How Can This Be?

Our society merges words and meanings together like no other culture. It’s hard to use vocabulary that is not ambiguous. I have been learning to ask for a definition of words when talking to people so we do not have a misunderstanding.

The word love is so ambiguous. We love so many things. {I love the beach, I love Texas Roadhouse, I love the Tarheels, I love Craigslist, I love God, I love my car, I love my job, I love……………………………..}

One of the biggest areas of misunderstanding is how love and sex are interchangeable. First, love and sex are not the same. One may love to engage in sex but  sex is not love. Sex is a venue for an expression. It can be an expression of love or an expression of lust. It can be an expression of control or an expression of submission. Let me add another word to this mix:  What is the difference between love, lust, and sex?

Women in general have the reputation for being more emotional, sensitive, and romantic compared to the male counterpart. I am unsure how many women truly know the difference between love and their receptivity for validation. There are many actions which can assist in conveying love, but can also deceive one if love is not defined within an individual’s framework.

Many times when an affair occurs you hear the statements, “I had no clue” or “I never detected anything was wrong.”

You can receive flowers, gifts, and have an active sex life and still have infidelity taking place because most acts are not the definition of love. The reason I believe love is rarely defined accurately is because the standard of love in our society ”has become“ relative and circumstantial to each person’s needs and desires.

If one desires something bad enough you can portray love for a short burst of time, depending on one’s needs or love language. You can take someone for a romantic roller coaster ride and never demonstrate genuine love.

Throughout the study of relationships and psychology there have been six types of love identified and categorized.

Eros is romantic, passionate, love. In this type of relationship, love is life’s most important thing. A search for physical beauty or an ideal type also typifies this type of love.

Ludus is a game-playing or uncommitted love. Lying is part of the game. A person who pursues ludic love may have many conquests but remains uncommitted.

Storge (STORE-gay) is a slow developing, friendship-based loved. People with this type of relationship like to participate in activities together. Often storge results in a long-term relationship in which sex might not be very intense or passionate.

Pragma is a pragmatic, practical, mutually beneficial relationship. It may be somewhat unromantic. A person who leans toward this type of relationship may look for a partner at work or where the person is spending time. Sex is likely to be seen as a technical matter needed for producing children, if they are desired.

Mania is an obsessive or possessive love, jealous and extreme. A person in love this way is likely to do something crazy or silly, such as stalking. The movie Fatal Attraction was about this type.

Agape (a-GOP-aye) is a gentle, caring, giving type of love, brotherly love, not concerned with the self. It is relatively rare. Mother Theresa showed this kind of love for impoverished people.

Agape love is what I want to focus on for the rest of this post.

This love is unattainable apart from God.

It is rare, yet it should be society’s standard for how we measure love, gauge love, give love, receive love, and interpret love. This love should be our foundation for all acts of love.

Let me submit to you a few amazing studies/polls to validate what I have written and posted.

• Studies of couples happily married for over 30 years showed that couples who rated their marriages as highly satisfactory described their relationship in terms which resembled erotic love more than the other five types.

No wonder we have a divorce rate at 60% plus!  A marriage based on physical beauty, appearance, and sexual compatibility is cursed to fail. Our appearances, our bodies, our looks, our weight, our teeth, our skin, sexual appetite, etc., will decline and change. As important as these components are, they are not foundational principles for marriage or love.

Love is not primarily a relationship to a specific person; it is a decision, an attitude, an orientation of character, which determines the relatedness of a person to the world as a whole…

Here is a poll that is both alarming and points a finger to everyone who professes Christ.

• In a classroom poll, conducted in two American introductory psychology classes of over 250 students each, the first five types were all familiar to over 80% of the students from their personal experience (their own relationships or people they knew). However, less than 10% of students knew somebody who expressed agape love.

Allow me to take issue with the last statement. What should be the standard for love in our society – AGAPE love, is virtually absent from our society, absent in the church, absent in our parenting, absent in our families, and absent in our schools.

My next post will answer WHY agape love is less than 10% and virtually absent from our culture.

Can we not admit, we as believers have FAILED? Don’t blame the church because that gives us an excuse. The church is composed of You and Me. Lets take total responsibility for our failure to be instruments and models of agape love.

1 Corinthians 14:1 instructs us to make love our highest goal and calling. If this was being adhered to, we would not be discussing the absence of authentic love, the inability to define love, and misreading eros as authentic love. We are without excuse because God’s Word accurately defines love and in simple clear instructions tells us how to demonstrate agape love.

The good news is its never too late to start demonstrating AGAPE love. Let the people around us SEE God’s love in action. We need to decide to “deny ourselves” some comforts, desires, titles, foods, hobbies, and accolades. Ask Holy Spirit to teach us and show us agape love. We need to be an apprentice to Holy Spirit and learn agape love so we can influence our world.