“You have heard that it was said, ‘You shall love your neighbor and hate your enemy.’  But I say to you, Love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you…

– Matt. 5:43f (NRSV)

…and one of them, a lawyer, asked him a question to test him.  “Teacher, which commandment in the law is the greatest?”  He said to him, “‘You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your mind.’   This is the greatest and first commandment.  And a second is like it: ‘You shall love your neighbor as yourself.’   On these two commandments hang all the law and the prophets.”

– Matt. 22:35-40  (NRSV)

To embrace the idea that love stands at the center of the Christian life is to dive headfirst into paradox.  For love – of God, self, neighbor and enemy – is commanded as the principle duty of a disciple.  And yet if love is as we have described it – not merely a moral choice (to act “as if” we loved, regardless of our feelings), but a condition of the heart (agape in all its complexity, complete with affection, passion, devotion…) – then it transcends the powers of human volition.  We cannot, by willful effort, no matter how sincere or devout, force ourselves to love what we do not.

How many of us have tried – with the best of intent – to love things like vegetables or exercise or Grey’s Anatomy (long story…), only to find that our efforts amount to naught?  Try as we might, it turns out that our affections are simply beyond our control.  And resolutions to “do better next time” serve only Continue reading

It occurs to me that, having placed love at the center of the Christian life, I owe you some sense of how I define the term.  A technical discussion, yes.  But one I hope will be helpful.  (If you are truly allergic to technical discussions, feel free to skip to the last paragraph.)

In seeking to understand the biblical vision of love, we are both aided and hindered by the fact that the Bible is not written in English.  It is always difficult to conceptualize ideas conveyed in another language, and thus there is always a sense that whatever we are thinking when we say “love” in English, we are not quite grasping what the original writers were thinking when they penned their words in Hebrew and Greek (and a little bit of Aramaic).  Yet, the mere fact that the scriptures were authored in three languages (and translated back and forth between them) allows us to have several glances at in idea that – in any language – is beyond complete articulation.

As you may know, there are four words in ancient Greek that we properly translate into English as “love” – eros, philia, storge, and agape – and much ink has been spilled in recent decades trying to nail down the distinctions.  The general trend, which I think has proven unhelpful, has been to define each of these terms in contrast to the others, placing each one Continue reading