What Is Love?

From my book, Nothing Worth Doing Is Easy...

Just about everyone has some degree of familiarity with 1 Corinthians 13, commonly known as “the love chapter.” When I think back on the events I’ve encountered over the course of my life, especially those involving the people around me, I can’t help but think of the lessons given in that chapter; specifically, 1 Corinthians 13:4-7.

That short passage gives about the best description of love I think a person will ever find; and not just romantic love, either. It reads, “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 with the truth; bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things and endures all things.”

The end of the second verse in that passage is what I can honestly say is the hardest for me to remember and live by, especially in certain specific instances. When I look back on the people I dealt with and the experiences I had in the church in which I grew up, the concept of not taking into account a wrong suffered is something I fairly often don’t really get right. I don’t hold any genuine ill will toward the people involved, but it’s still more than a little bit difficult to look back on that and not get a little bit upset.

The thing is, though, that’s not the end of the world as I have a tendency to think it might be. I’m human, so I have to acknowledge that I do and always will have flaws. I know I shouldn’t hold grudges against people who have treated me in unfair or unbecoming ways, but I also know help with those struggles when they come up is only a prayer away.

I’m still working on getting past those things. I struggle with it on an almost daily basis and I have often found myself taking full advantage of the help I know has been offered to me, but I do still occasionally fall short.

When it comes to my battle with cancer, there’s certainly no shortage of examples I’ve heard over the years of people who went through similar struggles and came out of it hating God, but that never even crossed my mind. Yes, I’ll openly admit that I thought it wasn’t fair that I ended up having to go through that, but the fact that I did and overcame it had more than its share of benefits. That experience not only made me appreciate how precious and short life really is, but it also gave me a whole different understanding of and appreciation for my impact on those around me.

The love that was shown by so many during that process and in the years since it ended is something I will never take for granted again. I know I made that mistake on several occasions in the past, but those days are over. I now realize that I have a purpose in this life that’s far bigger than just doing what I want and making decisions that bring me enjoyment and prosperity.

And that’s probably the biggest reason I refuse to let myself get caught up in the feelings of guilt and doubt that have crept in every so often since my bout with cancer. The love that was shown to me through all of that by everyone around me gave me a whole new perspective on life. Now that I’ve conquered the giant that is cancer, I have made it my mission to no longer let my selfishness get in the way of my efforts to return that love in even greater measure.

Don’t get me wrong, though. I don’t see any of that as some sort of contest or a debt I owe. After all, love doesn’t seek its own or keep a record of wrongs. I simply realize, far more than I ever did before, that there’s no more important part of life than love. And I don’t just mean romantic forms of love, either.

That’s something I’ve always thought was a little bit of an issue with the English language. English-speaking people often conflate love with romance, simply because we have just the one word. Other languages, a prime example being Greek, have multiple words that translate into English as love, but all refer to different things.

In Greek, there’s a different word for familial, romantic, platonic/friendly and the all-encompassing love that defies understanding. As English speakers, many of us see the usage of so many different words to describe such similar things as a foreign concept. I couldn’t disagree more with that assessment.

In English-speaking countries such as here in the United States, we just use one blanket term, love. And I think, by doing that, we miss out on a lot of nuance. Not only that, but it gets conflated with romance and people end up interpreting the word the wrong way in certain contexts.

I’ve told men who weren’t related to me I loved them on several occasions and have been told the same thing by other men. That, contrary to popular belief, doesn’t mean any of us have any interest in dating a man. There’s simply no other word that can be used to describe the connection between friends or members of your church family.

Not only that, but the word love seems almost like an oxymoron, in certain other instances. For example, when others treat us poorly, we have a tendency to not like those people very much. That doesn’t mean a Christian doesn’t or shouldn’t love someone. I love plenty of people I don’t really like.

And therein lies the problem with having just the one word to express such sentiments. If the English language did what several others do, I know it would solve a lot of issues for me and I think many others could say the same. We’d get far fewer funny looks from people who don’t understand the types of love a person can feel and express, that’s for sure.

I’d be lying if I said I think it’s easy to live by Paul’s description of love, though. It isn’t easy, at all. In fact, I honestly believe it’s one of the hardest things a person can try to do.

When anyone does something that hurts us in any way, it’s human nature to want to stay away from that person, never do anything nice relating to them or never want to help them again. That’s not how Paul says love works. If we want to truly live by the description of love given to the Corinthians, we have no choice but to forgive and forget, so to speak.

That’s not to say, however, that we simply have to pretend whatever that hurtful thing was that the other person did never happened. That, I think, is one of the biggest misconceptions about forgiveness. Forgiveness and by extension, Paul’s definition of love, can still be achieved while not setting ourselves up to simply keep getting hurt in the same way.

To forgive simply means to let go of a wrong that’s been done. Merriam-Webster defines it as “to cease to feel resentment against an offender.” That doesn’t mean to give the offender the same opportunity to commit the offense again, but to relinquish any feelings of ill will.

That, to me, isn’t at odds with Paul’s description of love, at all. As long as we forego any punishment for an offending person and show them the same level of love as before the offense occurred, that’s all we need. It’s as simple and as complicated as that.