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G’day everyone, Dave Deane here, and our question for the week is: Is love, love?
In 1922, Gertrude Stein published a poem entitled “Sacred Emily” which has a relatively well-known line: “a rose is a rose is a rose…” What does that mean? Well, it isn’t all that clear, but I think one of the better interpretations is that it means ‘things just are what they are’ and by repeating what a thing is, “a rose is a rose is a rose” we reflect and invoke our experience of roses; every new repetition of “rose” brings a new memory or reinforces a new smell, a new colour, a new emotion, a new experience we have had with roses to help us appreciate the diversity of lived experiences within the unity of what we call a “rose”.
Well, fast forward a century and the scene is a little different: from the 20th century poem of a rose to the 21st century politics of love. “Love is love” we have been told. But what does that mean?
Today, the phrase “love is love” has become something of an argument for human rights; for diversity and inclusion. The argument runs something like this: IF x THEN y; IF “Love is love” THEN all people should be free to live and love as they wish. And so we’ve had ad campaigns telling us ‘love has no genders’; ‘love has no race’; ‘love has no disability’; ‘love has no age’; ‘love has no religion’ – love is love! Nothing more, nothing less. Now at one level I understand the sentiment here. As a society, it is immensely important that we treat all people with equal opportunities, because every person is a human being: with intrinsic dignity and inherent worth.
But like Stein’s poem, there is also something very obscure about all of this. And I think what we have seen over the last several years the extent to which people with sincere motives can be sincerely mistaken.
What does “love is love” actually mean? I’m not exactly sure and if I understand the use of the phrase correctly, I think that’s kinda the point. Love has no boarders. We shouldn’t be asking what “love is love” means, it just is what it is. But if that were actually the case, we wouldn’t be having the culture wars that we are having, because if love has no meaning then the phrase “love is love” is meaningless. But it clearly isn’t meaningless because those who use the phrase mean something by it.
And here is where the problem begins to emerge. “Love is love” is a blind statement made by people with their eyes open.
If we express the proposition “love is love” in formal logic, we see that it is a statement of the law of identity: “A is A”. But as Aristotle pointed out some two and a half thousand years ago, “A is A” is hollow; it’s a proposition with no meaningful content because it says nothing about A. For example, when someone says, “A hylozinophorin is a hylozinophorin”, if we want to progress with a right understanding of a hylozinophorin, then the first thing we should be asking is, “what’s a hylozinophorin?” Because simply saying ‘it is what it is’ says nothing about what it is (I just made up that word by the way so don’t both googling it).
Aristotle recognized this long ago, and he suggested that the law of identity reveals within itself another more fundamental law of thought, the law of non-contradiction – “A is not non-A”. In saying “A is A” one is making an assertion of identity about A which presupposes an already held view of A in distinction to, say, B, or C, or some other non-A. So, in saying ‘this pen is this pen’ I am determining or putting a limit on what this thing is, this pen, as opposed to what it is not, say this top, or this microphone.
All of that to say, when it comes to the phrase “love is love” we see that there is already a presupposed view of love in mind. So when someone says, “love is love”, if we want to progress with a right understanding of a love the first thing we should be asking is “what is love?” But that is precisely the question which is omitted from present public discourse. And its omitted to its own peril. “What is love?” Left undifferentiated, the answer is this [… SILENCE… “nothing”… SILENCE] and you can’t parse the colours of a rainbow from that. You see, in removing all distinctions you end up removing even the distinction of no distinctions and so end up with nothing.
Look, I am genuinely all for diversity and inclusion, but this self-defeating cultural logic of love is not the way to argue for it. Not only does it fail, but the conflict between the intention and the actual logic of “love is love” in its socio-cultural-political outworking ends up being, ironically, oppressive all on its own. I mean, if love has no genders, no race, no age – why should it have marriage? I’m not talking about sexual orientation; I’m talking about love. Who gets to define the rules about what’s ‘in’ and what’s ‘out’; about what’s legitimately loving and what’s not? If the word “love” has any meaning at all, then there are rules, there are limits. The question is who sets them?
Well, permit me to sketch the Christian alternative.
The Beatles have told us that “all you need is love” but our culture has told us we don’t know what love is, so in effect we’re being told that we need what we don’t know. It’s not a new message. Paul to the Athenians: “while I was passing through and examining the objects of your worship, I also found an altar with this inscription, ‘TO AN UNKNOWN GOD’… what you worship in ignorance, this I proclaim to you.” (Acts 17:23). And that proclamation by Paul to the Athenians begins with “The God who made the world and all things in it…” (v. 24).
If our culture is messed up anywhere, it is messed up here. “Love is love” is a statement of love that says nothing about love because it has not reference or orientation to what love actually is. By contrast, the Christian alternative begins with “The God who made the world and all things in it…” (v. 24).
You know, it’s fascinating to me that the very first mention of “love” in the Bible is found in Genesis 22:2 when God tells Abraham to take his son Isaac to the land of Moriah to offer him on an altar. That story is not about child sacrifice – God provided a ram for Abraham – the point of that story is to spotlight what the love of God is: its action; it’s self-giving in the provision of a suitable sacrifice and Abraham and Isaac and the ram serve as a type or shadow for the ultimate expression of biblically love in the loving act of God’s self-giving in the person of Jesus.
See, it’s just too easy to say the words ‘I love you’. I love Malaysian food, I love my wife, I love green, I love my baby boy, I love the cricket – same word! Radically different meanings. When you take away the words “I love you” how would you know if someone really loves you?
You can see where I’m going. REAL love is not just a statement, real love needs to be demonstrated; it needs to be made concrete, it needs to be seen, to be heard, to be touched, to be made flesh and come alive! Hence the phrase: “being in love”. The lover lives literally in the being of the beloved, with a desire to give and to receive; to exhaust themselves for the other and to shelter themselves there all the same.
That profoundly deep kind of love is what the Christian Alternative offers: “God is love. This is how God showed his love among us: He sent his one and only Son into the world that we might live through him. This is love: not that we loved God, but that he loved us and sent his Son as an atoning sacrifice for our sins. (1 John 4:8-10).
The Christian alternative to the superficial and self-defeating cultural logic of “love is love” could not be greater. In the proposition “love is love” you can reverse the two terms around and have the same thing. You can’t do that with “God is love” because to say “love is God” is to subject God to love which leads back to the cultural warring of ‘my love’ versus ‘your love’ and the oppression begging question: who defines love. But when the Bible declares “God is love” the sacred boundaries of what is loving and what is not are fixed by no human hand.
And the word the Bible uses for “love” is “agapé.” There are 4 words for “love” in the Greek – the original language of the New Testament: storge (parental love), phileo (friendship love), eros (romantic love) and agapé, which is (what the Bible calls the love of God). The Biblical teaching is that the first three hinge on the fourth. We love parentally, friendly and romantically because of the love of God. And that’s why the Bible says you can’t say you love God and at the same time hate your neighbour, and you can’t say you love your neighbour and hate God because in the very act of love you’re presuming upon God who is love. So it’s not ‘my love’s versus ‘your love’ and whoever yells the loudest wins the oppressive day. It’s ‘your love’ and ‘my love’ because of and under God’s love. God sets the sacred bounds.
But, hang on: haven’t we just traded one tyranny for another? Why should God tell me how to live and love? What gives God the definitional right? Well, that question still shows that we haven’t quite got it yet. God is love, He has told us, but much more than mere words, He has SHOWN us the depths of His love in Jesus which means God’s love – God’s agape – in JESUS becomes the model by which we pattern our love of our self and of others. Jesus’ freely and willingly gave His life for you and I – not on some emotional whim, spurt of lust or vague sense of something bigger than Himself – but in wilful obedience to the Father for the sake of those whom He loves: you and me. Words can’t even begin to express the profundity of that kind of self-sacrificial love. But there it is… And it is patient, it is kind, it is not jealous, it does not boast it is not proud. It does not dishonour, it isn’t self-seeking or easily angered… It rejoices in truth; protects, trusts, hopes, perseveres, and never fails.
Today’s culture warring is essentially a quarrel of lovers who know nothing of love. The Christian alternative says “God is love” and proves it in Jesus who both raises our expectations and subverts our self-sufficiency. We need not be content playing in the puddles when before us the love of God extends like an endless ocean.
“Jesus stood and cried out, saying, “If anyone is thirsty, let him come to Me and drink.” (John 7:37-38)
