That Which I (May) Know Of, but Not How To…Yet?

I may know of love; I may know what it is?

Love can be as described in 1 Cor 13:4-7; patient, kind…the passage goes on.

Love can also be broken into 4 types in Greek; sacrificial agape, friendly philia, romantic eros and affectionate storge.

I have seen love; I have experienced it.

I have felt love; have I ever given it?

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Now, enough of my juvenile abstract pondering. I actually wanted to learn more about this, so I researched it a little. Sad? A little, but for all the inquisitive timid souls out there, may this spur you on your journey as well.

Erich Fromm suggests that in order to love, you need to be giving. However, there is a difference between merely providing and truly giving, which has 4 elements:

1. Care
• active concern for recipient’s life and growth
2. Responsibility
• Responding to expressed and unexpressed needs (especially the emotional needs)
3. Respect
• Ability to see person’s unique individuality and wanting that person to grow or unfold as they are
4. **KNOWLEDGE**

Knowledge is the core foundation for the amount of care, responsibility and respect one gives to another; one can only care for/respect/respond to a person as deep as you know them.

Now, let’s throw in little wrenches into the works to potentially add a little anxiety into the concept of love!

Is love eternal?
Is love merely a choice?

Love can only be as permanent as the beings expressing it; since we are but mere temporal, mortal beings at this time in our lives, our love for one another cannot transcend beyond that which is like ourselves: temporal. Of course, we can then play The God Card and state that His love for us is eternal through a life of loving and following our Saviour. This eternal love between God and humans should be the clear basis upon which we emulate our temporal love, and yet it can be so difficult to do.

Perhaps this difficulty stems from multiple sources, with our temporal existence being one of them. Consequentially, this leads us to the next source: if our love is temporal because we are temporal, then perhaps love really is just a choice. Mais ouais! people definitely have the choice to love another person, stemming from the amount of proximity, exposure, care and vulnerability they allow. Perhaps the thought of love as a choice was understood or interpreted to be more binary than it really is? Can two people (or just one side toward another) flip the “love-switch” upon meeting? Attraction, definitely! but love as we’ve seen above? How does one know enough someone to instantly love them upon meeting them!? Similarly, can that switch be instantly turned off? Instead of a flip switch, perhaps it’s more like a dimmer switch…  Well, dimmer switches also have an instant on/off. Huh.

Back to talking about choices though! It appears that just as we can make choices to let love grow toward a person, we can similarly make choices to withhold, diminish, freeze and ultimately end our love. I reckon it would be a very heart-wrenching and difficult decision. Not only would loving (or choosing not to love) be a choice, but rather it is an active choice. Adding a semi-Jesus Juke, we notice that God also made a choice in loving us through giving us His Son, and that Jesus made the decision to consult and adhere to God’s Will for Him at Calvary. Coming to accept the fact that love is totally a choice didn’t help much me with the anxious thoughts of its permanence, but there was some comfort in understanding that there are steps which can be taken to strengthen, re-kindle and repair love which is damaged or failing.

…and then my mind jumps around to when it doesn’t get better. And then. And then. And then…

And then we get to another aspect, where love is a verb. In a more spiritual sense, there is an idea that agape love only stems from loving the Father and romantic love is an outpouring of agape. All of this would hinge upon our relationship with God and whether we ultimately love Him. In Christian logic, this seems to make sense; we love for He first loved us. In secular logic, I simply cannot further comment.

In my perspective,  love is a 4-letter word which is thrown around quite loosely, often without much thought of its gravity and importance (of course, another question which would exist is “Who gives a shit?” but doesn’t that question apply to everything in life? Hohoho…). It’s something which God calls me to do (love God, love others), but is so difficult to do. It’s something which I don’t have much of a grasp on. It’s something that some stupid part of my brain wants to be able to tangibly define and understand. It’s something I want to share and grow.

Knowledge. Once again, everything comes back to knowledge. Just as we must know the Word in order to get a glimpse of God’s heart/mind (and as a result, should desire to supplement the growth with prayer, which in turn should supplement our desire to grow with more focus in the Word…etc.), we must get to desire to know the thoughts going through another person’s heart and mind. This desire to know the thoughts can only be fulfilled through communication, and likewise, communication exists through the desire to know. I’m getting all circular argumentative again…

Your heart and mind: I want to know it.