Beyond the Casket of Selfishness

REFLECTIONS
February 7, 2010

Some years ago Tina Turner had a hit song with the words, “What’s love got to do with it? What’s love but a second hand emotion.” We know from her biography and interviews that this song was for entertainment purposes, and that in fact Ms. Turner has serious thoughts about how important love is as a source of hope and healing. If we look at the writing of Paul, we could easily say love has everything to do with it. For the apostle, even through bold and sometimes harsh exhortations to those his letters are addressed, opens and closes his epistles with words of loving care and encouragement. He dedicates the entire 13th chapter of his first letter to the people of Corinth to the concept of what it means to live a love-centered life, closing with the phrase, “So faith, hope, love abide, these three; but the greatest of these is love.”

The late theologian, C. S. Lewis, spent thousands of words on hundreds of pages describing the concept in a book titled the Four Loves. He suggested the first love is Eros the love of attraction. This is the science of hormones where through biology and circumstance we become drawn to one another. He says the second love is Philial, a Greek term for love of another, as if they were brother or sister. Many of us in childhood experience a bond with a friend which becomes lifelong, and though no relation, these folks become family. The third word he uses is Storge, usually pronounced store jay, a Greek word for familial love. The family of origin, nuclear family, dysfunctional or otherwise they are our own. The character Sir Toby in Shakespear’s Twelfth Night expresses this when in frustration he fumes, “Am I not consanguineous? Am I not of her blood?” Illustrating the adage that while we may not choose them as friends; we are related by blood, they are family. Dr. Lewis spends a great deal of time with the fourth love which he calls Agape, the Greek word for Holy love, that transcendent gift we experience in the person and presence of Jesus. According to Lewis, it can never fully be ours because the power of God’s love is meant to be shared.

Still, talk of love is difficult for the simple notion that we are people who say we believe the Bible is the truth of the love of God, yet we feel free to use it as a tool to judge and often hate people who are different than ourselves. The Gospels record that a scribe, in an attempt to trick Jesus, asked what the greatest commandment was. Jesus in response issued two new commandments as the summation of all Mosaic law. “To love the Lord your God with all your heart and mind and strength, and to love your neighbor as yourself.” The word on love, be it from Matthew, or Paul to the Corinthians, or in the voice of C. S. Lewis remains the same. It is all encompassing and its etymology can be traced to the heart of God.

Dr. Joey K. McDonald
First United Methodist Church
4832 Tujunga Avenue, North Hollywood, CA 91601