If I speak in the tongues of men or of angels, but do not have love, I am only a resounding gong or a clanging cymbal. (I Corinthians 13:1 NIV)
I’m currently reading an economics book by Deirdre McClosky entitled “The Bourgeois Virtues: Ethics for an Age of Commerce,” wherein she makes the argument that rather than free market enterprise—my preferred term over the Karl Marx invented term “capitalism”—being driven by greed—as Gordon Gecko in the movie Wall Street says—it is rather impelled by benign self-interest mixed with the classical virtues. One of those virtues is love, and her chapter on that virtue, and how it is enacted in business was fascinating as well as being counter to common cultural perceptions. Here’s a short excerpt:
In other words, it’s not the case that market capitalism requires or generates loveless people. More like the contrary. Markets and even the much-maligned corporations encourage friendships wider and deeper that the atomism of a full-blown socialist regime or the claustrophobic, murderous atmosphere of a “traditional” village. Modern capitalist life is love-saturated. Olden life was not loving; communitarian life was not; and actually existing socialist life decidedly was not.
All this got me to thinking about how our present culture views love. First of all, in the same way that our culture has drained all the meaning out of marriage, reducing it to merely a romantic/sexual relationship, such that for whomever one feels such an attraction, that person is a candidate for “marriage,” love also has been shrunken and diminished, reduced to an emotion, a “feeling.” I suppose some of this is due to a rare limitation of the English language. If we turn to the New Testament, written in Greek, we find four different words, each with very specific meanings, that were translated as love in English. C.S. Lewis wrote a book about this called “The Four Loves.” These Greek words are: storge—familial love such as a mother for a son; philia—brotherly or friendship love; eros—romantic love, such as husband for his wife; and agape—divine or Godly love. Interestingly enough the scholars who translated the original text to English in the King James Version of the Bible, first published in 1611, used the word charity instead of love (as more modern translators have) for the “love chapter,” the 13th chapter of I Corinthians. I think they exercised great insight in the use of this alternative to the word love. Of course in middle English the word had a very specific meaning—Christian love of one’s fellows—that has since changed to mean organizations that provide help to the needy, or the giving of such help by an individual. But if we examine the list of characteristics of love (or charity) as described by Paul in the chapter it can shed some light on what it really means to have this agape—the Greek word used in various forms throughout the chapter. The first 3 verses might lead us to think that he’s talking about an emotion or feeling, but the subsequent verses where he describes the traits of this love tell us a different story.
Love is patient, love is kind. It does not envy, it does not boast, it is not proud. It does not dishonor others, it is not self-seeking, it is not easily angered, it keeps no record of wrongs. Love does not delight in evil but rejoices with the truth. It always protects, always trusts, always hopes, always perseveres. Love never fails. (I Corinthians 13:4-8 NIV)
Notice that almost all these characteristics denote action rather than feeling. Viewed in this way, other scriptures can derive a more meaningful—and I would argue—logical interpretation. Consider Jesus’s call to “love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you.” Such an enjoinder is nonsensical if what he means is to have feelings of affection for them, especially in light of his own words to his enemies, the religious leaders—the pharisees, scribes and sadducees—of his day: “hypocrites”; “whitened tombs”; “serpents”; “offspring of vipers.” (Matthew 23:27&33 NIV)
The distortion and depletion of our understanding of biblical love is to a great extent informed by our culture and its present obsession with emotion and feelings. An entire system of morality has evolved, and been adopted by a majority of society based almost entirely on feelings. I have written about this in my post called “The New Morality.” Sadly this morality of feelings, completely detached from biblical reference and authority, or even any classical philosophical text, has wormed its way into popular Christian thinking like a parasite of the mind, eating away at clear interpretation of scripture and distorting its meaning to conform to popular perceptions. Paul warned Timothy about this:
For the time will come when they will not listen to the sound doctrine, but, having itching ears, will heap up for themselves teachers after their own lusts; and will turn away their ears from the truth, and turn aside to fables. (II Timothy 4:3&4)
To be a Christian means first to accepted the truth of the Gospel and put one’s trust and reliance in the gift of salvation secured by the sacrificial death and resurrection of Christ. Second it means becoming a disciple of Christ, which entails having a biblical worldview, following as best as one can the commands of Christ and the eternal truths of the word of God, i.e. the Bible. It’s telling that so many have a suspicion of biblical doctrine that a slogan gained popularity in Christian circles a number of years ago: “doctrine divides, but love unites.” But what kind of love unites in the face of unsound doctrine? And what kind of division does sound doctrine create? I’ll leave you with this:
For the word of God is alive and active. Sharper than any double-edged sword, it penetrates even to dividing soul and spirit, joints and marrow; it judges the thoughts and attitudes of the heart. (Hebrews 4:12 NIV)
