Louvain is near Brussels, the Louvre is in France, and the Love Canal is an evacuated section of the city of Niagra Falls in New York, Loveland is in Colorado...but love is not first a place. Go to Ife and see for yourself.
A lovebird is a greenish short-tailed African parrot. The geeks call it Agapornis. A love-in-a-mist is a white or pale blue flowering Mediterranean plant. Nigella damascena. A love-lies-bleeding is a tropical South Asian plant with small red flowers. Amaranthus candatus. A louvar is a large tropical deep-sea fish with a blunt head, a silvery pink body, and bright red fins. Luvaris imperialis. A love apple is a tomato. Lycopersicon. But love is not first a physical life form. Get some larvae and taste for yourself.
Is love lust? I have learned that you can kiss without loving, and you can love without kissing. I wonder what you would look like beneath your night gown. Lips, tips and hips. I do not love you. I am a tailor wanting to know your dimensions. I am a minister at the altar of debauchery wanting to lay my hands on you. I am a warrior in chain mail and a condom conquering and riding to conquer, wanting to add your name to my list. Make no mistake- I do not love you. I can not love you.
Is love open handedness? I have learned that you can give without loving, but you can not love without giving. This true euphemism is the substrate for love’s corruption. There is such a thing as the fattened calf. I do not love you. I am a business man negotiating my deal over lunch. I am a fisherman hanging my bait on a steel hook at the end of a transparent nylon line over the boat’s edge in deep waters. I am a long con artist and maga maker lining your pockets and stirring your greed. Make no mistake- I do not love you. I can not love you.
Is love verbalisation or emotional expression? I have learned that you can say without loving, but you shouldn’t love without saying. I might have said it into a Dictaphone, but I do not love you. I am a poet writing lines for my opening act and ultimately my pay. I am an orator putting my best foot forward. I am an on air personality keeping your head in the clouds and your feet off the ground. Make no mistake- I do not love you. I can not love you.
Love, in the New Testament ethos is best defined not first as a situation, an emotion, a place, an activity or an abstraction. Love is best defined first as a Person. God is love. This revolutionary Agape concept is deliberate, radical, rational and coherent. Love as the eros concept wants sex. It takes you to bed. Love as the phileo concept wants security and sustenance of friendly sentimental personal attachments and relationships. It takes you bowling with the fellows. Love as the agape concept is a radical paradigm shift concept that responds not to what people have done or who people are and is a fundamental foundation for birthing a higher phileos or eros. It is a deliberate love undefined by reciprocity, undeterred by adversity, unperturbed by passivity. A love that waits for prodigals with arms open wide, a love that covers a multitude of sins, a love that pardons before the deed is done, a love that hangs on a cross but does not die. This God kind of love touches on the unconditional. It does not primarily want for itself.
Its height is its direction upwards towards a Creator who deserves a love with all your heart, with all your soul, with all your strength, and with all your mind in response to His undying but dying and sacrificial love. Its breadth is its direction outwards towards others within our own love community. Its depth is its direction inwards; a healthy, non-patronising love for oneself. Its length is its tangential and confrontational direction is towards our enemies, haters, persecutors, detractors.
Not lust with a jock itch, not open-handedness with a self centred liberality, not verbalisation with the lips of an asp and the lisp of a carnivore, not a blind cloud-riding emotion. Not just eros. Not just phileos. A multi-dimensional agape shed abroad in our hearts by the Holy Ghost. A love born in the Spirit, born of the Spirit and bourn by the Spirit- for love is a Spirit. I am that I am love. A love defined by God in me expressing Himself outward to others. A love defined in me living the character of a Creator; a love in me responding to situations as He would respond, expressing His nature, His likeness, His person.
‘...that your love will flourish and that you will not only love much but well. Learn to love appropriately. You need to use your head and test your feelings so that your love is sincere and intelligent, not sentimental gush...’
But what is love?
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