LOVE ACTUALLY

WHAT IS LOVE?

The film ‘Love Actually’ is a great movie.  It’s funny, sad, heartwarming, hopeful.  And it shows many different aspects of love.  We see love and longing, love and delight, love and fear, love and grief, love and betrayal. It is like a house with many different rooms, any of which we may live in at any one time.

The actual nature of love is perfectly described in the Bible, in theOld Testament.  It happens to be the love between two men, David and Jonathan:

‘And it came to pass when (David) had made an end of speaking to Saul, that the soul (nephesh/breath) of Jonathan was tied together with the soul of David, and Jonathan loved him as his own soul.’  

(1 Samuel 18.1, taken from the Orthodox Jewish Bible) 

Love is letting down the drawbridge of our inner lives and allowing/inviting someone else to come and take up residence.  The Gospel of John has a marvellous phrase about experiencing God’s love in this way:

(Jesus said), ‘Those who love me will keep my word, and my Father will love them, and we will come to them and make our home with them.’    (John 14.23) This is mysterious, but no more mysterious than what happens between people. 

THE LADDER OF LOVE

English has just one word to talk about love.  Though that is better than France that has just the word ‘aimer’  to cover ‘love’ and ‘like’.  Strong’s Greek concordance has a bewildering number of words signifying love and passion.  Here are seven, though not all of them found their way into the New Testament.  Between them they describe the love journey.

1 Philautia means self-love or self-care.  It is the foundation of any healthy relationship, because if you don’t care for yourself, you are expecting love to be all in one direction, fulfilling your own needs. The commandment to ‘love one’s neighbour as oneself’, is in both the Jewish and Christian scriptures.  Sadly that is how many people  do operate. If you think of yourself as not worth anything, that is how you will see others, with the resulting social tensions and even violence.

2 Storgē is the natural affection between members of the family or within a kinship group or a football supporters’ club. It is the bread and butter of all human relationships.

2 Ludus is  playful, uncommitted love such as flirting or even casual sex. The focus is on fun with no strings attached.  Staying at this level is to stay in shallow relationships; but it is a significant element in other types of love.  As the saying has it, ‘All work and no play makes Jack a dull boy’.   Unsurprisingly, it does not figure in the Bible.

3 Epithumia.means desire or longing.  St Paul said to his fellow-believers in Philippi, “we longed with great eagerness to see you face to face.” (Philippians 1.23). In general the Bible takes a negative view.  “All that is in the world- the desire of the flesh, the desire of the eyes, the pride in riches – comes not from the Father but from the world.”  (1 John 2.16)  In fact, it is simply a natural expression of human feeling.

4 Philia means a close friendship, a feeling of loving and being loved.  Aristotle called it a relationship based on ‘mutual affection, esteem, and liberality.’  It was separate  from family and kinship ties and from the relationship between oneself and one’s patron.  Affection was key component but so was physical expression.  It included kissing when greeting one another (as in Mark 14.45).  This is normal in the Middle East today, men kissing each other on alternate cheeks, and holding hands, as I experienced in Kerala, India.  Friendship was a serious commitment.  You could rely on your friend to bail you out of debt.  Perhaps it was something like the comradeship of soldiers facing battle together and if necessary dying for one another.  In the New Testament Christians are constantly urged to have brotherly love for one another.  As Jesus said,  “I have called you friends, because have made known to you everything I have heard from my Father .”  (John 15.15)                                                                                                                                                                                

5 Eros is sexual passion.  It is not even mentioned in the New Testament.  It is the powerful urge that simply takes us over.  As Benedict says in ‘Much Ado About Nothing’, “I do much wonder how one man, seeing how much another man is fool when he dedicates his behaviour to love, will after he hath laughed at such shallow follies in other, will become the argument for his own scorn by falling in love!  And such a man in Claudio…”. It is not just physical sex, it is the mental and emotional turbulence that precedes and accompanies it.  

6 Pragma is a committed, compassionate love that often grows as two partners continue to cherish and care for each other. This type of love is associated with being together for a long time.  It is not used in the Bible as a form of love; there it simply means something done, something pragmatic.

7 Agapē was originally a rather colourless word referring to quiet affection within families.  It became THE word for love in the new Christian communities.  With the example of Jesus before them, it came to denote the kind of self-sacrificial love that put Jesus to the cross, which Christians could emulate by putting the needs and concerns of other before their own.  A love of the will rather than of feeling – though both are essential.

THE LANGUAGES OF LOVE

There is a useful little book called ‘The Five Love Languages.  The author, Gary Chapman, writing from his experience as a marriage consultant, says that often problems arise within marriage because the partners have different ways of perceiving love.  We all have a particular love language, developed in childhood.  If this is addressed it makes us feel cherished and loved.  However, if one partner does not hear his/her desired love language, then he/she feels unloved and big problems can come.  Here are the five ‘languages’. 

a)   Words of affirmation.  Compliments, affirmations, verbal encouragement, all create that feeling of being cherished.

b) Quality time.  Spending serious time together is what develops that special closeness for some.

c) Receiving Gifts.  Unexpected gifts can make some people feel really valued and cherished.  Women seem to have a particular predilection for flowers.  (I don’t understand it, but I do it).  Or a good single malt whiskey might be the thing.

d) Acts of service.  Mending something or dong the washing up can really make a difference to some people.

e) Physical touch.  Actual touch, being held, affectionate sex is what is most important for some.

Of course, we all enjoy all of the above.  But most people, Gary Chapman says, have a primary love language which they need to hear to be able to respond in their turn.

One of the questions asked in the book was if men and women have different preferences.  Chapman says no, it is completely equal across genders.   And so I assume that this approach would work equally well for same-sex couples, though the book does not mention this,

THE CLASSIC QUOTE

I can’t leave this topic without quoting the most famous passage of all about love. When I was at boarding school, we had it read to us at the end of every term.  Here is part of it:

‘Love is patient; love is kind; love is not envious or boastful or arrogant or rude. It does not insist on its own way; it is not irritable or resentful; it does not rejoice in wrongdoing, but rejoices in the truth. It bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things.. And now faith, hope, and love abide, these three; and the greatest of these is love.’  (1 Corinthians 13.4-7, 13)