Life as a Christian Woman

¹If I speak in the tongues of men and of angels, but have not love, I am only a resounding gong or a clanging cymbal. ²If I have the gift of prophecy and can fathom all mysteries and all knowledge, and if I have a faith that can move mountains, but have not love, I am nothing. ³If I give all I possess to the poor and surrender my body to the flames, but have not love, I gain nothing.

⁴Love is patient, love is kind. It does not envy, it does not boast, it is not proud. ⁵It is not rude, it is not self-seeking, it is not easily angered, it keeps no record of wrongs. ⁶Love does not delight in evil but rejoices with the truth. ⁷It always protects, always trusts, always hopes, always perseveres.

⁸Love never fails. But where there are prophecies, they will cease; where there are tongues, they will be stilled; where there is knowledge, it will pass away. ⁹For we know in part and we prophesy in part, ¹⁰but when perfection comes, the imperfect disappears. ¹¹When I was a child, I talked like a child, I thought like a child, I reasoned like a child. When I became a man, I put childish ways behind me. ¹²Now we see but a poor reflection as in a mirror; then we shall see face to face. Now I know in part; then I shall know fully, even as I am fully known.

¹³And now these three remain: faith, hope and love. But the greatest of these is love.

I Corinthians 13 (The Love Chapter)

I’ve been on an organizing tear lately. I used to be hyper-organized, but marriage and childbirth have pretty well taken care of that. Recently, however, I hit my limit. Time for a major purge of the house.

During tonight’s purge and toss I ran across a small piece of paper, the size of a business card, that I had written notes on from a sermon when I was around the age of 15. The sermon was on the four different words that the ancient Greeks used for “love.” The four words are:

• Storge - Instinctive, natural affection.
• Eros - Passionate love.
• Philea - Friendship love.
• Agape - Total and unconditional love.

Our word Love is thrown around so easily that I wish we had several words like the ancient Greeks to convey the deeper meanings. But there is one descriptive word for love that is missing from the ancient Greek.

Narcissistic love.

And it runs rampant in our world today.

Narcissism is defined on dictionary.com as “inordinate fascination with oneself; excessive self-love; vanity.” Sort of a “I’m so great aren’t you glad I’ve let you into my world” kind of love.

We use the word love expecting something in return, kind of a payday for our affection. But that isn’t the way we are supposed to love. While we might not be able to truly love unconditionally, we need to love honestly and without regard to what we get out of the deal.

Love is hard. Whether it is the love between a husband and a wife, love between mother and child, or love between friends, there will be rocky times. There are going to be times when you wonder just what you were thinking when you invited that person into your life.

But what love means is that you can’t give up on that person. You can get mad, get sad, get over it. But you can’t just walk out. To do that is to deny that the person you are walking out on is a gift to you from God.

But that’s what we do. We get mad. We feel cheated. We didn’t get the deal that we signed up for. So we walk. And we look for the next bigger, better deal. And odds are we will walk out on that one, too. Because we have such an inflated vision of who we are, no one can live up to our vision of who we “deserve.”

I have seen good people, smart people, toss friendships of a lifetime because of a hurt, something that could have been worked out with effort. I have seen marriages end because one spouse wanted more than the other could deliver, and rather than reach a compromise or understanding, it’s just easier to file a paper at the courthouse and walk away.

And if I hear one more person tell me how resilient children are when faced with the loss of family…

Well, you get the picture.

I understand that there are situations where friendships and marriages end. I’ve lived in this world long enough to lose friendships because of my own stupidity, and I’ve walked away from friendships that were unhealthy. And I’ve had dear friends suffer through relationships that were marked by abuse and cheating, where divorce was the only answer.

But I’ve seen way, way too many folks, smart people, Christian people, walk out just because they were selfish and self-centered, unwilling to compromise or adapt.