This Thing Called Love

The question Jesus answered for the lawyer that day was “Who is my neighbor?” But an equally important question, and one that doesn’t get asked nearly often enough, is “What is love?”

Some enchanted evening you will meet a stranger across a crowded room. Neither of you has a clue what the other is like. But your heart rate goes up and your imagination goes into overdrive and, well, you know how it goes, right? Happily ever after is just around the corner. Is this love?

On her thirteenth birthday Lisa’s mother takes her to the gynecologist to get fitted for a diaphragm. “You’re a woman now,” she says, “I want you know that you can tell me anything.” Is this love?

“I’m sorry, honey,” says Brad as he picks Nancy up off the floor and gets some ice to bring down the swelling along her jaw where he hit her. “But you know what it does to me when I see you having fun with someone else. I just lose it. You matter so much to me.” Is this love?

Tony says to Sharon, “We’ve been going out for weeks now; everybody does it. If you really loved me, you’d have sex with me.” Is this love?

“My son will never leave me,” says Alice smugly, “no one else will ever take care of him like I do. He knows what’s good for him.” Is this love?

What is love?

“If we do not have love, we are nothing,” [1 Cor 13] says the Apostle Paul.

But what is it, that we should know when we have it? Being human, and infinitely capable of self-deception, we are capable of giving the name of love to things that are pale imitations at best and grotesque mockeries at worst. Is love a feeling? Is love a right? Is love an instinct? What is love?

“God is love,” [1 Jn 4:8] says the Apostle John. Many good people who aren’t Christians think that God is an idea of love, an ideal state of being, an abstract state of positive energy, as it were. But that cannot be. Because love is personal, it cannot exist in the abstract. Love cannot be separated from people.

That’s the first thing to remember. Love is personal.

What is love?

“This is love, that he laid down his life for us,” [1 Jn 3:16] says the Apostle John. That’s the second thing to remember. Love is action. Love involves doing something. Doing what? Giving. Giving what? Giving self. Giving why? For us. Because we needed help. Love involves the giving of self for the sake of another.

What is love?

Love stands in contrast to hate, which twists, makes ugly, and kills. Love cleans, and heals, and brings life. Love is creative. “When we love one another,” says John, “we pass from death to life.” [1 Jn 3:14]

Love is personal. Love gives itself away. Love brings life.

Most of us, I think, have grasped that love of God must necessarily be followed by love of neighbor. It is, for one thing, the subject of John’s first letter. “Whoever does not love does not know God.” [1 Jn 4:8] “Those who do not love their brothers and sisters are not from God.” [1 Jn 4:20] “Whoever hates another believer is in the darkness, walks in the darkness, and does not know the way to go on, because the darkness has brought on blindness.” [1 Jn 2:11]

But the religious leaders who opposed Jesus had forgotten this. The commandment to love God wasn’t new with Jesus. But it wasn’t as clearly linked with the commandment to love others - even foreigners - until now. It’s there, of course: “You shall not take vengeance or bear a grudge against any of your people, but you shall love your neighbor as yourself...” and a couple of verses later, “...you shall love the alien as yourself.” [Lev 19:18,34] But the major emphasis in the Old Testament about how you should treat other people was on justice. It’s easy to convince yourself you’re being just, though, when you act strictly according to the letter of the law without thinking or caring about the people the laws are supposed to protect. And that’s what had happened to the religious leaders who opposed Jesus. They claimed to love God but ignored the poor and needy at the least excuse. So Jesus made a point of rubbing this in whenever he had the opportunity.

Not too long before Jesus came on the scene, the famous Rabbi Hillel told an inquirer that the whole law was summed up in the saying, “Whatever is hateful to you, do not do to another.” In a slightly different form, this has come down to us as the Golden Rule. And many people think that this is the be-all and end-all of Christ’s teachings. But it is only a half. You see, you cannot truly love your neighbor if you do not love God, any more than you can truly love God if you do not love your neighbor.