July 25 2020
LOVE: IMPOSSIBLE?
I have been thinking about LOVE lately. “All we need is LOVE”, the Beatles sang. C. S. Lewis, in his “The Four Loves”, said that some people are glad the English language uses both the words “love” and “like.” He says his own generation was told not to say “I love strawberries,” but to use the work “like” in that instance. Lewis talks about loves in terms of Affection, Friendship, Eros, and Charity. His true message is that the four are almost always intertwined and that they are at their most intense and satisfying level when they are connected to a love for God.
That is the angle I want to explore, and I have come to a startling and disconcerting conclusion, so disconcerting that I hesitate to come to a final verdict. It most certainly remains a point of debate.
Love and Like. Biblical examples.
Thanks to my classical schooling – Latin for 6 years and Greek for 5 years – I can read the New Testament in its original Greek and distinguish the four kinds of LOVE: Agape, Philo, Eros, Caritas, two of them evident in John 21.
When Jesus, after his resurrection, met with his closest followers on the shore of The Sea of Galilee, related in John 21: 15-17, he specifically addressed Peter who had denied him three times. This passage illustrates two types of LOVE in the Greek language, perhaps best translated as Love and Like. Jesus, pointblank, asked Peter, “Do you love me”, using the AGAPE – the unconditional ‘love’ verb. Peter answers Jesus with a different verb for love – philo – which expresses the love one has for a friend, sort of ‘like’, have affection for. Jesus, the second time uses ‘agape’ again (do you really, really love me) and Peter again answers with philo or ‘like’. Jesus then too switches to philo and Peter confirms this. The tempestuous Peter has become temperate.
How do we love God?
“God is love. Whoever lives in love lives in God, and God in them”. (1 John 4: 16). Jesus in Mark 12: 30, spells it out: “Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind and with all your strength”. Jesus here echoes Deuteronomy 6: 5 which has exactly the same wording. In both instances the equivalent of AGAPE is used. Jesus tells us that loving God is an all-consuming matter that’s why the ‘all’ ‘and’ is repeated three times.
This begs the question: HOW DO WE LOVE GOD? There is a definite creation-love connection, based on John 3: 16,”For God so loved (agape) the world that he gave his one and only Son, that whoever believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life.” I believe that this is the only other instance, apart from declaring his love for his Son, when God expresses this utmost emotion: love, in this case love for his creation.
Of course, there is 1 Corinthians 13, that famous chapter on LOVE.
If I speak in the tongues of men and of angels, but have not love, (Agape used throughout) I am only a ringing gong or a clanging cymbal. If I have the gift of prophecy and can fathom all mysteries and all knowledge, and if I have absolute faith so as to move mountains, but have not love, I am nothing. If I give all I possess to the poor and exult in the surrender of my body, but have not love, I gain nothing.
And now these three remain: faith, hope, and love; but the greatest of these is love.
Words come cheap: deeds are decisive. When we say we love God, then this needs clarification, hence a little detour. I have a Van Gogh biography, a most depressing book. He and his father, a Protestant minister, were constantly in conflict, especially because of his aim in life: to become a fulltime painter. He tried to follow in his father’s footsteps, becoming an evangelist worker in London of all places, but that did not last long. He was as stubborn and stupid as his parents were. However today we don’t treasure ‘Vincent’ – that’s how he signed his paintings – because of his character – depressive – and his living habits – he killed himself – but because he produced marvelous artwork, now trading in the tens of millions of dollars.
All great artists are valued by their works: Rembrandt, Bach, Shakespeare: we couldn’t care less about their personalities. God too, is and remains a mystery. The Old Testament depicts God as very human, caring, forgiving, but also vengeful and angry, but in the New Testament God is pictured differently: he is ‘invisible’: “God lives in unapproachable light, whom no one has seen or can see.” (1 Tim. 6: 16). Yet we must love him, unconditionally, the AGAPE way. So how do we love him? We love him, the invisible Creator, as we love all great artists, by his works: his creation is the utmost in everything.
Practical Implications.
Back to 1 Corinthians 13.
Paul, in his letters, always warns against backsliding to the Jewish rituals, outlined in the Mosaic ordinances, such as circumcision and temple worship. He brought a new message: not LAW but LOVE. We, too, prefer the easy way out: we still want to go to heaven so that we can abuse the earth. Forget it: that’s 19th and 20th Century stuff, basically Gnostic Paganism. Jesus died to make a New Earth under a New Heaven possible, because God so loved the world, the cosmos, the universe. We too must love what God loves, that really means LOVING CREATION the AGAPE way, unconditionally, without any hesitation, whole-heartedly, with all the power and intellect and human strength we possess.
That is my conclusion, and I wonder whether that is still possible. Today, whatever we do, from birth to death, from our rising in the morning to our resting at night, we do the opposite of God’s love commandment in regard to creation.
The problem is that loving God and loving his creation is the key to eternity: that is my ultimate conclusion, but that has tremendous implications, scary and impossible.
“If I speak in the tongues of men and of angels, but have not LOVE FOR GOD AND CREATION, I am only a ringing gong or a clanging cymbal.
If I have the gift of prophecy and can fathom all mysteries and all knowledge, and if I have absolute faith so as to move mountains, but have not LOVE FOR GOD AND CREATION, I am nothing.
If I give all I possess to the poor and exult in the surrender of my body, but have not LOVE FOR GOD AND CREATION, I gain nothing.
LOVE FOR GOD AND CREATION is the key to eternal life, the key to THE NEW COSMOS. Jesus died to regain PARADISE, the Garden of Eden. Love for creation extinguishes the boundaries between all religious expressions: Islam, Judaism, Roman Catholic, Protestant, Hinduism, Buddhism, even the atheist, perhaps especially the atheist!
Impossible? A pipedream? Difficult today? Yes, but it explains Jesus’ words, “Many are called, few are chosen”, (Matthew 22:14) and “Nevertheless, when the Son of Man comes, will he find faith on earth?” (Luke 18:8), because today it is impossible to live totally in line with ‘perfection’. Matthew 5: 48 tells us, “Be perfect as your heavenly Father is perfect”. The Greek word used for perfect is ‘teleios’, meaning that in all we do we must keep the ‘telos’, the far-away ‘end’ in mind, a word we daily use in ‘tele-phone’, ‘tele-vision’, and ‘tele-commuting.’
LOVE: STILL POSSIBLE?
“Work out your salvation with fear and trembling”, (Philippians 2: 12). Salvation is not something to take for granted. Jesus gave his life to buy back creation. Is salvation still possible today?
Lord have mercy! Pray without ceasing. Live to do the impossible. Save creation. Ora et Labora.