What's Love Got to Do With It?

there are different kinds of love, eros, agape, philia, storge, etc…but i think we have watered it down because people are offended by not being loved. much like the word friend; people seem hesitant to call someone an acquaintance.

while we should love our neighbor, i wonder what type of love we are capable of in our humanness…is it the kind that gives or just the kind with good intentions.

Here’s a good one for you: a couple of weeks ago, I was convicted because I realized I was using (most of my life) the words “Love you” to mean “Goodbye”.

Historically, this is probably because someone(A) had a mental breakdown because someone else(B) died, and they(A) weren’t sure that they(B) knew that they(A) loved them(B), and then this convention was adopted into popular culture and trained into me as a child.

Now, that previous paragraph reminded me of my hatred of pronouns, and how in college I decided that communication was impossible. There were lots of reasons for this, besides just pronouns. Words like “nail”, which have multiple straightforward meanings. Words like “Mad”, which have a generally accepted meaning, but have (slightly? maybe not) different meanings to different individuals. And last, words like “Love”, which have so many possible meanings they are pretty much worthless. (now isn’t THAT a terrible thing to say.)

I gave up. (it was an adolescent phase; I matured late. (if at all? ) ) I deliberately encrypted my speech, using babble, obtusely bad grammar, and other techniques to emphasize the ambiguity and error involved in conversation.

I moved on, and have shoved the issues of “has she understood me” or “am I really understanding her” under the carpet, and only worry about them when there are warning signs, but the brokenness of our language remains, and about the best hope it appears we have (though I’m not fond of it) is that spanish will steamroll the US, since at least it has a few more distinctions than English. (for example: amiga vs novia)
Failures will always exist, and we’ll always struggle with them, while we’re down here. For now, I’m trying to make sure I am meaning the right thing when I say “Love you”. I don’t think reducing my use of the word Love is the correct direction; I need to change my heart.

To be honest, I think we need to use the word “love” more. What would it hurt? There’s different levels of love, but it’s all love. I’d rather be saying, “I love, I love, I love” than “I hate, I hate, I hate”.

Great post though. There’s definitely a love war going on now in the world, and the fact that you have been thinking about it shows that the Holy Spirit is confirming this in everyone.

PS
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Scott, you are absolutely right! I like your wording much better than mine:)