by Tommy Karlas
The ancient Greeks had four words for love: storge (affection, both physical and familial), philia (friendship), eros (romantic love), and agape (God’s love for people or Christ-like love for others). The first three are the natural and earthly loves we call emotions, or feelings, we have for others. The fourth love agape, however, is more of an action or intention toward someone. It is truly love in the purest sense because it desires the best for the beloved simply for the beloved’s own sake. It wants the best for it’s object regardless of how itself is effected or how deserving or not the object is. It is my hope to briefly show that although familial affection, romantic love, and friendship are all good things, they can only survive and in fact, be what they were meant to be insofar as they have been raised up into agape, or unconditional love itself.
Now in reality the three natural loves have things in common and are combined and blended in different ways. Affection can be sort of a base for the other loves the same way tonic is a base for gin, vodka, etc.. Affection is obviously a part of friendship and romantic love. And friendship can be an element in a romantic relationship as well as familial relationship. But none of these natural loves desire the object’s good simply for the object’s sake. Yet in their own way, all three imitate the divine love, agape, and make us at some moments and to some people what we must come to be at all times and in all relationships. There’s probably nothing like falling in love that would make you give up everything or do anything for someone, especially in that beginning phase. And what more than family affection could make you love the sometimes unlovable like agape does. Indeed like God loves us always.
But what about the differences and dangers of the earthly and human loves? When left to itself, eros can fool us into treating it like a god. Taken to the extreme, Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet is a good example of this. The god of eros, when falling in love, can convince us to put our new-found love above all else, including our own personal health and well-being. Eros whispers “better to be miserable with her/him than to be happy without.”
Or what happens when the “falling-in-love” is over and the newness wears off and/or when he or she lets us down? Should we just give up and start all over again with someone else? It’s true this is what happens all too often. But if it’s what everyone did at that point, there would not be one lasting marriage or relationship in the history of the world. And just like romantic love, friendships and family relationships too will meet their end, or become toxic, if they are put on a pedestal or are made the center of our happiness. Why? Because we are all flawed beings with questionable and selfish motives at times and spending any significant amount of time with one another reveals that. Because familiarity breeds contempt. Because we are putting second things first when we put our human relationships before God. As C.S. Lewis said, “love ceases to be a demon only when it ceases to be a god.” Lewis also agreed with Freud’s assessment that “all human loves carry with them the seeds of hate.”
It’s only when our natural loves and relationships have been made second things to our relationship with God that they can truly become their best and what they were meant to be. Because when we realize how much God loves us despite our unlovability/unloveliness, we become long-suffering and softhearted towards others, especially those we are close to. It is true that you can have no thoughts of God’s love and get along fine with common sense, compromise, and a give-and-take adaptability. But that give-and-take is still not love itself, the gift of God.
It is also tempting to sometimes think that God loves us not because of what He is (love), but because of what we are, because we are intrinsically lovable. Or the opposite…that God can’t possibly love us because we are unlovable. There is something in all of us that doesn’t want to receive love if it is not deserved, either way. But something amazing happens when we can accept both our soul’s impoverished state and receive and respond to what Christ did for us on the cross. There is a peace and a gratitude that transcends understanding and our circumstances, whether good or bad, that makes our cup overflow and want to give that kind of unconditional love to others.
