It’s funny in our society that we only have one word for love. We love pizza, we love our kids, we love Nascar and football, we love our good friends, and we love our wives and husbands. We use the same word for everything and sometimes I think it is indicative of how little we understand love in our world.
The Greeks had lots of words for love. I’m not sure why they got it and we haven’t. Eskimos have dozens of words for ice and snow because it’s such a big part of their world. Perhaps love was a bigger part of their world in Greece back in the time of Christ. Perhaps that is part of the reason why Christianity flourished in Greece and Rome and not in Judea after Christ’s crucifixion.
Love is the central theme of Christianity. We rarely think about it that way, I suspect. Mostly we think it’s about going to church, or giving in the offering plate, or not violating the ten commandments…which is all pretty sad if you think on it for very long. What a small faith it would be, if that were all it was. Jesus said loving God and loving your neighbor was the essense of faith. We are to be in a “Love Relationship” with God and man. So how did the Greeks define that? One of their words for love was Eros. We all know that word in our society from the erotica that is peddled by the media. It is the love of loving: it embodies emotional love, physical love, the kind that is the rush of excitement. It seems we look for that a lot in our choice of boyfriends and girlfriends. Then they had the word Filial love for the brothers and friends. It was the kind of love born of true understanding of who someone was, and that we were in it all together…semper fi! LOL Our word maniac comes from one of their other words for love…Mania. That is the love of obsession. The love that wants beyond all restraining, and it often takes form in love of wealth or power, but it can be the love of a person that possesses or stalks. They called Stargy the love of dependents like children and other family members who counted on them. I suppose group leaders, pastors, firefighters and others might feel this kind of concern and love sometimes, too. But the love that seemed most interesting and rare was Agape love.
Agape is love by choice. It is often love that makes no sense, is selfless in nature, and seems to have no benefit to the one loving. It is the love that makes marriage relationships really last…and most curiously, it is the love that God chose to bestow on mankind.
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