March 7,1997
Dear Br. Earl:
Most people, including Christians, suppose they know what is meant by the word love. Such expressions as “I love you,” “I love ice cream,” “she loves me,” “I love the dog,” “ the dog loves me,” “I love country music,” or “I just love that dress you are wearing,” seem to be common expressions of love. Therefore, love, in common usage today, means either a fondness for someone, something, or a special feeling of fondness for someone or something, or, more often a special feeling of fondness for self.
THIS IS NOT LOVE BUT EMOTION.
There is a difference. God gave us emotions such as fear, apprehension,
joy, peace, happiness, anxiety, caring, sadness, sensitivity,
depression, and loneliness to give fullness and meaning to life.
While some of these emotions may not seem calculated to brighten
our lives but tend in the opposite directions, they were, nevertheless,
given to us by God as expressions of a full range of emotions,
all of which, by the way, he is capable of feeling and expressing,
although he chooses not to express some of them, such as depression.
Christ certainly felt some of the negative emotions while hanging
on the cross, so we know that God can also feel them.
But what about love, isn’t it also an emotion. My response
is emphatically, NO, it is not an emotion. Love is a principal
that motivates action.
Rather then saying “I love Sevilla,” I should say, “I
do love Sevilla.” This last expression may seem like sematic
slight of hand but consider the expression again. When I say “I
do the dishes,” “I do my homework,” “I do
the gardening,” or “I do the mathematical calculations,”
no sense of emotions or emotional involvement is expressed or
intended. In these expressions, “DO” is the verb and
the other words, dishes, homework, gardening, mathematical calculations,
and love are the object or the “Did” of do. Don’t
laugh, By applying the verb to its object, a result occurs. That
result is the finished dishes, homework, gardening, mathematical
calculation, and love.
Let me express this in a different way and I think the meaning
of love will become clearer. Consider Christ standing before his
father in heaven. They are both looking at the sinful human race
and Christ is saying, “Father I love the human race. I have
great and wonderful feelings for them. My emotions are overflowing
with love, mercy, compassion, and sadness over their wretched
condition, but please don’t ask me to become their savior,
that’s such a nasty job and besides I don’t like hanging
on crosses.” If Christ felt only emotions for us, then he
would never have left heaven and endured the shameful and painful
experience of the cross that we might be saved.
There is a humorous story that illustrates this point of the limits
of emotional love. Her boyfriend is speaking to his girlfriend
over the telephone and telling her of his undying love for her,
of his great and tender regard for her, of her beauty and his
great joy and happiness over his love for her. Finally, he utters
the famous words, “I love you so much that I would cross
the deepest ocean to be with you, scale the highest mountains,
endure the greatest pain, swim the deepest rivers to be with---but
I can’t come over tonight if its raining.” I remember
one of Tim’s male friends. When he learned of his death,
he came immediately to be with us even though it was the middle
of the night and he couldn’t possibly reach our house because
of the high water. Early the next morning, he walked in from the
main road to our house, and went with me to find his jacket which
we found approximately 1/2 mile down the creek from where Tim
fell into the water.
The remainder of the day, he hung around the house, figuratively
wringing his hands with emotion and shedding tears all over the
place. His emotions were at a fever pitch over the death of his
best friend. Several days later, we received a beautiful hand
drawn plague with a special poem he had composed and written in
memory of our son. But when it came time for the memorial service,
which was delayed by severe weather, he was nowhere to be found
and never did respond to my telephone calls. We have neither heard
from him nor seen him since then. So much for love! But then what
is love? When a man loves a woman as his wife, he has eyes for
no other woman, but her. When she looses her beauty with age,
he doesn’t notice, for she is still beautiful in his eyes.
When she is sick, he cleans up the mess and can’t remember
it the next morning. When the emotions are gone, his love grows
stronger. He never wearies of her even if she wearies of him.
A principal sustains him. A commitment keeps his love strong.
His love is the commitment and the principal.
I feel totally inadequate of expressing the depth and quality
of God’s love. How can I tell of it? Look at the cross, for
only there will you or I find a suitable manifestation of love,
as a principle. May the Lord richly bless you with an understanding
of true love and a willingness to manifest it as a principal in
your live. Your brother in Christ.
Allen A. Benson