Love

Love suffers long and is kind; love does not envy; love does not parade itself, is not puffed up; does not behave rudely, does not seek its own, is not provoked, thinks no evil; does not rejoice in iniquity, but rejoices in the truth; bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things. Love never fails.

1 Corinthians 13: 4-8

Love: the most misused and misunderstood word of all. I have spoken many times about the importance of understanding the true meaning behind words. For if we do not know what just means, how can we ever be just? The same notion applies to love. How can you ever know true love if you do not even know what it means? We have been led to believe in a fiction of love. The conditional love we experience, which drives us to do ‘crazy’ things, is untrue. Love is an action. Something which you must try your hardest to achieve; it is not a feeling.

By definition, love is characterised as a deep feeling of affection. As usual, society provides us with a false and ambiguous meaning of a crucial term in order to cause confusion and prevent us from performing love as we should. The analytical part of me wants to ask, ‘how do you measure deep affection’ and ‘what is affection’, but for the sake of time, I will leave those questions alone. I’ve noticed there has been no distinction made between romantic love and general love of family and friends; therefore, I will make it myself.

Firstly, let’s discuss romantic love. We must first examine how love is portrayed to us in popular culture in order to understand what most people believe romantic love to be. Love is portrayed as a sensation that one experiences when they are emotionally and sexually drawn to someone to the point where they want no one else (occasionally). Of course, in today’s evil world, many people propose that you can, and even should, love one person and sexually desire another. If you truly love someone, any urges you have for anyone other than your partner come from demons or your weak flesh and never from the spirit of God living inside you. All opinions related to the normality of committing adultery or cheating while loving someone are demonic. All our flesh is weak which means we are always vulnerable to temptation. However, just because many people act out on that temptation does not mean it should be rationalised as normal.

As I was saying, romantic love is portrayed as being characterised by intense sexual and emotional attachments to a partner, but these links undoubtedly have limitations; the concept of love is always a feeling and never actions. I do not mean that partners never do nice things for each other on TV, but these things are done because of the intense feelings that they have for each other at the moment. This is significantly different from showing love through your everyday actions and resistance towards temptation. In 1 Corinthians 13:4-8, it defines the true meaning of love in an unconventional way. Love is characterised as a person (or spirit) and his behaviours are explained to us. There is no mention of any feelings, only behaviours. Thus, we see that love is an action, not a feeling. The only way to truly love someone is by loving them; although your level of intense physical and emotional desire may fluctuate throughout the course of the day or depending on your mood, your actions should never change. Loving your partner is the same as loving yourself, as both of you are one in the eyes of God. How do you love yourself? By treating yourself right, forgiving yourself, not holding yourself up to ridiculous standards, and ultimately growing closer to God. All these are the same way you love your wife (or husband), as she (or he) is you and you are her (or him).

Husbands, love your wives as Christ loved the church and gave himself up for her, that he might sanctify her, having cleansed her by the washing of water with the word, so that he might present the church to himself in splendour, without spot or wrinkle or any such thing, that she might be holy and without blemish. In the same way, husbands should love their wives as their own bodies. He who loves his wife loves himself. For no one ever hated his own flesh, but nourishes and cherishes it,

Ephesians 5:25-29: just as Christ does the church…

As for unromantic love, there is no doubt that the idea of a ‘deep feeling of affection’ is wrong. As I have already said earlier, paraphrasing from Corinthians, we are told what love is. Love does not envy or behave rudely, is not selfish, nor does it have any evil thoughts. This is how you love others. How can you love your brother if you are jealous of him? It makes no sense. It is so mind-boggling to hear people say, ‘I love my friend but can’t hang around her’ or ‘I love my brother, but he is an idiot.’ Love is an action, how can you disrespect those you love? When God says love your neighbour, it seems like such a weird thing to say. How do I have a deep feeling of affection toward someone I do not know well? However, as an action, loving your neighbour becomes a simple thing to comprehend.

What is love? It is impossible for me to give you an answer in one sentence, even in one essay. Perhaps the best way I can describe it is as God. God is love and love is God. For He allows the sun to shine on the unbelievers and the believers (Matthew 5:45), and those who disrespect Him live as long as those who don’t. Getting as close to that as humanly possible is love…now ask yourself this question, have you ever loved even a single person?

By TheNarrowPath