What is Love?

I was flipping through the channels a while ago when I fell upon an interview with a starlet who had just gone through a divorce. I normally would have blown right by the program on my way to ESPN, but something she said caught my attention. The interviewer asked her how she was coping with being alone again, to which she responded, “Nothing lasts forever, much less love.”

I wanted to protest, to clarify her grievous misunderstanding of what love is and what it can do, but the television is, unfortunately, a one-way communication device. She could not hear me.

But then I started thinking about what I’ve learned about love from popular culture about love. I’ve learned that I can’t buy me love, that love can drive you crazy, that love is a long, long road, that you can be love sick, love drunk and a soldier of love, that love stinks, that all is love, and that all you need is love. Sometimes, though, you don’t get any real answer in popular culture about love. Instead, you get a question: What is Love? (Baby don’t hurt me, baby don’t hurt me, no more.)

That’s not a very deep understanding of what love is. So, I decided that I would look to God’s revealed word to find out what He has to say about love. Even there, though, I didn’t get a definitive answer. The scriptures use the word love in so many different contexts, such as the following:

“For God so loved the world, that he gave his only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in him should not perish, but have everlasting live” (John 3:16).

“Jesus saith unto him, Thou shalt love the Lord they God with all thy heart, and with all thy soul, and with all thy mind. This is the first and great commandment. And the second is like unto it, Thou shalt love thy neighbour as thyself” (Matt. 22:37-39).

“And he said, Take now thy son, thine only son Isaac, whom thou lovest, and get thee into the land of Moriah; and offer him there for a burnt offering upon one of the mountains which I will tell the of” (Gen. 22:2).

“Husbands, love your wives, even as Christ also loved the church, and gave himself for it” (Eph. 5:25).

“That they may teach the young women to be sober, to love their husbands, to love their children” (Titus 2:4).

“And Jacob served seven years for Rachel; and they seemed unto him but a few days, for the love he had to her” (Gen. 29:20).

The word love cannot mean exactly the same thing in all of these passages. The love God has for us is not exactly the same as the love we should have for Him. The love someone has for a neighbor is not exactly the same the love shared between a husband and wife, while the love the husband and wife have for their children is different still. And the love that Jacob had for Rachel is the kind of love that all of us single people are looking for. Is it any wonder that someone might be confused about love, when it can be used in so many different contexts?

I found a quote from Gordon B. Hinckley in his book Standing For Something. He says, “If the world is to be improved, the process of love must make a change in the hearts of humans. It can do so when we look beyond self to give our love to God and others, and do so with all our hearts, with all our souls, and all our minds.

“As we look with love and gratitude to God, and as we serve others with no apparent recompense for ourselves, there will come a greater sense of service toward our fellow human beings, less thinking of self and more reaching out to others. This principle of love is the basic essence of goodness” (p. 9).

That definition of love sounded a lot like the definition of charity, which is the pure love of Christ. It is a selflessness that can enhance every kind of relationship. God sacrificed His Son as a selfless act for us, His children. We obey His commandments out of love, not only because we want the promised blessings if we do. Husbands and wives should serve one another and they should both sacrifice to satisfy their children’s temporal and spiritual needs. And any service rendered for a loved one should seem like a small price, just as Jacob’s seven years of service seemed to him but a few days.

This kind of love doesn’t seem like the kind of love that pop culture talks about. It seems like so much more. And as Mormon wrote to his son, Moroni, it is far more enduring that whatever that starlet felt for her ex-husband. “I am filled with charity,” he writes, “which is an everlasting love” (Moroni 8:17).

Happy Valentine’s Day, everyone!

Simon Peter: The Unauthorized Biography

I’ve always been bothered by the way Peter, the Apostle, is talked about in religious discussions. Some scorn him for his lack of courage and others praise him for overcoming his moments of weakness and becoming a powerful instrument in the Lord’s hands. Both characterizations ring false to me. They don’t adequately explain the entire New Testament record that we have of him.

We know that Peter did deny Christ three times, but we also know that he “smote high priest’s servant, and cut off his right ear” (John 18:10) when Judas came to betray Jesus with “a band of men and officers from the chief priests and Pharisees…with lanterns and torches and weapons” (John 18:3). The other gospels describe this group as “a great multitude with swords and staves” (Matt. 26:47, Mark 14:43). I would imagine that this multitude outnumbered the people with Christ, and that they were better armed. Many of them were probably soldiers. Yet Peter attacked them first. I can’t understand how he could be so zealous in the garden, yet so craven only a few hours later. With the rest of this post, I will present an alternative narrative to explain Peter’s actions here. I don’t present this as doctrine or the absolute truth, but as another way of understanding the scriptures and the people they teach us about, based on what they tell us.

The narrative starts at the Last Supper. This is where Christ, according to the popular understanding of these events, prophesies that Peter will deny Him. But the language Christ uses here is very important. He says, “Before the cock crow twice, thou shalt deny me thrice” (Mark 14:30). God frequently uses the future tense in commands, not necessarily prophecies. Just look at the Ten Commandments and all of the “thou shalts” that it uses (Exodus 20). But why would Jesus command anyone, let alone His chief Apostle, to deny Him? Right before this, Peter declared, “I am ready to go with thee, both into prison, and to death” (Luke 22:33).

Peter was perfectly willing to die for the man he knew to be the Christ. In fact, I get the feeling that he wanted to die for Him. Nothing would have been more glorious than giving his life for the man he worshipped. But that is not what Christ had in mind for him. Christ needed him to lead the church, no to die in some futile attempt to stave off the inevitable.

With this understanding, we see Peter’s reckless attack on the high priest’s servant as brave, but stupid, disobedience. Peter hasn’t yet got the message, so Christ tells him to put his sword away. Jesus has to help his overzealous disciple understand that this is supposed to happen. This isn’t a battle for Peter to fight.

Even still, while all of his other disciples “forsook him, and fled” (Mark 14:50), Peter followed. Being anywhere near Christ at that point was the most dangerous place for a disciple to be. The people wanted to kill the master, I can’t imagine that they would have treated the disciple any better. Despite the danger, Peter was there, as close as he could get to his Lord. When he was exposed as one of the Christ’s followers, he knew he had a choice to make, declare his allegiance to a condemned man and suffer the same fate, or deny it and escape with his life, as Christ commanded him. He chose obedience, even though the pain of it made him weep.

As the culmination of this narrative, the resurrected Christ asks Peter three times if he loves him not as a backhanded way of saying, “See, I told you so,” but as a reward. Peter suffered through helplessly watching the Messiah die, but it was not without a purpose. Peter was meant to “feed [the Lord’s] sheep” (John 21:17).