Crazy Little Thing Called Love
Once, when I was in middle school, I rode my Huffy single gear bicycle through what felt like 20 miles of hot Florida afternoon sun, just to get a chance at “accidentally” meeting a classmate toward whom I felt what I determined to be “love.” I peddled back home after riding past her house once.
“That’s puppy love,” you might say; not real love. Okay…What is this crazy thing called love and how do we experience it?
Greek rationality has broken down “love” into about seven types (differs by different sources): Eros, erotic love; Philia, friendship; Storge, family or kinship; Ludus, playful love; Pragma, practical long-term love; Philautia, self-love ([url=http://www.psychologytoday.com]http://www.psychologytoday.com[/url]). You can find four of them in the Bible.
The Greeks, then, seem to accept that the kind of love you experience is dependent on the type of relationship. Do you desire sexual intimacy? Well, that’s Eros. You enjoyed a fun activity with your buddy? That’s Philia. Mom can’t get enough of her daughter? She’s experiencing Storge. You have warm feelings looking into a mirror? You’ve been hit by Philautia.
My investment of years with my former college sweetheart, now my wife? I guess that would be Pragma. God’s limitless, unmerited love for you? We call that Agape.
It’s helpful that love gets thinly sliced, placed on a slide, and pinned open with labels so that we can understand it better, but such exercises seem too mechanistic and leave out important components of love. At least I’m not satisfied with it. My young teen yearnings don’t seem to have any place in that realm of love.
Do we, as humans, experience love because we tend to cultivate a learned attachment to each other, or is there a unique and inexplicable bond called “love” which is created between special category of relationships? It’s a question I’ve spent more time pondering than I’m comfortable admitting. While I lie next to my wife, after she’s fallen asleep, I’ve indulged my drifting thoughts to wonder, “Is my intense feelings of love for her just a product of the amount of time I’ve spent with her?”
Forty years after biking past my crush’s house, I’m still not confident about love, but I’ve come to some conclusions. Love doesn’t happen just because two parties are in a certain relationship. There’s no guarantee that a father and son will experience Storge. Merely spending time in proximity doesn’t precede a Philia bloom. How we experience love, in my limited personal observation, has to do more with imagination.
I’m not suggesting that imagination fueled love is always true, just as two people engaging in sex are not always experiencing Eros. Relational categories are not the best indicators of love. It’s more likely a product of our imagination interacting with the past memories as well as future potentials.
There’s nothing profound in what I am suggesting: love is created, felt, experienced, shared when two parties ruminate on the past memories and imagine future ones with fondness and anticipation. Your mother will always remember holding you after you first entered her life and imagines making warm memories into the future. My Pragma for my wife doesn’t come merely from time spent together but also what I imagine lies ahead together. Likewise, we can cultivate our love for God as we contemplate the past faithfulness and anticipate our future in God’s presence.
What lies ahead for you with God—Someone who has demonstrated limitless grace to His people? Use your imagination.
David Kim is the English Ministry Pastor at Good Hope Adventist Church.