All you need is love

    The English language is one of the richest languages in the world containing well over a million words.  Webster’s Dictionary estimates that we are currently adding nearly 25,000 words to the English language each year.   We have words and grammar taken from foreign languages like German and Spanish, and we have words that are strictly creations of the modern era like internet and facebook.   Yet, with all this richness of language there are some glaring shortcomings in English.

    Have you ever noticed that you can say that you love pizza and also say that you love your grandmother?  Or you can say that you love football and that you love your spouse.  How can one word (one very powerful word) be used so interchangeably to mean so many different things?   Koine Greek, the language that that New Testament was written in, had at least 3 different words for love with meanings like “brotherly love”, “romantic love”, and “unconditional love”.    It certainly seems like we could use a few more words for love.

    For instance when we Christians say “love” what exactly do we mean by that?  We know that Christ calls us to love our neighbor, so are we talking about an emotional feeling of fondness?  If we feel fondly toward our neighbor would that mean that we have succeeded in loving them?  What if we don’t feel an emotional fondness for someone?  Does that mean we have failed to love them?  What about action?  If love is all emotion then do we have to do anything, or can we just feel?

   The famous Christian philosopher and theologian Thomas Merton once defined love as: “To will that which is best for another above all else, even one’s own self.”  I like that definition.  It sounds most true to how Jesus practiced love.   It also gets us off the emotional hook and forces us to take an active part in the lives of those we are supposed to love.   How would our loving of our neighbor look if we took that definition as our definition of Christian Love?

    Spend some time this week practicing love.   See what happens.