CHAPTER 1: HOW DO YOU LOVE?

A Contemporary Story of Love
For any young person to think of love is to think of the future and the romantic adventures with their special other. We dream of that perfect other to romantically and mysteriously enter our lives; we will open the door and there he will be; we will walk on the street and there she will smile at us, and in that instant moment we know – it is them! The reality is that we live in a “gray” world with messed-up people and situations we all have been a part of. Dreams-like relationships don’t usually happen, because life is not a dream. Life is a set of choices and a variety of people we meet; each day we need to decide what to eat and wear and we need to work on our relationships with family, friends and the special other; life is a process.
I have always hoped, like most of my “girly” friends, that the man I am going to marry will be a single man, perhaps couple of years older than me, with a beautiful smile and well taken care of teeth. I think of this man as never married before with no kids on the side, and hopefully, still a virgin. We will get married, have kids and good jobs, never argue and go on with our lives as happy servants of our God – oh, that is because we are also both of the same faith – that is my fantasy of perfect romance. But what he will be like cannot be known at this moment as I have not yet met him, he will be more like the man in the story I am going to tell below, actually no . . . he will be more like me . . .

Katty is a twenty-two year old college senior, young American woman and Riley is about thirty-three year old man.[1] Katty and Riley are currently in a romantic relationship with one another, with the full support of their families and friends. It does not sound like it yet, but this love story is an unusual occurrence in Western cultural understanding of romance. Katty has been waiting for her love most of her life and now this man, who appears to be that one person, is not that perfect Romeo of which girls dream. Riley has two kids, one of them is eight years old and the other is about two. Katty did not know this until later in their relationship as Riley thought it would be best to tell her later, perhaps so that the children would not get their hopes up. The story gets complicated as each child comes from a different mother. Katty is not a naïve woman, and of course she was a little surprised by all of this and took some time to think it through and check in with her family. Of course, they are still together – a year later, which means that Katty made a decision to take a risk and love him beyond all of that. To be honest with you, this is not a love story of which I dream or hope to have. It is everything but that! It seems that Katty made a choice, a choice to love this man who wanted to love her back just as much. Katty had enough courage to take the risk and respond not only to the feelings of love, but the physical and realistic act of loving another to whom life has happened. To be able to do this, there is a sense of active humility involved which shows the self, that life also happens to us and we need as much of the other person’s forgiveness as they need it from us. True love here, has the power to overcome what looks like a mess and bring order back into other’s lives.

Katty and Riley are a happy couple a year later, living together and thinking about marriage. I am not sure what the final outcome of this story will look like, but I know that both of them seem to be selfless in their acts of love for one another. Keep this story in mind, as it is the most recent recollection of true loving that I was able to observe and learn from. I believe that this example of practical and daily love for the other, even though it emphasizes the romantic aspect of love (although I am not sure it is only a romantic love we have here), it is a way of showing us God’s love which transforms our hearts to the point of our ability to sacrifice of our own good for someone else’s even greater good.

“All we need is love.”

Beloved, we must continue to agape (“love”) one another, because agape comes from the center of who God is and everyone who agapes out of God has been begotten and he knows God Himself. The not agaping one, does not know God, because God is that agape.
(1 John 4:7-9)[1]

God is agape. Agape is a mystery. The ability to agape one another is a miracle, and yet God calls us to live out that miracle on a daily basis. It is in human beings that this miracle can be fulfilled and this agape-love can come alive. Human beings are a necessary part of creation, as their relationships reveal this mystery of transforming love and living God. But human beings tend to be very self-centered, self-righteous and prideful, and at times, it is very hard to have agape for creatures with such attitudes.
Agape cannot be defined as mere love, as in our cultural and social ways we come to understand love as a warm feeling toward one another, or an object of our affection. Agape is much more extraordinary, full of wonder and “aggressive” in a sense, than a mere warm feeling. Agape could be very dangerous to a society as it desires to sacrifice one’s rights and pleasures for the other’s better being. Love in the Western understanding of the word, does not require self sacrifice to such an extent, nor does it call to give all we have to those who have less. Our understanding of love is that of claiming a possession of the desired object and it becomes ours. It is a one way street and it encourages our success, rather than the success of the other. Thus far, my understanding of “love,” as with the majority of young people in my generation, is very shallow and it is based on the cultural aspects. We rarely pick up theological dictionaries and look up words, especially the word “agape” and try to meditate on its meaning for our lives. If we do so, rarely do we meditate on its meaning for the community as a whole, rather we think of it in terms of individual good, as that is how we are encouraged to live – individualistically and independently. In the Western world, the good life is a life of personal success and not the success of everyone else in one’s community, that is, instead of working toward the good of the whole, we (I) work and are expected to work toward the good for our own lives. I think we missed the point somewhere.

This is why I am at a crossroad, asking questions about the true meaning of “love,’: What did “love” look like, for a first generation of Christians, who lived in communion with each other? How can this “love” be translated into today and interpreted in its cultural content? And what is its intentional meaning for me today, the one who believes that the Bible is a set of directions for one’s life? If I believe in “love” as something commended to me by Christ, the one whom I desire to serve, I must take this subject seriously with an appropriate discipline, as is anyone who sets a set of values for their lives. We must not only believe in them, but learn about them, look into the day when they were formed and see how others before us lived them out, so that those after us can also be transformed by it.

Copyright © 2007 by Dorota Krzyzaniak
All rights reserved

Footnotes
[1] Krzyzaniak, Current Translations of the New Greek Testament.
[1] The names have been changed for the purpose of this paper and privacy of the individuals.