A friend of mine was reading a letter to a newspaper from a reader who was involved in an extramarital affair with a high school girlfriend. This reader was asking for advice on what to do since he loved both women, and feared his wife suspected what was going on since she had recently grown more distant towards him.
My heart sinks when I hear stories like this. Sometimes I wonder why we spend years studying all kinds of diverse subjects that bear no importance in the eternal scheme of things only to have the greatest misconceptions on the subject that we seem to care the most about: love. The word love is ubiquitous and, in our culture, seems to wear all kinds of meanings with the greatest ease. It can mean craving for a delicious Sicilian Cannoli dessert, desire for the latest line of Armani fashion clothes, or lust for the latest young Hollywood bimbo; often all at the same time. There surely seems to be a lot of love out there.
What Love Is and What It’s Not
When speaking of love, we seem only to consider the emotional and sentimental aspect of it. We live in a world that defines love in the context of an ethereal flow of emotions. And these emotions are our emotions; they count to the extent that they make us feel good; so in the end it’s once again all about us, us, us. Is this love?
No it isn’t. Love is certainly a feeling; yet it is much more than a feeling. It is an act of the will that goes beyond the emotional state of natural affection towards another being.
Emotions are fickle by definition and, as in the case of our reader above, if we base a relationship only on emotions, the consequences can be—and often are—disastrous, for all the parties involved.
If our reader loves his wife and his girlfriend at the same time, whose passions, feelings, and desires is he satisfying while consuming his adulterous relationship? Whose interests is he elevating above everything else?
Is this how God intended love when he made Adam and Eve? What is love anyway?
Noah Webster’s 1828 Dictionary defines love in the following terms:
An affection of the mind excited by beauty and worth of any kind, or by the qualities of an object which communicate pleasure, sensual or intellectual. It is opposed to hatred. Love between the sexes, is a compound affection, consisting of esteem, benevolence, and animal desire. Love is excited by pleasing qualities of any kind, as by kindness, benevolence, charity, and by the qualities which render social intercourse agreeable. In the latter case, love is ardent friendship, or a strong attachment springing from good will and esteem, and the pleasure derived from the company, civilities and kindness of others.
The love of God is the first duty of man, and this springs from just views of his attributes or excellencies of character, which afford the highest delight to the sanctified heart. Esteem and reverence constitute ingredients in this affection, and a fear of offending him is its inseparable effect.
It also has the following definition for the word charity:
In a general sense, love, benevolence, good will; that disposition of heart which inclines men to think favorably of their fellow men and to do them good. In a theological sense, it includes supreme love to God, and universal good will to men.
In a more particular sense, love, kindness, affection, tenderness, springing from natural relations; as the charities of father, son and brother.
The definition of charity touches on the aspect of love that goes beyond feelings. Charity is defined as universal good will towards God and men.
This is the sense that we Christians must attribute to love; a disposition of the will that makes us rejoice in the happiness of God and of our fellow men even though it bears no advantage to us. In this sense, love is first and foremost an act of the will, not just a warm and fuzzy feeling that makes us feel good. John 3:16 speaks of this love that God has for men in spite of our lack of godly traits (Isaiah 64:6, Romans 3:10). This is not a cozy feeling that God has for us. It’s charity, benevolence, desire for our wholesome happiness for our own sake.
Love the Christian Way
The Word of God itself, not surprisingly, gives us the greatest definition of love:
Charity suffereth long, and is kind; charity envieth not; charity vaunteth not itself, is not puffed up,
Doth not behave itself unseemly, seeketh not her own, is not easily provoked, thinketh no evil;
Rejoiceth not in iniquity, but rejoiceth in the truth;
Beareth all things, believeth all things, hopeth all things, endureth all things. (1 Corinthians 13:4-8)
All men possess will, intellect (or knowledge), and feelings; and all men have the choice to subject their intellect and feelings to their will or, conversely, to subject their will to the demands of their feelings or to the commands of their intelligence.
The will can directly control the intellect; it cannot control feelings directly, but it can control them indirectly through the thoughts of the intellect. In other words, once we enter a state of mind that is focused on abiding by God’s law for its own sake because we recognize that love is the motor and the ultimate end of the universe, then our intelligence will understand the reasons behind the supremacy or love, and our emotions will rejoice in its beauty.
Love encompasses feelings of natural affection, compassion, love of kindred, and many others, but cannot be reduced to or confused with them, as even animals have such feelings. Feelings do not command moral sanction in and of themselves; only when we decide to subject our will to their satisfaction for a purpose contrary to the welfare of God and His universe do we commit a sin that is worthy of moral sanction.
The opposite of love is selfishness. Selfishness is disobedience to the law of God, the choice of one’s own gratification over the welfare of God’s universe. Selfishness is the subjection of our own will to the impulses of our emotions for the sake of our interest. Selfishness is what motivates our above-mentioned adulterous husband to satisfy his own carnal desires over his wife’s happiness. When he states that he loves his wife in his letter to the newspaper, he is really saying that he has feelings of compassion and natural affection towards his wife—which are common to men and beasts alike—not love.
Love and selfishness have their own attributes, which we’ll study and compare in a future post. We will see that selfishness can sometimes wear falsely righteous clothes and look like a well-accepted form of love.
Why, you thought Satan was resting on the sidelines?
© 2008 Francesco Scinico
{ 4 comments… read them below or add one }
You are right, Annette. Love is altruistic. The beautiful thing about this is that, once we understand and accept this, our feelings will reflect this state of our heart, and we will be able to “feel” love in a way unknown to the world.
You are so right in saying the love is more than just a feeling. Feelings can be so fleeting and driven by the lusts of the flesh. Love is saying that I care about you more than I do about these feelings that are so fleeting. Love says I will choose today/this moment/this hour etc… to think of you more than I think of myself.
Hello,
Anyone is free to read my posts and comment on them, whether they are Christian or not.
Our faith, however, is bound to have a profound influence on how we approach certain topics. A Hedonist, for example, would approach the concept of love differently from a Christian and reject the basis of my definition of love entirely. An agnostic, on the other hand, might accept the basis of my definition as grounded on natural law, if not on the Bible.
I write from a Christian perspective for an audience that understands and accepts the underlying à priori affirmations of the Judeo-Christians faiths, whether as part of their religious beliefs or as part of their overall moral weltanschauung.
Thank you,
Francesco
“”This is the sense that we Christians must attribute to love”"
Nice article, but not everyone in the world is a Christian. Or, are you only writing for a Christian audience? Because that would be a shame, as I enjoyed the article and would like to be invited to read other works of yours.