Love and Charity
I wrote this on my Xanga way back…
Thursday, May 13, 2004
Love isn’t a feeling. Feelings are fickle and capricious. Love is much grander.
That thought needs some revamping. Half a year later, I’ve a much more comprehensive understanding of it.
There are many kinds of love – from God, between family, between friends, romantic, and etc… I’m talking about the romantic sort =p. The insight I gained from thought and experience was further refined in reading Passion and Purity’s 2nd last chapter. There are two “stages” of love. The problem with society is that the second part is often overlooked and discounted. As I see it, feelings play a large part in the first stage and choice plays a large part in the second stage. When one starts to like someone else they may wonder what it is to like someone, whether or not this liking is serious, what it means to be serious, where the line is between liking and loving, whether it is an infatuation or not, whether we can trust our feelings, and so forth… I don’t intend to clarify all too much of that in this lil write-up, my focus is the second part of love. In this first stage one is strongly attracted to other and there’s a “spark” and an overall sensation of “being in love”. In Passion and Purity, Elisabeth Elliot tells of how there was a guy who was very handsome and had dated many different girls and such. He had always “fell out of love” with them and wondered what was wrong. The last girl he was with he felt was surely the one but then lost interest after awhile. He wonders who to marry. In his description of that girl he only said “gorgeous”, which is indicative already of a serious lack of maturity and understanding of love and marriage. Elisabeth Elliot responds saying
“about this business of falling out of love. Everybody does it, you know. Sometimes before they get married, but always afterwards. Modern folks simply bug out of the marriage then, if they feel no obligation to keep vows — vows made foolishly, they believe.”
What is needed after what is felt as “falling out of love” is a followup into this “second stage” of love. Elisabeth then quotes from C.S. Lewis in Mere Christianity
“Being in love is a good thing, but it is not the best thing. [I want to point out the emphasis of the term being 'in love' and not 'love' itself] There are many things below it, but there are also many things above it. You cannot make it the basis of a whole life. It is a noble feeling, but it is still a feeling. Now no feeling can be relied on to last in its full intensity, or even to last at all…. In fact, the state of being in love usually does not last…. But of course ceasing to be ‘in love’ need not mean ceasing to love. Love… is a deep unity, maintained by the will and deliberately strengthened by habit; reinforced by the grace which both partners ask and receive from God…. They can retain this love even when each would easily, if they allowed themselves, be ‘in love’ with someone else. ‘Being in love’ first moved them to promise fidelity: this quieter love enables them to keep their promise. It is on this love that the engine of marriage is run: being in love was the explosion that started it.”
It is not wrong to be attracted to someone if they’re physically attractive, charismatic etc… but if that is all that is behind a marriage then there is something very wrong. “Being in love was the explosion that started it”, it is by no means the end in and of itself. The second part of love is what is mentioned as the “quieter love”. That’s the part where love is a choice. The initial love/feeling being a choice is still arguable, but is not the focus. The choice is made with a mature evaluation of the beloved and serious thought of the future. After quoting C.S. Lewis, Elisabeth continues in her letter of response… “one of these days you need to take a cool, clear look at a good Christian woman. Assess her potentials as a good Christian wife. Is she the kind you’d want as a hostess at your table? Is she what you want for a mother for your children? Is she womanly? Godly? Sensible? Modest? Companiable? [...] Is it God’s time for you to get married? Then make up your mind and ask God’s help to love her as she ought to be loved.”
January 10th, 2005 at 8:32 pm
thanks. – Sig
January 11th, 2005 at 10:10 pm
When you’re thinking about being in love and love as a choice (both in the romantic sense) I believe that the two are invariably linked. It’s very easy, like you said, to fall in love and just as easy to fall out of love. Speaking from personal experience as well, the new feeling of being in love is one that is very exciting and fresh, something unexpected and altogether greater than anything expected. Where the feeling starts to fade is when the unexpected becomes the expected which takes away some of the element of excitement and introduces some staleness to the relationship. A romantic relationship, like any other is one that must be constantly growing, maturing, deepening, changing from the growth. Where the falling out of love might happen is when the second part of love, the all important choice to love is not present. If someone simply wants to ride the wave of the feeling of being in love, sooner or later (and probably sooner) he or she will fall out of love. It might feel like “that special magical something is beginning to fade.” It takes a choice to stay in love, a choice to be romantic, a choice to see something new everyday in the person you love, to do something new, to walk through life together. Do that, and you will see a smile as fresh as the first time ever was.
“acknowledged”
“affirmative”
“ready and waiting”