Extolled as the greatest virtue, love is fascinating and complex, and takes courage to reach its pinnacle. Yet for a language containing over 500,000 words, English is short on the distinctions between the various kinds of love. It uses the same word to show as much preference for a cup of tea as for your soul mate.
Greek, on the other hand, does not need any clumsy clarification when talking about love. In fact, Greek has several words to choose from, for different kinds of love and for different people whom you love. By deciding where your relationships fit into these types, you may find you are loved or love more than you think. Always a good thing.
Eros or Erotic Love
The first kind of love is Eros, which is named after the Greek god of love and fertility. Eros represents the idea of sexual passion and desire and the ancient Greeks considered it to be dangerous as it involves a “loss of control” due to the primal impulse to procreate. Because Eros is centered around the selfish aspects of personal infatuation and physical pleasure, Eros must grow into a deeper love to be sustained. When misguided, Eros can be misused, abused and indulged in, leading to impulsive acts and broken hearts.
Kane, a marriage and family therapist says “A person newly in love sees the world through the lens of love and most everything is tolerable and everything their partner does is delightful. Romantic love evolves when one feels a sense of interdependence, attachment, and that their psychological needs are being met”
Philia, or Deep Friendship
As Aristotle put it, philia is a “dispassionate virtuous love” that is free from the intensity of sexual attraction. It often involves the feelings of loyalty and sacrifice among friends, camaraderie among teammates, and sharing of emotions.
Another kind of philia, sometimes called storge, is a love without physical attraction. Storge is primarily to do with kinship and familiarity as between parents and their children.
Ludus, or Playful Love
Although ludus has a bit of the erotic eros in it, it is much more than that. This was the Greeks’ idea of playful love, which referred to the affection between children or young lovers. You may have experienced it in flirting and teasing, during the early stages of a relationship. But we also live out our ludus when we gather together, bantering and laughing with friends, or when we go dancing.
Mania or Obsessive Love
Mania love is a type of love that leads a partner into a type of madness and obsessiveness. The person exhibiting Mania love, needs love to feel a sense of self-value. Because of this, they can become possessive and jealous lovers. If the other partner fails to reciprocate with the same kind of mania love, many issues develop. This is why mania can often lead to problems such as codependency.
Pragma or Enduring Love
Pragma is a love that has aged, matured and developed over time. It is beyond the physical, it has transcended the casual, and it is a unique harmony that has formed.
You can find pragma in married couples who’ve been together for a long time, or in friendships that have endured for decades.
Pragma is about making compromises to help the relationship work over time, and showing patience and tolerance.
The psychoanalyst Erich Fromm said that we spend too much energy on “falling in love” and need to learn more how to “stand in love.” Pragma is precisely about standing in love—making an effort to give love rather than just receive it.
Psychologist, Rachel Needle says. “The truth is that you have to put in time and energy and make a conscious effort to sustain the relationship and the passion. Basic communication with your partner on a daily basis is important to continue connecting on an emotional level. Also, remind yourself why you fell in love with this person.”
Philautia or Self Love
The Greeks understood that in order to care for others, we must first learn to care for ourselves. This form of self-love is not the unhealthy vanity and self-obsession that is focused on personal fame, gain and fortune as in the case with Narcissism.
Instead, philautia is self-love in its healthiest form. It shares the Buddhist philosophy of “self-compassion” which is the deep understanding that once you feel comfortable in your own skin, you will be able to provide love to others. As Aristotle put it, “All friendly feelings for others are an extension of a man’s feelings for himself.”
The only way to truly be happy is to find that unconditional love for yourself. Often learning to love yourself involves embracing all the qualities you perceive as “unlovable”.
Agape, or Love for Everyone
The highest and most radical love is agape or selfless love. Agape is what some call ‘spiritual love’. This is an unconditional love that you extended to all people, whether family members or distant strangers. It is the purest form of love that is free from desires and expectations, and loves regardless of the flaws and shortcomings of others. Agape was translated into Latin as caritas, which is the origin of our English word “charity.”
C.S. Lewis refers to it as the highest form of Christian love. But it also appears in other religious traditions, such as the idea of mettā or “universal loving kindness” in Theravāda Buddhism.
Agape is the love which we intuitively know as Divine grace: the love that accepts, forgives and believes for our greater good.
In his book “You are the One”, Kute Blackson shows us the courage needed to live our lives fully engaged in agape love within a world that discourages it. He makes a good case for transforming ourselves into a conduit for God’s love to reach everyone.
True love is always freely given, with nothing expected in return. It is a commitment to share what is in your heart with another person, no matter who they are, or what language they speak.
Yet most of us have been conditioned to hold back our love. We go from being young children who say “I love you“ to the dog on the street or the man behind the counter and we become adults who reserve our love for people we can trust, for people who earn our love, for people who love us back.
We are taught to believe that love is based on certain conditions. Get good grades, be a good girl, look a certain way. That love is dependent on a certain set of actions. If someone doesn’t measure up, love should be restricted. We learn that our love should be held in reserve. It is for our family, our girlfriend, our children, our spouse. We cling to these people. They are the ones who get our love. But we hold the power to love anyone in any moment.
So, when do you hold back? Do you hold back with your spouse? Do you expect him or her to meet a certain set of expectations and then you will offer your love? Do you hold back with your siblings? Still harboring resentment from some inequality or injustice in the past? Do you hold back with your coworkers? Your neighbors? Your kids? Everyone that you meet is desperate for love. When you realize that love is something that can be shared with everyone, there is no limit to the love you can give.
I am not saying that the path of love is going to be easy. It is a muscle you have to exercise. It is a daily choice that you must make. Don’t refuse it. Love is not a feeling you have no control over, but a fierce commitment. There are no good excuses to hold back the one thing everyone in this world is craving more than life itself. Begin to ask yourself the question daily: “Am I loving fully? Could I love right now?” This question becomes a kind of moment to moment meditation, and it can open your eyes to opportunities you may miss otherwise.
Love is not a passive word. Love is not something to store high up on the shelf in your closet and bring out only on special occasions. Love is a living thing to be used every second of your life. Love is not just for the great saints and heroes of history. It is our birthright. Our destiny. Our responsibility. The more you use it, the more it grows. At the end of your life, the only thing you get to keep is the love you give away. All of life is a gigantic temple. Everything in it is an expression of the divine. Everywhere you walk is holy ground.
What the Apostle John Says about Love
Looking to the Bible, the Apostle John clearly indicated that it was God who initiated love.
“We love because he first loved us. If anyone says “I love God “, yet hates his brother, he is a liar. For anyone who does not love his brother, whom he has seen, cannot love God, who he has not seen. And he has given us this command: whoever loves God must also love his brother. “
John echoed the words of Jesus. When asked by the religious leaders of his day to point out the greatest commandment in the law, he answered,
“Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind “. This is the first and greatest commandment. And the second is like it: “Love your neighbor as yourself “. All the law and the prophets hang on these two commandments.
Then John summarized it best when he said,
Dear friends, let us love one another, for love comes from God. Everyone who loves has been born of God and knows God. Whoever does not love does not know God, because God is love.
As Jesus Christ lived out his enlightenment and realization of his fundamental unity with God, he had a unique urgency, a poignant wild passion, and a hunger for justice that made him the hero of love to the human race. Christ came not to found a new religion or to ingratiate a new set of dogma but to open up a fierce and shattering new path of love in action, a path that seems now, with the hindsight of history, the one that could have saved – and still could save – humanity from its course of suicidal self-destruction.
Love Your Enemies
In his book What’s so Amazing about Grace, Philip Yancey states “There is nothing we can do that will make God love us more. There is nothing we can do that will make God love us less”. That being true, a theology of love is grounded in the realization that God loves our enemies as much as God loves us. And we are all created in the image of this God. We are all precious in God’s site. We are all children of God. This is going to be a stretch for many of us, but one of the highest and most powerful forms of love and compassion flows when we learn to pray for those who persecute us, when we dare to love even our antagonists and enemies.
Apartheid
In his book ‘Naked Spirituality, Brian D McLaren describes an example of agape love that touches a life with it’s magic.
A white South African once told me about a time when he was on the receiving end of such a blessing.
During the apartheid years, he believed what he was told by white authority figures, namely, that those working against apartheid were evil troublemakers, rabble-rousers, communist, and heretics. Chief among the troublemakers was an activist Anglican priest named Desmond Tutu.
Once, walking through an airport, this large white man saw Tutu coming towards him. Overcome with rage, he moved toward Tutu and roughly, intentionally bumped him as he walked by. Tutu, much smaller in stature, fell down, landing on his backside with a thud. When Tutu open his eyes, angry blue eyes glared down at him with a sneer of obvious distain, only to see Tutu’s shocked and dazed face gradually focus and form into a smile. “God bless you, my child”, Tutu said, his brown eyes gleamed with an impossible mix of passion and mischief.
The man strutted away, all the more infuriated because Tutu found a way to transcend his acts of hatred. During the hours and days that followed, the words of blessing echoed in his memory and gradually the big, proud white man was brought to repentance by a simple, spontaneous blessing. Tutus nonviolence wasn’t simply a political strategy; it was a spiritual practice. It was rooted in this practice of intercession. The only way we will learn to respond to violent actions with non-violent actions is by learning to respond first with nonviolent words – words of blessing, not cursing, words of prayer, not revenge, words of compassion, not retaliation.
Ghandi
Kute Blackson recounts yet another incident of agape love in action:
Gandhi was in prison many times throughout his life. But he never allowed feelings of anger, victimization, and hated to overpower his call to love now. On one such occasions, after being imprisoned, Gandhi requested a pair of scissors and some leather and cloth from the prison warden. He was given these items, and during his stay in prison, he made a pair of sandals. He made them with great love and attention to detail. Upon Gandhi’s release from prison, he asked to see the army officer who had imprisoned him. He handed the sandals to the officer and said, “Officer, while in prison, I made this for you. A gift from me to you. “ The officer was speechless and stood in silence. Gandhi simply turned around and walked out. No words were necessary.
Even when staring injustice and cruelty in the face, we can choose to love. It’s easy to love when you get what you want. When life is kind to you and people are nice to you. But this takes great courage to love when your life is difficult or you are treated unfairly, and even greater courage when the people around you are unkind and rude. But Jesus taught us that this is when loving really counts.
Mother Teresa
“Love is not something that fossilizes, but something that lives. Works of love, and declaring love, is the way to peace. And where does this love begin? Right in our own hearts. We must know that we have been created for greater things, not just to be a number in the world, not just to go for the diplomas and degrees, this work and that work. We have been created in order to love and be loved.”
If you find yourself saying, “Oh, well, only the great ones know how to love that unconditionally. They are special.” Kute Blackson tells us “This is an illusion. If it was possible for Gandhi, it is possible for you. The great ones weren’t special people with special powers. They were like you and me. They were simply examples of what was possible. They showed us our capacity to love and what we can all be. They simply dared to exercise their hearts capacity to love more and more.”
Divine love is inside us. Divine love constitutes forgiveness, charity, benevolence, kindness, cooperation, sharing. All of these and more. We just need to release it and exercise it.
Conclusion:
The ancient Greeks found diverse kinds of love in relationships with a wide range of people—friends, family, spouses, strangers, and even themselves. By mapping out the extent to which all types of love are present in your life, you might discover you’ve got a lot more love than you had ever imagined. You are loved. You were born to love. Everyone is waiting for your love. What else is there to do but love? Be courageous and share the agape love God has given you with everyone.
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Relevant Scripture:
See what great love the Father has lavished on us, that we should be called children of God! And that is what we are! (1 John 3:1 NIV)
We love because God first loved us. (1 John 4:19)
References:
8 Different Types of Love by Mateo Sol https://lonerwolf.com/different-types-of-love/
“Ancient Greeks 6 Types of Love“
You are the One by Kute Blackson
Naked Spirituality by Brian D McLaren
Spiritual Meditations 