Truth about true love

In his first encyclical -- the highest form of papal writing -- Pope Benedict XVI wrote about the meanings of love, and said that physical love, when reduced to pure sex, becomes a debased commodity, “a mere ‘thing’ to be bought and sold.” To reach a higher, fuller meaning of love, one must enhance it by spiritual, selfless love for God and others. He argued that the word “love” has become too common and misused and needs to be restored to its “original splendor.” Do you agree with the pope’s assessment?

Those questions deserves several columns to answer. Let me try to do it in one.

The first question is about the nature of physical love. Culture, society and the church have cheapened physical love by presenting it as a mere physical act. Scripture clearly teaches that it took two creatures -- one male and one female -- to represent the full image of God.

When united sexually, a union of the completed image occurs. It is within this union that God intended for the manifestation of his glory to the world to occur.

The family becomes core to building society, and it begins sexually.

There are no marriage ceremonies prescribed in Scripture, only passages like “Isaac brought Rebekah into his tent, and she became his wife.”

There was no priest in the tent, lets be clear on that.

When we focus so much on ceremony, liturgy and bad theology, then the world reacts with its own bad philosophy, and we end up with sex as nothing more than a physical version of an Xbox 360 game.

I am amazed at how regularly I meet with young people who view sex as nothing more than a game or a prize to be won. But I guess they learned part of that from Bill Clinton.

Please don’t think I am demeaning the role of ceremony. What I am saying is that when we underemphasize a scriptural teaching on sexuality we undermine the importance of the sexual act and relegate it to the domain of TV shows and movies stars to define.

Would any reader say that our culture has a healthy view of sex?

I blame the church for not teaching a healthy view of sex. When the church, led at the time by celibate men, viewed sex as part of the physical world and not the spiritual world, an unhealthy and philosophically unfulfilling view of sex emerged. Those outside the church have been more than eager to present their views.

From Freud to Hollywood, there have been myriad responses. None of them has been more fulfilling or healthy than the poor theology of the church. We need to get back to a biblical view of sexuality as something that God created as a gift for humanity to enjoy and to be used within the context of a marriage.

The second question is about the word “love.” It has been said that 80% of the people in the world find mates through arranged marriages and not through the dating process that the west has decided is the norm.

The point being that these people find love in choice. I admit there is an emotion called love, but that is not what we are talking about.

According to our Scriptures, love is a choice. The beauty of this kind of love is not in receiving it, but in having received it from someone who chose to love you.

Anything else would be robotic.

In the context of physical love and relationships, the choice to love adds selflessness, sacrifice, protection, dignity and much more on top the beauty of the physical love. The different loves are complimentary when used together. However, the contemporary emphasis on the emotion leaves an entire category of love unused. Because of this, emotional love becomes part of the physical act and fades over time.

Real love never fades because it is a choice.

SENIOR ASSOCIATE

PASTOR RIC OLSEN

Harbor Trinity

Costa Mesa

Love is always bewildering, especially for those who confuse love with one of the most powerful internal demands of nature: the urge to reproduce. Combine that struggle with all the guilt and shame attached to the subject and up pops the labels: sin, condemnation and rejection.

I think it nice that the pope has voiced his opinion on the matter, and I think that no one -- with any moral fiber -- would disagree.

However, it is not love that needs to be restored to its original splendor; it is humanity that needs to be restored to love.

And this requires time, maturation and the willingness to make a whole lot of mistakes as you learn. It also requires a strong spiritual philosophy to guide the process, teach forgiveness and inform the student on the path.

We are all students on the path, even the pope. We all need to learn how to use love as a guiding principle that defines behavior, logic and reaction.

I tend to see love as a synonym for God: the means by which we expand our ability to express compassion and goodness.

If we were to let love define our conduct, how would our daily lives be different? Would we listen more, care more, spend more time helping? Would the quality of our experience be better? It only takes a moment to do a prayer for love, but will we take the moment?

This month, I will be talking about love and how to improve your ability to use love as a guiding principle. I will address the demystification and consistency issues most people have when it comes to love. We will provide self-assess- ment report cards so you can monitor how well prepared you are, how you show initiative, how much you contribute, and if you are getting better.

Love is not bewildering or confusing to those who see themselves as part of a divine presence.

Gandhi said, “When it comes to love, you may not know what you’re doing, but something within you does. Keep listening to the inner voice of love, and become the change you want to see.”

SENIOR PASTOR

JAMES TURRELL

Center for Spiritual Discovery

Costa Mesa

I dislike the expression “falling in love.”

Falling is an accident and a descent.

I prefer “rising in love.” Rising is purposeful, an upward climb. You fall into a rut, fall into a hole, fall through the cracks, but you rise to the top, rise to the occasion, rise like a phoenix out of the ashes.

When poet Percy Shelley wrote of “one word so often profaned,” he was confident his readers knew the word. To use “fall” with “love” is a profanation of what love should be.

How do we profane love? By lavishing it on those who are distant and withholding it from those who are near. Professed lovers of humanity often cannot stand people. They rush to the aid of strangers but do not speak to their relatives.

Love is cherishing what is at hand.

How do we profane love? By associating it exclusively with getting and receiving.

The word “love,” in Hebrew, derives from a root “to give.” Contrary to some who think that to love is in the taking, the Torah teaches that love is first of all to give.

How do we profane love? By extolling its virtues but failing when that love is tested. A psychology professor reproved a neighbor, scolding a child, saying, “You should love the boy, not punish him.” One day, the professor repaired his concrete driveway. He laid down his trowel, started toward his house, and just then saw a mischievous little boy put his foot in the fresh cement. He rushed over and began berating him, telling him he should be severely punished. The neighbor leaned from a window and said, “Watch it professor! Don’t you remember? You must love the child.” At this, the psychologist yelled back furiously, “I do love him in the abstract, but not in the concrete!”

How easy to tell others that they should love, but what a challenge to prove one’s own love when a foot mars the fresh cement.

How do we profane love? By neglecting to give it voice. A wife was on a starvation diet of affection. Her husband refused her any signs of love. At her wit’s end, she demanded, “Why don’t you ever tell me you love me?” The husband responded, “When we were married I told you that I loved you, and if I ever change my mind, I’ll let you know.”

Love must be expressed, and often.

How do we profane love? By only speaking its name, but neglecting the acts by which love is demonstrated. Love is in the detail: the small considerate act, the word of encouragement, the gentle gesture. One hundred protestations of eternal love do not match one embrace or wiping away one tear.

It is best summarized by Erich Fromm. Immature love follows the principle: “I love because I am loved.” Mature love follows the principle: “I am loved because I love.” Immature love says: “I love you because I need you.” Mature love says: “I need you because I love you.”

RABBI MARK S. MILLER

Temple Bat Yahm

Newport Beach

That poor English word “love” is too frail to bear the burdens, which, for lack of a sturdier vehicle, we impose on it -- as if ice cream, one’s spouse, and the family dog were perfectly interchangeable objects of the same verb.

The French do better: “Je t’aime,” “I love you”; “Je t’aime bien,” “I like you a lot.”

The Greeks probably did it best of all, identifying four varieties of love and, to minimize confusion, attaching a different term to each.

As C.S. Lewis distinguished them, in his typically nimble “The Four Loves,” they were storge, the sort of affectionate loyalty one holds for one’s family or country; philia, the bond of comradeship shared by teammates, say, or troops under fire; eros, or erotic love of the kind the Flower Children of the 1960s and early ‘70s had in mind when pressing us to “make love not war” (by which they really meant “have sex, not strife”), and it is abuses of eros that seem to provoke the present pope; and agape, or caring servant love, which hungers to unearth a need in order to fill it.

All four “loves” appear in the original Greek New Testament. In the Bible as a whole, it is “agape” that is usually meant when our English word “love” appears. God loves us, not because we are desirable but because we are needful; the word becomes flesh, not because God envies our lot, but because God is merciful and gracious.

When Jesus exhorts us to love one another as he loves us, or to love our neighbors as ourselves, such self-giving love is again the sort God has in mind -- whether we happen to like those people or not. The sign of love in this context is not a rose-colored valentine, but a cross.

The question of the upcoming Valentine’s Day is “Will you be mine?”

A good answer is “Please, let me give myself to you.”

If standing before the throne of grace at our great judgment, we are asked, “Did you do a lot of loving?” and we respond, “You bet! I ‘partied hardy!’” the reply will likely come, “No, that’s not quite what I had in mind. I meant how much did you care and give-and-take care.”

An old Russian yarn has it that an elderly peasant, queried why she believed in God, replied, “Because once, during a famine, a passing stranger handed me an onion.”

There was a valentine! There was love!

(THE VERY REV’D CANON)

PETER D. HAYNES