What’s love go to do with it?

Let us love one another, for love is from God.

Love has to be one of the most ill-defined and yet most universal terms known to humanity. From a faith perspective we are called to love everyone. As individuals we seek to be loved because feeling loved is the easiest way to find self-validation from an outside source without facing the challenging adventure of believing in one’s own self-worth because of who one is on the inside. And yet, despite this being a God-like quality (to love) we fall in and out of love at fairly alarming rates. How can a quality that stems from God, turn to hate which is the antithesis of love?

Ancient scholars defined different types of love, but does this mean only some are from God? I think, perhaps, we have ‘bastardized’ the concept of love from the time of the Gospels when we heard that ‘God is Love’ because we simply could not comprehend that level of benevolence. Somehow along the way, love came to be synonymous with desire and love became an excuse for behaviours that we knew, deep down, were questionable. Perhaps it is our ongoing human predilection to seek that which we should find within, from others. Surely love has to come from within. If love stems from God, and our relationship with God is grounded and founded in our soul, then does it not follow that love stems from within and is not a response to something external?

If then love stems from within, how can someone not be worthy of that love? Therefore, it follows that we can love all. I have heard it said (when perhaps making poor choices) that a person does not deserve my love. This is potentially true. After all, do we deserve God’s love? Does it then follow that if I love someone and they have done nothing to warrant this love, am I behaving in a God-like manner? This is where I think semantics have led us astray. There are degrees of worthiness and the difference between humans can never truly equate to the difference between humanity and God. To love someone with no hope of return and to truly wish them well is – I think – within the arena of love. To love someone who does not wish it, to try and force this love on them, is not love – that is desire.

Some people say they love their life. I think it would be better to say they enjoy their life, or appreciate their life or are grateful for their life. Surely we have to come back to the meaning of love – which is grounded in the wellbeing of the other, not ourselves. Perhaps our best examples of loving in this world are children and pets. We say we love them. We put them first (often at our own discomfort) and love them even when they do not return the feeling or cause us pain. If we don’t save the meaning of the word soon – we risk the meaning becoming antiquated and then do we run the risk of losing real love in our world?