The Greatest Thing

Faith, hope, love, these three, but the greatest of these is love. The Apostle Paul at times was right on target. I’ve toyed with the concept before but it seems ever more imperative to try to figure out just exactly what it means to love God, neighbor and self. Reports of our impending doom fly at us from every direction and yet there still is not any serious discussion of how love might have the power to turn things around. That may be because there have been so few serious discussions of what love is. I remember one of Dad’s sermons in which he reported that an encyclopedic examination of love that once took pages had been condensed into a couple of paragraphs—and that was many years ago. I suppose I should go to wikipedia to find out what the current state of love’s definition is, but we all know that Stephen Colbert could change that overnight anyway. The Greeks—whose language was employed in the earliest stages of New Testament composition—had several different words to convey different aspects or kinds of love. English has managed to consolidate those into a singular word that somehow is supposed to convey the greatest power known to humankind. Perhaps this explains the almost infinite diversity of other means of power that translate into concrete forms of violence and destruction. In other words, we humans have discovered the secret of nuclear weapons because even that is apparently easier to grasp than cosmic love. I’ll pursue this line of thought for a while, and it sure would be nice to enhance the process with your thoughts. I’d love to hear them!