Love Is

Last year Psychology Today published an article entitled 7 Reasons Most People Are Afraid of Love. (Interesting ... is it true that "most people are afraid to love", or are they intending to say "For those who are afraid to love, here are the 7 common reasons"?) The truth everyone knows that "love hurts". I mean, didn't Nazareth tell us so? (The band, not the place.) How many songs have been written about how tough it is to love and lose? And we have to be constantly reminded, "It's better to have loved and lost than to never have loved at all." All very noble sounding. Because, as everyone knows, love hurts.

I wonder if our modern concept of "love" has caused more harm than good. We've come to believe that "romance" = love. We're quite sure that love is that warm feeling, that ache in the pit of your stomach, that goo-goo eyes thing going on between ... well, we're not sure about that anymore. Two people of the opposite sex? Same sex? More than two? Hey, maybe it's that woman and her 12 cats. She loves them, doesn't she? Who knows? But we know what it is. Of one thing we are quite certain. There is only one "right person" for any one of us. That's why the 5th Dimension could sing "I'll never get married" because, after all, his one true love was marrying someone else. And we weep for them.

Except ... no one seems to ask if it's true.

According to that Psychology Today article, there are lots of reason we're afraid to love. There is the vulnerability of love. There are the past hurts of love. There is the threat of pain that joy brings. There is the fear of unrequited love. There is the fear of disconnection from family or friends. There is (inexplicably) the fear of having too much. It's interesting to me that all the fears listed are predicated on ... me. What will I feel? How will I hurt? What will I lose? What will it cost me? Is that love?

Well, it's surely love today. But the biblical version includes such things as "does not pursue its own things," "believes all things," and "bears all things." (1 Cor 13:4-8). In fact, in that description, I can't find a single reference to "what I get out of it." That seems quite in contradiction to our modern version of love. All about "how I feel" and "what I get", that version seems to be "what I have to contribute" and "what you gain."

I think that, perhaps, our present version of love has created a monster never intended or required by the biblical version. The Puritans, for instance, "married for love", not because they were "in love", but because they could love. The question was "Are you mature enough to give of yourself to another person?" That version of love was a sacrificial attempt to obtain what was in the best interests of the other person. Oddly enough, that doesn't require warm feelings or the loss of appetite. Giving to another for that other, not for what you will gain, can't be nearly as painful as our current version. A marriage predicated on "I will give of myself to get what is best for you" can achieve a "100%" status rather than the hopeful "50-50" version we desire today. A marriage where both spouses do this, then, achieve a "200%" marriage, so to speak, where both give their all for each other regardless of the return.

Personally, I would hope that God doesn't suffer from our version of love. If He only loved those from whom He could get a satisfactory return, we'd be in real trouble. But He doesn't. And we can only be relieved and overjoyed at that. But us? We seem to think that love is some sort of unknown chemistry from which all important decisions--who to care about, who to marry, with whom to have children, even who to discard--are made. Based almost exclusively on "if it feels good, do it", we Christians go through life seeking to "feel affectionately toward our neighbors as we feel affectionately toward ourselves" and to "feel warmly toward God" as if these were the intent.

I suspect we've slipped a cog here and don't recognize it. Sure, warm feelings will likely result from pouring yourself into the best interests of another, but is that the definition of love? Or have we succumbed to a watered down version that only vaguely connects to the one God intended but is guaranteed to cause you great pain in life? If so, is that really God's intent or is it possible that an enemy of God is behind this?