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Tackling the ControVerse Pastor Sam Manyika
YOUR definition of love can imprison, destroy or liberate you.
The notion that love is or is supposed to be just an emotion which flows uncontrollably like a river which has broken its banks, with no defined path or known destination is as misleading as it is destructive and dangerous.

Human beings were given capacity by God to determine their destiny, we are not creatures of instinctive impulse only. We have the ability to think, plan, assess, analyse and scrutinise. For Christians this should be done prayerfully too. We then draw conclusions and make relevant well informed decisions.

Love is not just an emotion even though it is emotion driven, but should involve intelligent choice making. In relationships between two people of the opposite sex, if you allow your emotions and feelings to dominate and control your decision making processes, you will have a lot of fixing, correcting and cleaning up to do all your life. When all caution is thrown to the wind and people marry a few seconds after meeting in what may be referred to as a “whirlwind romance,” you know  you have candidates for a potential disaster. The inside of a spinning whirlwind is not the best place to start or plan one’s life from.

When people ignore the voice of reason, wise counsel, the word of God, and their inner man, and also when they choose to ignore glaring differences, inconsistencies, lies and some dangerous behavioural patterns in the target of their so called “love” because their hearts are beating like some traditional drum, you can be assured of impending heartbreaks if not head breaks.

We all know that God is love. His word encourages us to love one another. It is common, however, when it comes to defining love that we tend to skip certain of its components picking out the ones which sound favourable to us. While the word of God describes love as being patient, unselfish, not proud, not jealous, nor boastful, not easily angry, etc there is one defining component that you find people deliberately skipping or ignoring which is the truthfulness of love. The bible says “love takes its delight in the truth.”

1 Corinthians 13:4-7:
Love is patient and kind, not jealous, not boastful,

5 not proud, rude or selfish, not easily angered, and it keeps no record of wrongs.
6 Love does not gloat over other people’s sins but takes its delight in the truth.
7 Love always bears up, always trusts, always hopes, always endures.

God loves unconditionally but this does not mean he embraces our condition if it is in conflict with his nature. So even though He embraces us initially as we are, there is a patient, kind but firm expectation that we will change into his likeness. There is also an application of truth during that process. A loving person will observe your condition truthfully and communicate that to you truthfully so that you can act on it. We all know the nature of truth, sometimes it is very painful and unpalatable.

A loving person will communicate to another person truthfully that they cannot be husband and wife, business partners or other because of specified reasons. They cannot be considered as failing to show love for telling the truth.

Some people with natural business acumen, who were destined to be wealthy lost it all after wrongfully acting on ill-defined perceptions of love. They married the exact opposite of the word success and lost everything. Their new partners were catalysts for poverty. Potentially powerful ministers were converted to spiritual wimps after getting caught up in this “brain and common sense suspension mode” were foolishness sometimes reigns supreme. The signs were there for everyone to see that it was never going to work, but as the saying goes, “Love is blind,” and in many cases this can be taken literary.

Actually true love should have both its eyes wide open. History has tried over and over again to educate humans on the dangers of acting on this self-destructive, misdirected misinterpretation of love to no avail.

To put it bluntly, to be stuck in a nonproductive, retrogressive, meaningless, unfulfilling, uninspiring, abusive, controlling, directionless, unprofitable relationship because you think that you love the other person or because you are constantly reminded that you are not a loving person if you walk away is social, material and spiritual suicide. It is also a big lie of the devil.

You do not have to hate someone to appreciate that being with them, or to associate with them will not get you anywhere in life, be they friend, relative or a business partner.

Loving a person unconditionally does not mean you allow their condition to destroy you. Loving unconditionally means you reach out to a person regardless of where they are and offer assistance or help especially so as to bring about change. If they however love their condition regardless of how distasteful or unproductive and retrogressive it is, that is a choice they will have made, you do not have to be stuck with it.

The following are some definitions of love by some philosophers and psychologists.

Greek philosophers

● Agape love is unconditional love. It is love by “choice” even if you are not pleased. A good example is “God loves us with our faults.”
● Philia love is the dispassionate virtuous love, guided by our likes or our healthy or unhealthy needs and desires.
● Storge is the word for family love and the physical show of “affection”, the need for physical touch. Sometimes the love between exceptional friends.
● Eros is the physical “sexual” desire, intercourse. It is the root word of erotic, and eroticism.
Modern day psychologists
● Passion underlies physical desire, sexual behaviour, and arousal. This is the physical side
● Intimacy is the emotional aspect: closeness, connectedness, and warmth of friendship.
● Commitment is the decision-making part “CHOICE” of love; are couples willing to work it out?

Everyone is always trying to break down the meaning of love. It is however up to you to realise that your perceptions and definition of it can imprison, destroy or bring liberty into your life. You have to think about it.