This is one of my all-time favorite topics to discuss: what is love? I’ve talked with tons of students, both at U of I and up in Whitewater about the definition, nature, and significance of love.
Like any other person who has ever lived, I have ingrained images, ideas, and feelings that are associated with the concept of “love” brought on by the culture I live in. Being raised in the modern Western world, I’ve been conditioned by society to believe in, and constantly hope for, love largely as a feeling or emotional experience that is continuously and unfailingly romance-gushing, passion-driven, soul-gripping, tear-jerking, and depicted in every successful chick flick movie. You know what I’m talking about: where two people’s lives continuously intertwine in odd and unlikely ways until they realize that, despite coming from two completely different walks of life, they have all the same hobbies and/or values. Eventually (usually around the hour-twenty-minute mark), these events culminate to a scene bursting with poorly acted sentiment in which they first kiss and, from there, flash forward to a life full of constant happiness and at least three children.
Don’t get me wrong, I’m man enough to admit that I enjoy the occasional chick flick (The Proposal is definitely my favorite movie among the genre). But it’s this grossly over-dramatized idea of love that makes our advertisement world go round, causes pre-teen girls to become unhealthily obsessed with pop culture icons two-and-a-half times their age, and brings at least half of the marriages in our nation to an end once the couple loses that “newly-wed” feeling. To be honest, this view of love is a lie. To be even more honest, it’s an abomination of what our God intended love to be. I’m not here to be cynical, and I’m not out to ruin anyone’s hopes of romance or finding “the one” – these things are valuable in a society where we have the privilege to choose who we pledge ourselves to in marriage (not everyone is so lucky). But love is more, much more, than romance, and that’s what makes it so amazing! Let’s look at what God calls love and blow the top off of that finite Americanized view.
I’ll start in Malachi chapter 1. Verses 2-3 depict a conversation between the nation of Israel and God through the prophet Malachi, and they say this:
” ‘I have loved you,’ says the LORD. But you [Israel] ask, ‘How have You loved us?’ ‘Was not Esau Jacob’s brother,’ the LORD says. ‘Yet I have loved Jacob, but Esau I have hated, and I have turned his mountains into a wasteland and left his inheritance to the desert jackals.’ ”
The first thing that hits me from this passage is that God says He hated Esau. As a kid raised in church, my initial response to this thought goes something like, “Woah…wait….what the heck, God can’t hate someone! They always said that God is love. How can God be love and yet hate someone?!?” Well it’s definitely true that God is love, as 1 John 4:7-11 tell us this as plainly as could be. But the question remains: how can a God Who is not only loving, but is the definition of love Itself, hate? And not simply hate something, but hate someone?
This is the conclusion that I have come to: God is not wrong; we are. I think that this is a generally true statement, no matter what the subject. But when applied here, I mean to say this: God’s definitions of love and hate are different than ours, and His are the correct ones. If this is so, then we need to examine the history that God is referring to in Malachi order to build our proper definitions of these two words.
The story of Jacob and Esau is found from Genesis 25:19 to Genesis 36:29. Obviously I won’t quote all of this, but I’ll summarize the general plot: Jacob and Esau were twins, born to Isaac, son of Abraham, and Isaac’s wife Rebekah. Though they were twins, Esau exited the womb first and was considered to be the eldest child. Therefore, Esau was entitled to receive Isaac’s blessing and inheritance. However, in a plot concocted by Rebekah, who loved Jacob more than Esau, Jacob steals their father’s blessing from Esau. Esau, upon discovering this, becomes murderously enraged and pledges to kill his brother. So Jacob does what any of us would – he flees for his life. After some time, Jacob is met by the Lord, Who promises him that his descendants will become a great nation with whom God will keep the covenant He made to Abraham: to bless them and be their God. God then renames Jacob as Israel, who later becomes the father of the nation of Israel, God’s chosen people of the Old Testament.
I think Esau tends to get a bad wrap in this story. But when we look at Jacob and Esau, they’re really not that different. Both were descendants of Abraham, so both had the opportunity to be blessed by God. And neither were exactly model citizens: Jacob was a thief, while Esau had intentions of murdering his brother. The only difference is that one of them, Jacob, had a covenant made to him by God. Esau never does, and we can read in Genesis 36 that his descendants melded into the tribes who inhabited the Canaanite land (i.e. people who worshiped idols and had no relationship with God).
This singular difference between the lives of Jacob and Esau is the key to understanding God’s words in Malachi. He made an eternal covenant to Jacob and his descendants, but God never does this for Esau; God committed Himself to an unending relationship with one line of descendants, and so He loved them. But He doesn’t offer this love to Esau. So God’s love is covenantial commitment, and His hate is the lack of this commitment. In other words, true love is to choose and commit yourself to someone – to stand by them and bless them no matter what. Accordingly, true hate is not the abhorrence of someone, but simply that they are not someone you have committed yourself to. When a man marries a woman, he vows to choose her in love over every other woman in the world, and, thus, hates those other women in comparison to his wife (remember to keep the proper definitions here!). This relational understanding of love and hate is what Jesus is referring to in Luke 14:26-27; as His disciples, we are choosing to commit ourselves to Christ above all other relationships.
I think we need to change our definitions of these words to fit God’s definitions. And as we do this, let’s drop the fluffy view of love as a product of emotions and feelings that, Hollywood aside, will inevitably wax and wane over time. And let’s adopt the secure, lasting, and truthful view of love as a covenant that outlasts emotions, hardship, pain, arguments, differences in opinion, physical separation, etc. Love is looking at someone, whether it’s a spouse, child, parent, friend, co-worker, fellow member of the Body of Christ, or whoever else and saying, “I choose to stand by you and bless you no matter what.” That’s how Paul is able to write in 1 Corinthians 13:7-8a that “love always protects, always trusts, always hopes, always perseveres. Love never fails…”
Grace and peace.
nick at navs 