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Love Languages...

              “A new command I give you: Love one another. As I have loved you, so you must love one another. By this everyone will know that you are my disciples, if you love one another.” (John 13:34-35)

 

          Now, let’s start with the Greek. The word for love is transliterated agape. It’s not philos, which is brotherly love or friendship. In other words, we’re not called to like one another. We’re called to love one another – to look out for what is in the best interest of, and to be committed to maintain a relationship with the other person. This command given by Jesus doesn’t involve our loving those who aren’t Christians. That’s elsewhere. This is tough because Christians are humans and humans can be world-class jerks. This is what some folks don’t seem to get – it’s not the Christians, the Atheists, the Whites, the Blacks, the educated, the uneducated, the right, or the poor that are jerks. It’s people.

          But one of the two major functions of any religion is really to teach people how to deal with one another. One of the goals of religion is to teach people not to be jerks. It’s the same with philosophy. In the wrong hands, the purpose tends to shift to justifying the jerk-hood of those who follow the religion or philosophy.

          As one world-class jerk to another, I find that my jerkiness tends to be activated when I have to interact with people. I would much rather do something for someone – especially something I enjoy doing – than to spend time with the person. This is especially true if it involves listening to the person. I claim my “love language” is acts of service. If there are love languages, are there not also hate languages?

          If I may paraphrase Dallas Willard, attack and withdrawal are hate languages, but I suspect that there are dialects and that they are distortions of our love languages: acts of service, words of affirmation, touch, gifts, and quality time. So, my hatred might be expressed through my not helping someone, by doing something designed to harm or humiliate the person, or by doing for something they can and should do for themselves.

          This is just a theory on my part, but it makes sense. Do you know what your love language(s) is(are)? What would using those words, that time, that touch, those acts of service, or those gifts to harm look like? What would withdrawing them be like? 

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