The problem is, I think in general we have a flawed perspective on both.
My general experience is that when someone mentions 'love', the images that come to mind (for me and for others) are images of romance and eroticism, and these primarily in the context of one-to-one relationships (ie. intimacy).
So when putative 'love' songs are played (some examples: U2's "When Love Comes To Town", Evanescence's "Bring Me To Life", Enrique Iglesias' "Hero") the imagination jumps to romantic and erotic conclusions.
However, there is nothing in any of these songs (and many others) to indicate that they are actually about romance or eroticism (leaving aside the issue of music videos, which often introduce themes that are not obviously present in the songs - this is the case with "Hero"). They may, in fact, be about Love.
Scott Peck defines Love as "the willingness to extend oneself for the sake of one's own or another's spiritual growth" (paraphrased, The Road Less Taken).
And the apostle Paul wrote the following:
This chapter is often read at weddings, which is fine, but again, it shifts Paul's love discourse into the context of romantic and erotic love, instead of Love.The Gift of Love
If I speak in the tongues of mortals and of angels, but do not have love, I am a noisy gong or a clanging cymbal. And if I have prophetic powers, and understand all mysteries and all knowledge, and if I have all faith, so as to remove mountains, but do not have love, I am nothing. If I give away all my possessions, and if I hand over my body so that I may boast, but do not have love, I gain nothing.
Love is patient; love is kind; love is not envious or boastful or arrogant or rude. It does not insist on its own way; it is not irritable or resentful; it does not rejoice in wrongdoing, but rejoices in the truth. It bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things.
Love never ends. But as for prophecies, they will come to an end; as for tongues, they will cease; as for knowledge, it will come to an end. For we know only in part, and we prophesy only in part; but when the complete comes, the partial will come to an end. When I was a child, I spoke like a child, I thought like a child, I reasoned like a child; when I became an adult, I put an end to childish ways. For now we see in a mirror, dimly, but then we will see face to face. Now I know only in part; then I will know fully, even as I have been fully known. And now faith, hope, and love abide, these three; and the greatest of these is love.
On the other hand, we avoid death, treating it like an enemy. What if Love and Death are more connected than many of us like to imagine?
The experience that got me thinking about this question was seeing the promotional wrapping for the DVD collection of Buffy the Vampire Slayer Season 5. You see, in one particular episode of that season (the episode "Intervention"), Buffy, the superpowered guardian of her world, takes a vision quest in an attempt to better understand her power, her calling, and her duty.
The message she receives from her spirit guide is troubling to her. For almost five years, she has been immersed in death. She fights undead vampires, she kills demons and sorcerers, she has herself been drowned and revived, and shortly before the episode in question, her mother died of complications due to brain surgery.
The message is two-fold:
"Love will lead you to your Gift."
"Death is your Gift."
Buffy's response is resolute: "Death," she says, "is not a gift."
But this message throws her into self-doubt. She has spent a lot of energy convincing herself that a Slayer is something more than just a killer; that she has a calling above and beyond the blood-and-guts of nightly patrols and demon fighting. How can death be her gift?
What she neglects is the first portion of the message: "Love will lead you to your Gift."
How can a Love, which leads to a Death, be a Gift? In a Christian context, this concept is not difficult to understand. And Buffy understands as well, when the time comes. In the final episode of the season (the episode is called "The Gift") she sacrifices herself in an act of love, saving the world from an onslaught of evil and destructive forces.
So that's all well and good. Kudos to Joss Whedon for portraying a character who does not see a link between Love and Death, but discovers it when the time is right.
But that promotional packaging... do you know what it said? It said, "Buffy learns that love is the greatest gift of all."
Love is the Gift? What? At first glance, it seems to be connected to the chapter from 1 Corinthians that I quoted above. The NRSV, of course, calls this chapter "The Gift of Love." Love is the greatest spiritual gift, says Paul. Love is the greatest gift, says the packaging from the Buffy Season 5 DVD set. But the Love that Paul writes of is intimately connected with death. And the love that Buffy discovers in her journey is intimately connected with death, also.
When you just throw that statement out there - Love is the greatest gift of all - without any explanation, you have to assume that people are going to be thinking of mushy, sentimental love. Paul writes an entire chapter explaining what he means when he says "love." Scott Peck wrote an entire book. It took Buffy five episodes to figure it out.
When love is framed as a romantic, erotic, or sentimental condition, it is easy to convince ourselves that we are satisfying the Great Commandment, to love God, neighbour, and self. It's easy to have mushy feelings about everyone, and if that is the greatest gift, then we're all doing okay. But love isn't the greatest gift. Love, if you remember, will lead you to your gift.
So what is it? Death? For Buffy, at that point in her life, it was. But I don't think that's true for everyone. Love will lead you to your Gift, whatever it might be. And your Gift is not something that you will receive... it is something that you already have, and that you are being called to give away. What will it be? Love will show you the way.
But not a romantic or erotic love. This is another kind of Love.
Why would they write that on the promotional packaging? Love is the greatest gift of all. A charitable view would be that they didn't want to reveal the secret, so they said something ambiguous and (somewhat) intriguing. A cynical view would be that they thought their audience would not understand or be 'turned-off' if they wrote what really happened. A pessimistic view would be that they are so wrapped up in the fluffy bubblegum culture that they actually can't see the difference between what they wrote and what happened.
Which of these is accurate? There's no way to know. But I am convinced that it reveals a deeper problem in our culture, namely our unhealthy concepts of love and death as simple, unconnected, and easy. Because when I hear the songs that I named above, I hear something very different. I hear them talking about a love that is hard. A love that takes us deep. A love that calls us to our greatest gift.
And when people say something like, "Jesus was all about love," how are we to take that? Was he all about being nice? A careful reading of the stories about him would say no, he was not primarily interested in being nice to people. No, if he was all about love, then it was a different kind of love than is most commonly discussed in our culture.
But he also wasn't primarily interested in dying, which seems to be the focus of a lot of Christians these days. That he was "here to go," in the sense that his purpose and calling in life were to die.
No, the meaning only comes when the two are connected. For Buffy, and for Jesus, the significance of their deaths is that they are acts of love... not romantic love; not mushy sentimental love; but the spiritual gift of love described by Paul.
Without their willingness to extend themselves even to the point of death for the sake of others growth and 'salvation', their Love would be empty or incomplete. And without the Love that showed them the way, their deaths would be meaningless.
That is the meaning of the cross.
Image credit: www.screencap-paradise.com
