Not just on Valentine’s Day but all year through we long for expressive love. Is a picture perfect love too much to ask for? Does anything in that shade even exist? Let’s explore!
We long for relationships because we all long for love. We are not created to live in isolation but in communities. Since we are made in the image of God we are by default social beings, created relationally. So if we fail to love, we fail to reflect His image.
Love translates itself differently in different relationships, and I cannot deny that each of them has gravely disappointed me at some point or the other. Yet my heart keeps yearning for that one “PICTURE-PERFECT LOVE.” Wondering if there is one such love…
CS Lewis in his classic work “Four Loves” broadly classifies love into four kinds.
•STORGE
Is the warm affectionate love that parents have for their children and vice versa. It is natural and emotive because it is present without any compulsion and arises out of affection to the familiar. It is least discriminating and most vulnerable.
This love is understood to be something “built in “or “readymade” in a family context. As a result, members of the family expect or even demand to be loved despite their wrong behaviour.
UNREASONABLE & often DISAPPOINTING love.
•PHILEO
Phileo love refers to the strong relationship between people who share common interests. Unlike storge, it is least impulsive or emotive. Even strangers can become friends. C.S. Lewis says the typical expression of opening Friendship would be something like, ‘What? You too? I thought I was the only one!”
Friends are free from a self-conscious attitude because what brings them together is not themselves, but the common interest they share with each other. This relationship by nature is selective and therefore exclusive because not all of us share similar interests. Broken friendships are common as interests keep changing.
An UnRELIABLE & InCONSISTENT love.
•EROS
Refers to a state of being in love. Eros includes erotic love. But because of blind devotion Eros can cause heartbreaks. In such cases love becomes a demon the moment it begins to be a god. That’s the danger of elevating Eros to the status of god.
DOMINATING & DEMANDING love.
•AGAPE
Which is unconditionally expressed to people with non-lovable qualities. It’s God’s sacrificial love. God is so full of love, that it overflows and he can’t help but love us. Agape is a Christian virtue as was used in the first century AD to describe Christ’s love on the cross. “In God there is no hunger that needs to be filled, only plenteousness that desires to give.”
The other loves are supposed to yield to the love of God for those forms of love TO BE COMPLETE.
In conclusion I quote
“When I love someone and that someone doesn’t love me back, I hurt because I lost something.
When God loves me and I don’t love Him back, God hurts because we lost something…” (Anonymous)
This is what I call a “PICTURE-PERFECT LOVE”.
Source –
1. ?Ask
2. C.S. Lewis, The Four Loves
