What is love?

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"What is love?"  This question circulated my thirteen-year-old mind, and for years I've tried to understand love long enough to write a post about it.  The question circulates the world around us in songs and movies.  Often all of us say "I love you" to family and friends without even thinking about what we are saying.  We also say that we love food or love sports.  The overuse of this four letter word has filled its meaning with confusion.  What is love?  If we do not know what love is, then how are we to love?



No matter who or what we are loving, love gets messy.  Love is passionate and often all-consuming.  Love is both the basis of good and evil.  We use the word love when other words just don't quite fit the bill for the levels of emotion we are feeling.


Our first problem in understanding love is realizing that there is only one word in our language for love.  You could use like or adore, but they aren't the same.  The Greeks had love figured out better than we do.  They had many words for love, eros or romantic love, philia or love between friends, stroge or the love of family, and agape an unconditional love.  These words for love divide the this "emotion" into levels of love.  Shedding light on the fact that love is different depending on who we are loving or how we are loving.  These words for love also illustrates that with time love changes, some day eros love will also be stroge love.    

In 1 Corinthians 13:4-7 love is defined, "Love is patient, love is kind. It does not envy, it does not boast, it is not proud.  It does not dishonor others, it is not self-seeking, it is not easily angered, it keeps no record of wrongs.  Love does not delight in evil but rejoices with the truth.  It always protects, always trusts, always hopes, always perseveres."  This love being described isn't and emotion, biblical love is action based love.  This love illustrated in 1 Corinthians is agape love, the love of Christ.  As we seek to follow the Lord that also makes His way of loving our standard for love. 

Love is an action.  It doesn't matter what kind of love you are pursuing.  Love takes work.  There is more to love than oxytocin being pumped through our body.  Love is what gives our lives purpose, but to be loved, we have to love.  We have to be willing to let other in and open up to no longer fighting our worlds alone.  We have to be patient and kind.  Realizing that love is not a fight but something worth fighting for.  Act in love, and you will be filled with it.

~ Lizzy

I've always wanted someone to say "I love you" but I wanted them to mean it.

Comments

  1. Anastasis FaithMarch 13, 2017 at 9:48 AM

    Love this!!

    Lol, I'm not sure which type of Greek love that falls under though! :D Maybe philia?

    ReplyDelete

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