are one and the same. Public intimacy cannot by definition exist. Could it be that love (if it is closely related to intimacy) when made public can dilute as well as add value? I think there is more distraction than augmentation.
So to publicly proclaim you love someone cannot be the final test to see if love exists. This applies to our human love as well as our belief in God. Try and systematize, ritualize or dramatize and the act of love can become cheap and fake, fast.
Acting out love is fun. Weddings are many a girl's dream. Sex is perhaps more of an obsession for men. And we are free to have fun.
When you know it is not there but still proclaim you love someone, that is just a slogan. Words used in vain. And so it is with God.
This song "Can't nobody" is a yearning to love and be loved by God whom they call Jesus. Whether this song is meaningful or a slogan depends on what we see and want. How many can truly say "can't nobody do me like Jesus... he's my friend" and not use it like a slogan in vain?
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