Love isn't something easy to define. It's abstract, vague, enigmatic. The closest attempt at a definition I've ever heard is "Love is the voluntary renunciation of rights". If you looked it up in the dictionary you'll probably find a lot of definitions that have to do with the things people associate love with - feelings, emotions, hope, security, happiness. Love does have a lot to do with these things, but it doesn't begin with them. You can't say that love is a feeling as much as you can't say that chocolate ice-cream is a chocolate, even though chocolate is precisely what you taste, what you experience. All these things are facets and products of genuine love, but they aren't the thing itself. They're not the root. So what is? The answer is choice. We love someone or something because we choose to. We choose to give them more importance, more time, and priority in our lives. Often we'll find ourselves putting them - voluntarily - before our own interests. Because we love them. The willingness to let go of what we're entitled to. That's where it all begins. But certainly, this isn't something that comes naturally to all people. Most people struggle with love; none of us can claim to do it perfectly. It's something that has to be learned through experience. But how do we learn to love? To love well?
One The love of God
The alpha and the omega - where it all starts and ends. God is the author, perfecter and embodiment of love. It's because we're made in His likeness that we're even able to love and it's through experiencing Him, directly or indirectly, that we learn how to love. God is the easiest thing to love and, paradoxically, the easiest thing to hate. God is perfect and infinite, always good, always right, always forgiving, always hoping. It's not hard to see how His qualities always win our hearts over. These same qualities can infuriate us - experiencing the infinite will always point out the limitations and shortcomings of the finite. We'll never be as good as He is. He'll never lose an argument. And, most frustrating of all, it is never His fault. But to know this and take it against God is to relinquish everything you have been given so freely in pursuit of a feeble pride. To say no to the one person who is best equipped and ever available to help us. If we let go and return, just making one step, opening the door a crack, we'd find His love isn't based on our acceptance or our ability.
But while he was still a long way off, his father saw him and was filled with compassion for him; he ran to his son, threw his arms around him and kissed him.
Loving God is so easy to do because He chose to love us first. He created us. He disciplined us. He forgave us. And He saved us from ourselves. All because He loves us. And no matter what we will ever do, He will always love us. Realising this, and experiencing it, can bear only one inevitable outcome. To love Him back.
Two The love of Others
You might not have noticed, but we live in a world filled with other people. What a shame. People that take the last seat on the bus. People that cut us off in the queue. People that smell. Interacting with other people is a necessity of living. Loving them is not. It is perfectly feasible to live ones life not caring for anyone beyond their ability to give us something we want. This thing could be a home, a job, company, a discount at the supermarket, even emotional attachment. If in all these things our focus is only on ourselves, what we're getting or experiencing, then based on our definition love hasn't entered the picture. And the scary part is that, because of our fallen nature, prioritising our own interests is what we're programmed to do. And we all do it. A lot.
But the first love will also inevitably lead us to the second. Slowly we begin to see aspects of God in His creatures. Think about it this way, God is good and the source of all goodness, so every time you see someone say or do something good you are seeing a part of who God is. You are seeing God in them. Think of your favourite hero speech from a film you've seen. That feeling of righteousness, of truth, of defiance in the face of evil, that's of God. And it's incredibly attractive. It feels right. This makes moving from loving God in Himself to loving Him in others flow easily. But there is a step beyond this - to love someone else for themselves, just as loving God in Himself. This isn't as easy as the first love, because unlike God, they're not perfect. They're going to make mistakes. They're going to mess up. And often they're not going to deserve it. To move past this is in no case easy but to do so is to achieve something truly beautiful - to love as God loves us. To make sacrifices and go out of one's way for another person just because they are, is to mirror the Creator and the Saviour. To take joy in them. To be interested in them. To look at what they do and take as much pleasure in it as if you had done it yourself. And to do this because it has been done to you.
Three The love of Self
You'll notice that loving yourself is the third step in the cycle. Which is odd as society deems that this is where it starts. Everything around us tells us to please ourselves, to make ourselves happy, to treat ourselves with some fancy shower gel. And loving ourselves is important, but we have to put it in context, so to speak.
The third love is not really about making ourselves happy or treating ourselves. Not that it's wrong once in a while, it's just not the point. Loving God and loving others, being led to a state of mind which always looks to put others before yourself can make self-love seem like a dirty concept. But think about it more in the sense of accepting yourself. Ah. To be other-minded is something divine, but if not coming from the right heart it can also be a form of escapism. Because when you're always thinking and working for others then you never have to come around to facing who you are. And for a society which promotes loving ourselves, there's a good number of us who find it hard to come to terms with who we are. To accept the way we look. The way we speak. The way we're not quite as good at football. The way we're too tall or too short. The way that in some form, we're just not good enough. And the hard part is that it's probably true.
But loving ourselves is just as important as loving God and loving others. It completes the circle and can only really be done once we've been through the other two. It is the second reversed. To look at ourselves, just as we are, with the eyes of the Father. To know that we are loved even though we are not worthy of it. To know that we're accepted. Just as we are. So then how can we judge ourselves? Who are we to say we're not good enough? Who are we to reject ourselves? Once we learn this love, possibly the hardest of the three, the cycle moves more easily. We learn to accept others' faults more easily once we've learned to accept our own. And we learn to love the Creator more when we really love the creation. To look at what you've done and take as much joy in it as if someone else had done it, that is the third.
