Posts Tagged ‘love’

Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind and with all your strength.

- Mark 12:30

While pondering this verse, what Jesus called “the greatest commandment” I was struck by how impossible this commandment really is to follow. I mean seriously, no matter how devoted, there are parts of my heart, soul, mind and strength that are devoted to many things other than loving the Lord my God.

Regardless, the command remains and I endeavor to follow it more perfectly. But, how do I go about doing that? I’m so prone to dogmatism and legalism. I want no part of the stinking self-righteousness that trying to be obedient to God in my own strength produces.

John taught that “We love because he first loved us” (1 John 4:19). This is the way in which I believe love and obedience grow gracefully.

1. I am loved by God
2. I receive that love and in turn love God
3. I obey God because I love Him

This begins with God, not with me. Love begins with God, not with me. Obedience begins with God, not me.

So looking back at the greatest commandment with this perspective, I am only able to love God with my heart to the extent that I have allowed God’s love to enter my heart. I am only capable of loving God with my soul to the extent I have allowed my soul to be loved by God. My mind will only love Him to the extent that I believe Jesus really loves my mind (even when it’s filled with ugly thoughts).

By contrast, to the extent that I hide my heart, soul, mind and strength from the love of God in Jesus Christ, I cannot love him nor obey his commands.

Let’s stop kidding ourselves; believing that our self-righteous, white-knuckling legalism is of any spiritual value. Obedience born of pride is not obedience at all. Only obedience inspired by the Love of God is true obedience. This is kind of obedience is of great value!

Whoever has my commands and obeys them, he is the one who loves me. He who loves me will be loved by my Father, and I too will love him and show myself to him.

- John 14:21

Put simply: obedience begins with love and love begins with God.

He started it…let him finish it!

This is so true.

What a man desires is unfailing love…
Proverbs 19:22

How many sorrows have we brought upon ourselves and others for the lack of love?

C. S. Lewis finishes his book, “The Four Loves” with an amazing treatise of divine love, agape in Greek. Until now, we have looked at the natural loves: storge, philia and eros. These are all to some extent expressed in the natural human experience. Agape, on the other hand, is completely foreign to nature. It is transcendent. So much so that scripture uses this word to describe the very essence of God (see 1 John 4:8, 16).

Old English translations of agape used the word, “charity.” This may be a more correct rendering than the word “love” that has become so ambiguous in contemporary language. But even charity falls short. Charity conveys the idea that agape is a free gift. It does not, however carry the full weight of love that loves the unlovable; unconditional, incorruptible and divine.

Agape is the only love that is inherently holy. All other loves carry with them a danger of corruption, as we have previously discussed. Not so with agape. Lewis characterizes the natural loves as pure only when they have been made an altar for agape to light upon. This brings me to the most terrifying aspect of divine love: the idea of holiness.

According to Lewis, and I suspect he is correct, only agape and that which has been subjected to it will enter heaven in eternity. Any love that I enjoy in this life, toward my wife, children, family and friends as examples, must be converted, in a sense, to agape if it is to endure. Only that which is holy can stand in God’s presence and only divine love can pass muster. The love I feel in this life must be yielded to the love of Christ. As he expresses his divine love through my natural love, it becomes something more than natural. It becomes supernatural; charged with his essence, which is agape.

In a wonderful way, divine love can only be given to another if it is first received. We can only give agape to the extent we have received it from God himself. Because God characterizes himself as love, receiving divine love is nothing less than receiving him. The deeper I invite Jesus Christ into my heart and life, the deeper the reservoir of divine love from which I may draw upon to nourish the hearts of others.

As this blog is primarily about sexual purity, I will close by briefly pointing out that divine love is the only power strong enough to counter the primary element of human depravity: shame. My counselor, among others, believes shame is the most powerful of negative human emotions. It is the root of enormous human sorrow and suffering. Furthermore, it is the ultimate root of addiction. For no other reason would anyone subject themselves to dangerous, compulsive behavior than shame, evidenced by the self-loathing all honest addicts will attest to.

Free, unconditional, divine love renders shame powerless. It reminds me of TILT on a pinball machine. God’s love shakes the foundation of man’s depravity to its core and leaves him with the same choice posed to Israel in ancient times. Before us is set life (love) and death (shame) for the choosing (see Deut. 30:11-20).

Today I choose life…I choose love!

Eros is not only a word in Greek used to describe romantic love. In Greek mythology, Eros was the god of love and son of the goddess Aphrodite. He is synonymous with the Roman god Cupid, often depicted as a naked, winged boy with bow and arrow.

Most of us have seen cartoons of such a character firing his arrow into an unwitting guy who is suddenly struck with an insatiable compulsion to seek out the object of love’s spell. The lovestruck suitor loses all self control and is at the mercy of base, animal instincts. It would seem to me that such legend exists because of the incredible strength of sexual desire.

I have to admit, there have been times when the draw to consume pornography or reach sexual release was so great it seemed as if I were on autopilot; practically unable to resist the temptation. Most who find themselves in the pitiable state of addiction to porn or sex will attest to similar loss of self control. It would seem as if something has pierced the heart, driving the compulsion. However, rather than an arrow flung from the bow of some chubby baby, I submit that the piercing results from moral boundaries crossed repeatedly. Decades of choosing to indulge my lust brought me to the place of virtual powerlessness over it. It was no single arrow, but thousands of tiny slices at my heart. The Assassin of Character Creep had done its work well, and I was the assassin.

It is important to redeem the word love, in particular the type of love known as eros. What I have been describing is not love at all. It is lust and nothing more. Eros is not lust, but a God-given desire meant to passionately bind husband and wife together. Eros is like fire: inside of proper boundaries it is beautiful and adds warmth to those huddled around it. Outside of safe boundaries, it is a wild force that destroys everything it comes in contact with.

Studying “The Four Loves” has helped me draw a clearer distinction between eros and lust. One is a God-given love. The other is a selfish impulse better defined as unlove. Which do you think best fits pop culture’s portrayal of romance?

The third of the loves C. S. Lewis discusses in his book, “The Four Loves“, is Eros. He describes it simply as, “the love between the sexes.” We may recognize it as the root of the word erotic. However, eros is more than mere eroticism.

Eros is the passionate feeling a man or woman feels towards the opposite sex when falling in love with them. It may be described as a feeling of infatuation. Many phrases do eros justice when describing the experience of falling in love, love-struck or being smitten. Eros is exciting, spontaneous, and occurs in ways that captivate the focus of the lover onto his beloved.

It is would be easy to dismiss eros as inherently evil and lustful. This is a mischaracterization of eros, which we must remember is a creation of God. It draws lovers together in a powerful way which culminates in the most intimate of physical acts: the union of sex. The danger with eros is presented when elevated beyond its proper place and expectations are placed upon it which it cannot deliver.

It is clear in our modern society that eros has been both elevated and debased at the same time. It has been elevated as the most important of the loves, which leave us devoid of love because eros is the most fleeting of loves. It has also been debased as little if nothing more than sex. Lewis describes this misplaced attention on love as expecting from a dive what should rather be expected of swimming. Once the rush of the dive has passed, the lover realizes immediately the rush is gone, swimming requires work and conclude they must have dove into the wrong pond!

Eros is mysterious and difficult to define. Even C. S. Lewis had a difficult time describing it. However, any insight we can gain from studying the topic helps us to discern its proper place and apply wisdom to this intense yet most fickle of the loves.

As I studied philia I realized how little of it I have had in my life. My wife and I are definitely close friends and I would say our love has an element of philia as well as storge and eros. We have the common interest of marriage, household and our children. It is other guy friends that seem to be in short supply. They seem to come and go; ebb and flow.

Surveying my past, relationships that I would describe as friendship have centered around many different interests…

• School friends: These are friends I played with and had sleep-overs with as a boy. In the normal fashion, our interests were toys and play. We were young, innocent and rightfully did not share deep matters of the heart.
• Drug friends: In my teens and early twenties I had friends who shared my interest at the time in getting high. After coming to Christ and leaving drugs behind, I discovered that friends of this sort were not really friends at all. These were self-serving relationships; using each other when we had drugs. After I moved on, nearly all of these relationships fell by the wayside.
• Work friends: I have had coworkers that I have considered friends. However, outside of work we didn’t share our lives. Our common interests center upon our common jobs and no further.
• Church friends: Fellow Christians have a deeper common interest: the Lord. I have shared deeply of myself with other Christians; deeper than with my parents or sister growing up to be sure. Unfortunately at times, these relationships seem to not extend to the true heart and center around spiritual matters. While sharing spiritual interests is wonderful, there are other facets of our lives that sometimes seem unimportant to church friends.
• Recovery friends: Other men in recovery from porn/sex addiction have shared bared their souls to me over the years and mine with them. These have been in many ways the deepest relationships I have experienced. Recovery requires that I invite others into the dark places that I would rather keep secret. This kind of vunlerability creates a bond, particularly when the sharing is mutual.

In nearly all of the frienships in these different categories there is a phenomenon I have never been able to figure out. Many, if not most of these friendships do not seem to be reciprocal. It becomes wearying when I perceive if I were to stop initiating contact with a friend I would never hear from them again.

Regardless of how deep the fellowship has been, lack of reciprocation brings doubt regarding the depth of the friendship. Even worse, this occurrence can trigger feelings of shame; that something is wrong with me and that is why my phone never rings.

Lewis likens losing a friend characterized by philia as losing a limb; it is something that always leaves an obvious void. This description more than anything brings the depth of many of my friendships into question. How many of them would I describe in this way? What practical ways can I develop my frienships and experience the uncommon love that is philia?

This kind of love bothers me because I know it exists and I experience very little of it…

The second type of love that C.S. Lewis discusses in his book, The Four Loves, is philia, commonly defined as friendship. Those of us in the U.S. probably recognize phiia as the root of the city name Philadelphia, the city of brotherly love.

Lewis believes that philia is the least common and least natural of all the four loves. He goes on to say that there are many who go through life and never experience philia in its true form. Eros is common; otherwise none of us would be born. Storge is also common; otherwise none of us would be reared. Philia, on the other hand, is not an automatic experience that is common to human experience.

The rarity and general misunderstanding of deep friendship philia describes is evidenced by the fact that in the observation of it many would mistake it as homosexual. The portrayal of David and Jonathan in 1 Samuel has been interpreted by some as homosexual in nature. The sadness of this judgment cannot be overstated. It contributes to the lack of deep relationships between same-gender friends by adding element of fear. As we are taught in scripture, “There is no fear in love. But perfect love drives out fear, because
fear has to do with punishment. The one who fears is not made perfect
in love.” (1 John 4:18)

Philia is characterized by shared interests that bring two or more together. It is deeper than mere camaraderie, or good fellowship, which is almost coincidental. Rather, it is two or more who gather with common interests, but share them on a visceral level. They miss each other in true ways and look forward to spending time together. It is difficult to even describe this kind of love without it coming off as tawdry in nature.

Deep friendship differs from sexual, eros, love in this way: eros is characterized by a man and a woman face-to-face; eyes on each other. Philia is characterized primarily by a man and a man, or woman and a woman, standing shoulder-to-shoulder; eyes on their common interests. Eros is naked bodies. Philia is naked personalities.

One surprising factor about this kind of love is that it is not necessarily for good. Lewis believes that the cause around which deep friends form may be for good or for evil. They embolden each other in moving toward their common goals. Those goals may be commendable, or despicable. The phenomenon of philia is that the judgments of those outside the circle of friends are generally ignored within the circle. For this reason, Lewis described philia friendship is a resistance movement. Lewis went so far as to call philia the most spiritual of the loves, the corruption of which is also the most spiritual corruption.

It is quite easy to see that the lack of understanding and moreso experience of philia may contribute to all sorts of deficiencies of the heart, for which we may strive to fill illegitimately. The general audience of this blog have turned to sex to fill those voids.

Having defined storge love as familial affection in the previous post, I have been thinking about how this kind of love, or the lack of it, has played out in my own experience.

I did not grow up in an affectionate family. Storge was not commonplace as expressed in parental hugs, kisses and the like. Like any boy, I craved the attention, but it was ever absent.

When I was very young, about eight years old, I was exposed to pornography; not as an accidental discovery, but rather intentionally by my father who decided a Playboy centerfold was a great way to teach me about the birds and the bees. I was immediately captivated. He always had porn magazines on the bookshelf easily accessible.

What I was looking at appeared to be love. Two people, be it a man and a woman or in many of these mens’ magazines a woman and a woman, were showing what to me seemed to be affection and love. Without any guidance on these matters, it was cemented in my young heart that sex and love were synonymous. Furthermore, affection of any sort from a woman became sexually charged.

Since getting married my wife has many times expressed her feelings of pressure; that any expressions of affection must lead to sex. I have to confess the arousal that I often feel. I am growing in this area. Through this study of love I am learning that there are different kinds of love.

Only agape, which is for another writing, is love of a type that cannot be corrupted by the flesh. For me, storge love, defined as affection, has been hijacked by the loss of innocence in my formative years. Now I as a man am standing up to reclaim it and show affection in the way God intended it to be: a display of my love with no ulterior motives, only to communicate my familiar affection to my wife, family and friends!

The first of the four loves that C.S. Lewis discusses in his book is from the Greek word “Storge”. It is best described as affection, particularly in reference to parents and their children. Moving outward from that purest expression you would find non-sexual affection between spouses, other family members, friends and even strangers to whom we have affinity. Storge often has the unique quality of being expressed indiscriminately.

One phenomenon regarding each kind of love that Lewis explains is the tendency to both good and depraved expression. Storge love is what most in our society would consider to be deep feelings of affection that are marked by both commitment and familiarity. It is often difficult to determine where and when the feeling originated. To discover it is essentially to acknowledge that it has been there long before and grew as the relationship became more familiar.

However, this familiarity is the kind that can breed contempt. Storge in family relationships is often taken for granted and expected without merit. Out of familiarity, family members may treat one another in ways they would never dream of treating a stranger. If they treated others the way they sometimes treated each other it would be grounds for terminating the relationship. In its worst forms, this can play into members staying in abusive situations far longer than they ought.

Also, the familiarity of storge love can be resistant to change. Jealousy may erupt when the object of affection moves on to another stage of life. Rather than showing approval for one’s achievement which may change the familiar circumstances of the relationship, contempt for that achievement arises.

As the most commonly expressed form of love, storge is an easy companion to the other kinds:.

• Storge and Eros (love between the sexes): lovers may kiss and show affection, but it is not always sexual in nature. There are often varying degrees between storge and eros in marital relationships; a friendly kiss goodbye or a deeply intimate kiss and various degrees in between. Eros is typically fleeting. Storge, on the other hand, is more of a constant affection within the relationship. As Lewis puts it, “Storge makes a nest for Eros.”
• Storge and Philia (the bond of friendship): the bond between friends lends itself to shows of affection. A hug, handshake, pat on the back or high-five are all expressions of storge love between friends. These expressions deepen the friendship and bring more familiarity to it.
• Storge and Agape (unconditional love of God): Unconditional love may easily express itself in shows of affection. The most striking of these expressions are toward those that others may deem to be unlovable. Picture Mother Theresa cradling a leper as an extreme example.