Years ago, I had heard that the Inuit Indians (Eskimo) have many words for snow. Each word encompasses the essence of the frozen stuff. In English, we use an adjective in front of the word snow to describe it. For example, wet snow, dry snow, powdery snow, icy snow, packing snow etc. Some words just cannot be translated into English without using adjectives to capture the meaning of the word. Some words simply loose their multiple meanings or dimensions all together and thus the ‘true meaning’ of the word gets lost in the translation. When we read the translated version of a text it makes a little sense, but we find it hard to comprehend or grasp the concept.
This is true for the word LOVE and its translation in the Bible. In the Greek language there are no less than five words to our one English word for LOVE. Each of the Greek words encompasses a different essence of the word love. Over the years, when we (Americans-that’s all I can speak for) use the word love we primarily think and know it as a feeling. As many of us have experienced in our lives, love can and does mean more than a feeling. Somewhere over the past two thousand years the multifaceted phenomenon love has lost its translation from the early languages into English. Eros is the Greek word in which our English word erotic derives from. Obviously, this means feelings based upon sexual attraction, desire and craving. The second Greek word for love, storgé, means affection, especially between and toward family members. Interestingly enough, neither eros nor storgé appear in New Testament writings. Another Greek word for love is philos. The name for the city of Philadelphia is rooted in this Greek word, which means brotherly, reciprocal love. The ‘you do good to me and I will do good to you,’ kind of love.
The final word used by the ancient Greeks to describe love is the most interesting and by far the most under used and/or understood form of love. This word is agapé and it corresponds with the verb agapaó. This is an unconditional love that is based in behavior toward others without regard to their behavior. This type of love, agapé, is the love of deliberate behavior and choice, not a love of feeling. “Agapé is something of the understanding, creative, redemptive goodwill for all men. It is a love that seeks nothing in return. It is an overflowing love; it’s when what theologians call the love of God working in the lives of men. And when you rise to love on this level, you begin to love men, not because they are likeable, but because God loves them. You look at every man, and you love them because you know God loves him. And he may be the worst person you’ve ever seen.” (Martin Luther King Jr., Loving Your Enemies, Nov. 17, 1957).
“Love your enemies, bless them that curse you, do good to them that hate you, and pray for them that despitefully use you.” (Matthew 5). These are the words spoken by Jesus. We have heard and read this through the years and my guess is that most of us are dumbfounded because we can’t possibly comprehend loving someone who oppresses, murders, tortures, abuses, neglects, or hates us, or anyone we love. How can we love someone who has harmed us? Is Jesus really commanding me to love someone who makes my stomach go into knots or terrifies me? Or is the love Jesus is commanding us to ‘do’ something other than what we know as love; and it too was lost in translation?
Let’s explore agapé love a little further, “Because Jesus wasn’t playing; because he was serious. We have the Christian and moral responsibility to seek and discover the meaning of these words, and to discover how we can live out this command and why we should live by this command.” (Martin Luther King Jr., Loving Your Enemies, Nov. 17, 1957). Martin Luther King Jr. does an incredible job explaining how and why we must learn this kind of love. It is agapé love that will save humankind and the world.
How do we learn to love like this agapé love? It is NOT easy. It is something we need to teach ourselves and consciously practice. First, one must look inward at one’s self. This is probably the hardest thing to do. We must analyze whether the ‘hate’ response from an individual towards us is of various jealous reactions and/or other emotions that are prevalent in our human nature, OR is it something we have done to them in the past. Looking inward, we must also consider where we ‘fit’ in this world. What role in society are we apart of? Do people in other countries, cultures etc harbor hatred toward us? Why do people of various religious groups have hatred toward one another? If one is completely honest in this first step of learning to love on this level, you will find that the dislike and hate are reactions to something we have done directly as individuals or indirectly because we are apart of a group. That’s a little hard to swallow! Some of our associations are so far removed that we do not consider them relevant. Whether we are aware or unaware of our actions that have elicited an individual or group of people to react in such a way, we need to put ourselves in their place and decide how we would feel.
Why should we do this? Dislike begets dislike. Hate begets hate. Hating for hating sake just increases hatred in the world. If we hate you because of something that happened and we don’t look inwardly at why, chances are you hate us. Real world examples are abound. Just look at our relationships with other countries. Look at the Middle East and the continual and cyclical killing of people. You bomb us and killed people, so we retaliate. People are killed in the retaliation. People lose family members. Deep hurt takes root. Hate ‘blinds’ people to the ‘real’ reasons that caused the initial hurt. When people are infused in hate they cannot behave correctly. Unborn generations are taught about hateful behaviors and the cycle continues.
Someone has to have sense enough to stop the hate. Jesus is that someone and He is telling us to stop the hate. HE tells us we must love our enemies. If you are hated, then you stop the cycle where it is. You look inward and ask why. You take your enemies point of view. Ask yourself would you hate you if this happened to you? Would you hate you if this happened to your family? Then you do all you can possibly do to stop the cycle. You have to, because Jesus commands us to.
What if the hate has nothing to do with anything you have done or any association you have? There are people that are filled with hate. As Christians we must remember that ALL humans are made in the image of God. This does not mean a select few. That means that somewhere there is something about this person who hates that is good. We search for that goodness. We look hard to find that goodness and we love that goodness because that goodness is from God. We love God, so we love the hater. We do not love the hate, but we love the person who hates.
Agapé love is an action or a doing. A verb. It is a behavior and a choice on how to behave towards others. A quote I have had up on the computer screen for years is, “all that is needed for evil to succeed is, that decent human beings do nothing,” (Edmund Burke). Edmund Burke said this after taking German citizens into concentration camps after World War II. Many of us, I included; find it hard to stand up for what is right. We allow unjust things to happen to the innocent. We don’t want to get involved because it is not affecting us, or at least it is not affecting us directly. “…non-cooperation with evil is as much a moral obligation as is cooperation with good.” (Martin Luther King Jr., Loving your enemies, Nov. 17, 1957).
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