we all want, but God spare us the responsibility.
Jessamyn West; Love is Not What You Think
The Psychology of Love
The ability to love and express love is dependent upon childhood caregiving. Much research has documented three bonding orientations in children that carry over into adulthood. In psychological terms, the three bonding orientations are (1) secure bonding, (2) ambivalent bonding, and (3) avoidant bonding.
Secure bonding develops when childhood care is consistent and comforting to the child and offers a safe base from which to explore the world. Such children grow into adults that have a secure orientation toward bonding, which results in an orientation that engenders trust, lasting relationships, shared intimacy, and the ability to work out conflicts through compromise.
Ambivalent bonding develops when the childhood care is inconsistent, creating doubts in the child about the caregiver’s availability and the safety of the base from which to explore the world. Such children grow up to view themselves poorly and become preoccupied with keeping their romantic partners close at hand and firmly committed.
Avoidant bonding develops when the childhood-care needs are repeatedly rejected or the caregiver is frequently upset or violent. Raised in such an environment, these children develop avoidant patterns. As adults, they will avoid emotional intimacy, looking down upon it or dreading any hints of it.
This is the worst of life, that love does not give us common sense but is a sure way of losing it. We love people, and we say that we were going to do more for them than friendship, but it makes such fools of us that we do far less, indeed sometimes what we do could be mistaken for the work of hatred.
Rebecca West, quoted in Rebecca West: Artist and Thinker by Peter Wolfe
The Philosophy of Love
From a philosophical perspective, love has been categorized into three major types, using the Greek words eros, philia, and agape.
Eros refers to love that is passionate, intense, and sexual, even erotic. However, Plato held that, deep down, eros actually seeks transcendental beauty, but human beauty reminds one of that transcendent beauty.
Philia is fondness and appreciation of the other, beyond self. It is friendship, family loyalty, community ties, love for one’s work, and the like. Philia is associated with “brotherly,” as in Philadelphia (phila-delphi, city of brotherly love).
Agape refers to God’s love for His/Her children and to humanity’s love for one another. Such love does not seek anything in return for its expression. However, it has an ethical standard and may therefore impartially determine another’s warranting love—something we acknowledge today as tough love, meaning a love that calls the other to higher levels of behavior. In the New Testament, written in Greek, many of the “love” statements use the word agape.
One makes mistakes: that is life. But it is never quite a mistake to have loved.
Romain Rolland, Summer
The Spirituality of Love
Throughout the Bible, love is most important and powerful. When we think of power, even spiritual power, we rarely think of love. Yet, from Genesis to the Revelation, the Bible indicates that love evokes the highest, most godly of powers and actually is the nature of God. Love brings us closest to our true, divine nature—our angelic nature. Many biblical passages teach that of all the things a person can learn and do in this world, nothing reflects godliness more than love.
The two greatest commandments are found in both the Old and New Testaments. The first:
You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your mind.
Deuteronomy 6:5 and Matthew 22:37
And the second commandment:
You shall love your neighbor as yourself.
Leviticus 19:18 and Matthew 22:39
The actual Greek word used here is plesion, meaning a “close-by person.” This expands “neighbor” to include humans within our orb of life.
Perhaps the most quoted love passage in Scripture is the disciple Paul’s famous statement in 1 Corinthians 13:13:
Now abide faith, hope, and love, these three; but the greatest of these is love.
Paul described love beautifully:
Love is patient, love is kind, and is not jealous; love does not brag and is not arrogant, does not act unbecomingly; it does not seek its own, is not provoked, does not take into account a wrong suffered, does not rejoice in unrighteousness, but rejoices with the truth; bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things. Love never fails.
1 Corinthians 4-8
In these passages, the Greek word used for love is agape, meaning love like God has for His/Her children and creation.
The disciple Peter advised:
Above all things, keep fervent in your love for one another, because love covers a multitude of sins.
1 Peter 4:8
And John wrote:
Beloved, let us love one another, for love is from God; and everyone who loves is born of God and knows God. The one who does not love does not know God, for God is love . . . If we love one another, God abides in us, and His love is perfected in us.
1 John 4:7-12
Jesus spoke of levels of love, identifying the highest love in this often quoted passage:
Greater love has no man [woman] than this, that a man gives up his [her] life for his friends.
John 15:13; brackets mine
Most have come to understand that Jesus did not mean literal death, rather the giving up of self’s desires for another’s needs. It is thinking more of what another may need than what self may want. Yet this must not become self-destructive. No one could accuse Jesus of being a doormat of self-deprecating love. He often radiated a tough love. Those around Him often needed to hear the truth and a clear position on God’s ways, not to be pampered. Perhaps the best examples are his discussions with Peter. One instance was when Jesus began to share with his disciples the path that God had laid out for Him to walk:
he [Jesus] must go to Jerusalem, and suffer many things of the elders and chief priests and scribes, and be killed, and the third day be raised up. Peter took him, and began to rebuke him, saying, “Be it far from you, Lord; this shall never be for you.” But Jesus turned, and said to Peter, “Get behind me, Satan; you are a stumbling-block to me for you mind not the things of God but the things of men.”
Matthew 16:21-23; brackets mine
For his own sake, Peter needed to realize that his thinking was that akin to Satan’s, desiring the
