These are rough thoughts, bound to change over time and with experience.
I have been thinking a lot about love lately. I’m not sure why. I think it started a couple of weeks back when I was walking home from work and began thinking about mid-life crisis (MLC). The thing is I’m 39 and will be 40 in May and I suppose I’m in the danger-zone for something like a MLC. Don’t get me wrong, I don’t remotely feel old or even rebellious against age – in fact I’m pretty darn content these days, all things considered. Nevertheless the thoughts were there and I explored them.
The most common sympton of the MLC is an affair. The affair often stems from an inner sense that one is no longer as desirable as one once was which signifies a great problem in our understanding of love – its confusion with attractiveness and other temporal attributes. It occured to me that men (and women) who are struggling with a sense of being loved will often reach out to the first thing that loves and accepts them (or at least who they perceives loves and accepts them). It also occured to me that a great number of people these days will look outside of the marriage or relationship they are in for love. This often gets them in a boatload of trouble. Of course what is often being sought out is not love at all but a variation on the theme of selfishness and lust. A great deal of rationalizations are offered in response to infedelity including:
– a poor sex life
– lack of respect
– laziness on part of spouse
– we’ve changed (physically, emotionally, spiritually)
– boredom
The interesting thing about these and other motivations toward infidelity is that they hint at how we often define what love is. This is where I began thinking about the nature of love. What is it? Of course from a position of Christian faith I cannot help but recognize that scripture says "God is love" (1 John 4:8). In some ways this is incredibly frustrating because God is God and we are not and so if God is love then it is a standard we cannot hope to achieve. This is a poor excuse however because God is a trajectory He put us on…sanctification plays a part here.
So God is love. Still this leaves us with questions. We know God is love and we know that we are to emulate God and so our love is meant to be a reflection of His love. But what is it? This question is critical because much in our lives will depend upon how we understand the answer.
Plato spoke about love quite extensively in his various writings. Of course this was 2,500 years ago but it’s impact has been substantial. Plato’s theories are quite good but in the end the reflect an opinion of humanity as endlessly seeking after for the self. No matter how noble or high-minded the lover becomes ultimately in Plato love is a selfish extention of humanity.
Only in God does love become both noun and verb…otherwise, in humanity, love is a verb/adverb. As a verb love is an action or series of actions. It may even be descriptive of an action. But I think the character of true love is selfless action or outflowing.
If we take the husband or wife in crisis for a moment we would like to say a few things. First we would like to say to them that no matter how attractive (physically) their spouse is there will always be someone more attractive – always. This seems the height of unhelpful but the goal is to move the person beyond the physical…past lust to something higher.
The point is that if our love is founded upon or based merely upon physical attractiveness it is doomed. It must go beyond this to something deeper. This also underscores a critical defining characteristic of love – love is not depending upon anything outside of its source.
I went to a wedding the other day and it was a beautiful affair, it was outdoors and the sun was shining, the wind had died down the groom was handsome and the bride was beautiful and all was good. Here in this setting I heard the expected, a quote from 1 Corinthians 13:4-8:
"Love is patient, love is kind. It does not envy, it does not boast, it is not proud. It does not dishonor others, it is not self-seeking, it is not easily angered, it keeps no record of wrongs. Love does not delight in evil but rejoices with the truth. It always protects, always trusts, always hopes, always perseveres. Love never fails."
This is as much a definition of God as it is of love…for our purposes we will focus on love. Our journey has led us to the cusp of revelation – that love is not dependant upon the one that is loved. Godly love is utterly separated from the attractiveness, actions or character of the one who is loved. All of the attributes that define love in the above verses are a testimony to this – patience, kindness, protection, hope, perseverence all speak of the independence of love; they are all attributes that describe character that is not impacted by its immediate situation. Further to this the verses speak to us about how love does not react to the negative with negative by keeping no record of evil, not being easily angered, and of course love is not self-seeking.
The nature of love is easier to understand than to put into action because action is dependant upon a reaction or a previous action – love is dependant upon nothing and is fed from within. This means that love remains in place despite the person being loved not because of the person. The broken character of the other should not remove our love for them, the inevitable deterioration of the other should not impact our love for them, nothing the other says or does or feels should impact our love for them.
But, you say, if this is true and we were to love this way then we would love everyone equally. Ahhh…see that’s the trick…that is the nature of God that "God so loved the world that He gave…" (John 3:16). Love gives. Love gives with no strings attached. Now wait a minute you say! God requires something…His love comes with strings…you have to accept His son. Of course this again is the nature of love – it needs to be accepted, or rather it can be refused. Love respects the one loved and would never force it – so it stands and offers itself completely which means it opens itself up to complete rejection. This rejection does not reflect the quality of the love, it remains the same but the one it is offered to loses the opportunity to be transformed. Love transforms. This is the secret of the Grinch’s transformation in Dr. Seuss’s classic – he witnessed true love that was not dependent upon anything when he stood puzzling about the nature of Christmas:
"How could it be so? It came without ribbons! It came without tags!
It came without packages, boxes or bags!"
And he puzzled three hours, ’till his puzzler was sore.
Then the Grinch thought of something he hadn’t before!
"Maybe Christmas," he thought, "doesn’t come from a store.
"Maybe Christmas…perhaps…means a little bit more!"
And what happened then…?
Well…in Who-ville they say
That the Grinch’s small heart
Grew three sizes that day!
Love is foolishly dependant upon nothing. Love makes absolutely no sense when you think about it because love would sacrifice itself for the sake of the other and this goes against our own instinct for self-preservation. Love is a contradiction.
If we are to love then we are to be as foolish. If we are to love this way we will begin to understand enigmatic sayings such as `Matthew 12:48-50 –
"Who is my mother, and who are my brothers?" Pointing to his disciples, he said, "Here are my mother and my brothers. For whoever does the will of my Father in heaven is my brother and sister and mother."
or Galatians 3:28 –
There is neither Jew nor Gentile, neither slave nor free, neither male nor female, for you are all one in Christ Jesus.
There are more to these thoughts but it`s all my little brain can come up with right now. I`ll add later.
LATER – Of course I should mention briefly that God is love and so God is the source of all love. We offer various and sundry interpretations on the theme and our attempts at love seem more like poor artisans attempts to fashion something beautiful in a medium they’ve never used before. We create small idols of our love and put them on our shelves and worship them…but they are mere projections of lust and selfishness usually.
We said earlier that love was powered from within and dependant upon nothing external to allow it to exist. But doesn’t love need an object? Is this not some external requirement? God’s love exists well within His triune self. God’s love can exist apart from anyone else because He can commune perfectly within Himself…it is a pure act of grace that He has chosen humanity, who stand outside of Him, to be recipients of that love…He does not require us to be recipients.
In terms of humanity, we are not created to commune with ourselves. Our love, to be a reflection of God’s, must come from a source other than ourselves, but within ourselves – we must rely upon God’s spirit within us to be the source of our love. We must learn to relate to and commune with God’s spirit within us to effectively love those around us.
The irony here is that there are many with God’s spirit who choose to attempt love without it (or choose not to love at all)…in these instances our love falls far short and wreaks havoc and we become confused because we did our best but it was not good enough. Still others who do not have the spirit of God have been able to see enough of Him in creation to create a reasonable facsimile of His love – enough to put us to shame.
Actually… there are no strings attached in God\’s divine love towards us, none at all. I think our concept of "God as the romantic gentleman" comes more from a modern construct of love and courting than it does from the Scriptures.
"Love is a contradiction"– as Chesterton notes, love means loving that which is unlovable, or else it is no virtue at all.
"This is how we know what love is: Jesus Christ laid down his life for us." God\’s love is seen in Christ\’s death for us. :o)
I agree (I hope I sound like I agree in the post)…I like the Chesterton quote. Love is a contradiction which is why it is so profoundly difficult for some people to accept or even understand it. Thanks!
Thanks for posting that Pete. I\’ve never thought about love ias indepedent from an object. I think you started a paragrahph with "but doesn\’t this mean that we should love equally?: but then I\’m not sure if you finisihed it or if I missed something. Would you mind going over that point again? Thanks!