If God Is I Am, then Who Am I? - Day 10

Day 10 – loving

“Have I told you about the tension of opposites?” he says.

The tension of opposites?

“Life is a series of pulls back and forth. You want to do one thing, but you are bound to do something else. Something hurts you, yet you know it shouldn’t. You take certain things for granted, even when you know you should never take anything for granted. A tension of opposites, like a pull on a rubber band. And most of us live somewhere in the middle.”

Sounds like a wrestling match, I say.

“A wrestling match.” He laughs. “Yes, you could describe life that way.”

So which side wins, I ask?

“Which side wins?”

He smiles at me, the crinkled eyes, the crooked teeth.

"Love wins. Love always wins."

    –MITCH ALBOM, quoting MORRIE SWARTZ

Using a supernatural lens and a divine light source, we have looked inside ourselves and made three initial observations:

1. We are creations, not creators.
     (God alone is Creator.)

2. We are dependent, not independent.      
     (Everything we have, including our
      free will, comes from above.)

3. We are finite, not infinite.
     (All of us, unlike God, have
      limitations and boundaries.)

Another characteristic shared by all humans is love. We may not always show or feel it, but each of us possesses it. God, the fountainhead of all love, has placed a current of love within us.

C.S. Lewis writes of four kinds of love: affection, friendship, eros, and charity.¹ Affection is typified in family relationships, the parent-child bond being the best example. The root of friendship, he says, is a common interest between two or more parties. Erotic love, as the name implies, is sensual and sexual. Charity (agape in the Greek) is the highest love, described by Paul in his first epistle to the church in Corinth:

Agape is patient and kind;

agape does not envy or boast;

it is not arrogant or rude.

It does not insist on its own way;

it is not irritable or resentful;

it does not rejoice at wrongdoing,

but rejoices with the truth.

Agape bears all things, believes all things,

hopes all things, endures all things.

Agape never ends.

1 Corinthians 13:4-8

The way we express love is as varied as love itself. Gary Chapman talks of five love languages—words of affirmation, quality time, receiving gifts, acts of service, and physical touch—which apply to all sorts of relationships, including husband-wife, parent-child, and friend-friend.²

Other writers have subdivided love into three basic expressions: love if, love because of, and love in spite of. The first two are conditional, finite loves: "I love you if you love me; I love you because you are pretty; I love you if or because you are healthy, wealthy, pleasant, courteous, or faithful." In contrast, love in spite of is unconditional and infinite. It endures in the worst-case scenarios: "I love you in spite of your hatred, ugliness, sickness, rudeness, poverty, or unfaithfulness.” In short, "I love you, period!" Agape and love in spite of are synonymous.

This does not mean that agape is always a soft love. It is tough when toughness is needed. If there is recurrent sin in the beloved, agape will desire that sin removed and will do what is necessary—including appropriate discipline—to accomplish the task. But agape's discipline always comes with a personal cost. It longs for the best and suffers when that best is not manifest. Its discipline is always mixed with sorrow.

 Yes, you and I are loving beings. In its various types and expressions, our love is a gift to us straight from the Source. We love because God is love.

SELF-REFLECT

1. For whom in your life do you possess eros,

    the love of romance?

2. For whom in your life do you possess

     affection, the love of family?

3. For whom in your life do you possess

     the love of friendship?

4. Which of the five love languages do

     you use the most? Which do you need

     to improve the most?

5. Think of agape as the umbrella over

     all the other loves. Do you think your

     romantic, familial, and friendly

     relationships should also be “in

     spite of” relationships?

6. Thank God that He has loved you

     with an “in spite of” love.

¹C.S. Lewis, The Four Loves (New York: Harcourt Brace, 1960).

²Gary Chapman, The Five Love Languages, 1995.

Daily Quotation

Mitch Albom, Tuesdays with Morrie (New York: Random House, 1997), 40.