Love is All You Need

I wrote this for our local Link magazine (Feb 2014)...I felt it was worth sharing:

“All you need is love” sang The Beatles all those years ago. “Love is all around” was another famous love song. There are many, many love songs in all genres and when February comes round each year the shops are full of expensive cards bearing slogans and poems of variable quality about undying love. So what is love? It is certainly big business.

I love fish and chips and I love my wife; I also love rock music and I love my family, my daughters and grandchildren; I love rugby and I love God (a requirement of the job); I love my cats, I love to swim in the sea and I can say to someone that I love their hairstyle. Confusing, isn’t it, when you think about it. We use the word “love” so widely and so loosely in English and sometimes very casually. The Greeks had at least four different words for which we use the single word love, but for details of those perhaps you’d better ask Mary Clements. It’s a good game to try to name as many synonyms for love as you can. Here’s a few to start you off: affection, strong attraction, affinity, fondness, devotion, yearning, taste for…see how many more words you can think of and then group them as appropriate for the phrases I used above.

Unfortunately, the casual use of the word has also reduced its meaning even in the context of physical relationships between couples. There is an increasing confusion between the use of the word “love” and the word “lust” and I believe this has contributed towards the more permissive attitudes to sex prevalent in society and the breakdown of family life. “Making love” is a commonly overused phrase and sexual union has become a simple token of a mere shallow attraction or passing affinity for someone, rather than the ultimate expression of a deeper spiritual love between lifelong soul-mates. How sad!

But conversely, at its best, love is something truly wonderful and other-worldly. The most commonly chosen Bible passage at weddings is the famous passage in chapter 13 of St Paul’s First Letter to the Corinthians. This was actually not written about human physical love, but the definitive love of God. The Greek word used in this chapter is “agape”, which is a word that refers in a spiritual sense to a true unconditional love. It is wholly appropriate to read at church weddings, because it raises marriage in the sight of God above a human or merely legal partnership. In many places in the New Testament this same word is the one used to describe sacrificial and spiritual love, whether the love given is returned or not. Absolute love is rare is human terms; it requires pain and endurance and all the attributes named in St Paul’s letter. It is, however, the very love God has for each and every one of us – you and me – unreserved, unconditional, sacrificial love shown through Jesus. For that great gift surely we must praise and worship God each day of our lives.