To Love or not to Love.. Is that a Question?

I'm writing about this topic because my interest was peaked by Travis' recent post over at steppinginfaith. I'll be dealing with this issue in some depth next month in the gospel of the kingdom class so this will be a good little precursor.

Love is a crazy, captivating sort of thing and those who have been in love before are well aware of the emotional roller coaster ride it can and often does entail. This is a massive subject. Let's see where we go in this post..

First, there are different kinds of love. The Greek texts give us four different words for what we commonly refer to as 'love.'

Agape- this word is used to denote a sacrifical sort of love and we are familiar with it in NT usage in such passages as John 3:16 and the like

Eros- associated with a passionate love, a desiring or longing. the root for our word 'erotic'

Philia- friendship affection

Storge- typically used for family relationships

It always helps to define the terms. C.S. Lewis takes these four Greek words and speaks on them in one of my favorite books, The Four Loves. I would highly recommend it. The introduction is a bit difficult as it challenges some conceptual misconceptions we have but it is really great reading. That being said, the type of love Travis was discussing in his opening paragraph is not strictly within any one of these categories. That is the difficulty. However, if we understand these well it is much easier to discern where the weight of our true feelings lies. However there's not really space for that here.

The love we may feel towards a person of the opposite sex may be purely eros. We call that lust. It's fairly easy to spot. It may be purely Philia where we just have friends of the opposite sex who, though attractive, we are not attracted to. We often have agape love for our closest friends whom we would do anything for and these too we are pretty aware of. These are the people who we would willingly give our lives for (Jesus gave His for everyone, I'm not quite there yet honestly) and we probably know who they are. Storge, we love our family, that should be a given. The thing that makes it complicated is that the person you marry, you will love in ALL of these ways. You will love them sacrificially, you will love them passionately, you will love them as your deepest friend, and they will be with you as one flesh, closest family.

Love is difficult to describe (this is in a movie, but I can't think of it) because when you are in it, you can't explain it and when you aren't you either don't want to think about it or it doesn't make any sense. But, I've thought about it quite a bit, both in and out of it because I can't help thinking about things; it's just how I work.

Philia, Storge, and Agape have their own sort of traps and confusions, but honestly, for a single person, we don't have too many sleepless nights over them. I don't really lay awake at night thinking about how much I love my enemies or how much I love my friends and family or my dog. It's when you throw in eros that everything gets confusing because it overwhelms the senses, reason, and often our better judgment. Eros can make you do stupid things by itself but when combined with the other loves it becomes even more hazardous (potentially more beautiful if God's grace reigns). It is of great importance to recognize this.

Travis makes the point that 'thinking' you are in love is not the same as 'thinking you are a Calvinist' or 'thinking you are about six feet tall' or 'thinking the sun is hot.' I understand his point and it's a good one. But in some ways, thinking you are in love is exactly the same as those things. You think you are a Calvinist because you aren't completely sure of what that means or how it works. You think you are about six feet tall because you don't have something immediately at hand to compare it to (i.e. a tape measure). You think the sun is hot because that's what you were told, but you haven't been there so you just aren't sure. In fact, you think all of those things for different reasons (factual, experiential, perceived value) and you can think you are in love for many different reasons. If you are thinking that, then you are almost certainly in one of the four categories of love above. When we say 'in love' we usually mean eros plus. Being in love often confuses us emotionally and perplexes us mentally so we are unsure of what our true feelings are, thus we may well 'think' we are in love.

I might post some more on this later. It's an interesting topic and I did little to breach it in this short diatribe.

Until next time,
EP