Love is . . . (continuing)

So we had a discussion last night and the question was raised as to whether, as our host put is, "one could love if one was not saved?"

I don't find that questions useful, but still I answered. I said, "Yes." I was thinking of altruistic and charitable acts undertaken by persons apart from a desire to follow God. Something in their hard-wiring - their genetic make-up, that is - that allows that capacity to exist.

The counter-point was raised (if I followed rightly) that love could not exist with self as an interested part and that no one, apart from God, would act without some level of "self" motivation (that's a good pun for another time). Therefore those acts may look like love but are not because they are self-seeking and thus removed, defitionally, from love.

Hmmmmmm.

Well, I gently inserted that I think "self" motivation is a bit of a player in the love even of most people we regard as Christians. Can you really ever be totally rid of self and still occupy this creation as a created being?

But I don't want to argue the point, really. Frankly I don't need to thump on I Corinthians 13 for a total assurance of my understanding of love. That passage occurs in the middle of a discourse about spiritual gifts and is a direct rebuke to the notion of the Corinthian church that status was determined by gifts and thus to be more spiritual you would naturally desire greater gifts rather than less. And thus comparison was running rampant. The idea of love is inserted in this discourse because it is, as St. Paul said, "a way beyond comparison." So instead of comparison and gift-envy, you should love. Love is (if you bother to read the whole 3 chapters as a contextual piece) the maturity that rises above the kindergarten mentality of comparison.

14:1 brings it rather into focus: Pursue love and be eager for the spiritual gifts . . .

I see that as a statement of priority, not balance. Pursue love. Gifts will follow, but love is the goal.

So to make I Corinthians 13, so commonly called "the love chapter," stretch to be the definitive passage about love in the entire canon of Scripture is, in my opinion, asking it to do work for which it was not intended. I do see why people are drawn to it ... it is a checklist. And most Christians (indeed, most people) have an inner infatuation with checklists as a way to govern their development. You can thank the industrial revolution and western culture for that monster. But put aside the idea of the checklist and look at the qualities (positively defined and negatively defined) as a whole.

If you really need a checklist, then be sure to add what Jesus himself said: "Greater love has no man that this - that he lay down his life for his friends." Get busy on that why don't-cha.