Love Askew

Over a decade ago I had an astonishing three months, months during which, I'm thinking now, we were probably under a special benediction since we were being prepared for our overseas life.

The starting point of the wonder began with something quite small, though. It started with an eye- and heart-opening temperament seminar. During this seminar I found out that I was liked. By people. By...God.

See, as someone who has never managed to keep friends interested in being friends with me for more than a couple or few years, I also internalized that to reflect on what I thought God must think of me. I'd had this subconscious feeling that God saved me because He had to, because He'd promised to save anyone who called on His name. But after that I was kind of left to drift to the back of the crowd.

But to realize He actually liked me, and wanted to be with me...that was earth-shattering. It was mind-boggling -- really! But I'm now wondering, why? Why did it seem so much more meaningful to feel liked than loved (as I technically knew I was)? As Beth Moore says as well in one of her studies: "...try to fathom that God doesn't just love us. He also likes us!"

Doesn't just love us? What definition have we come to for "love" to lower it so? Have all our well-meaning efforts to convince people that "love is not a feeling, it's an act of your will"; "feelings of romance don't last, love is acts" made it...duty or something? Is it that we have only one word for 'love' using the same one to describe our relationships and our feelings for chocolate, whereas the Greeks have at least five; storge, agape -- what about "phileo"? That's the friendship one; liking love. Liking and loving. Have we squeezed the phileo out of our love here?

There are times when, as they say, loving doesn't necessarily involve feelings, sure. But it seems to me that maybe in our effort to keep it from meaning what the media suggest it means, we've swung too far the other way, as we are wont to do. I don't know. Maybe I've missed something here. But I want some of the glory of love to be restored to it. And I want my love of God to have a lot of liking in it.