Most all humans love love! We don’t always understand love. We often get hurt by love, especially unrequited love. And, despite our love for others, we often hurt them. But there is no questioning how much humans love love! It is the number one topic for songs and fairytales. Trying to avoid love is nearly impossible because Nature has built into our bodies some of the most powerful hormones supporting love. Evolution’s unswerving drive for the survival of the species has developed a human body that is loaded with powerful chemicals to help ensure the success of human bonding. The “love chemical” is phenylethylamine (PEA). When this is released in the brain of any human, he or she will feel uncontrollably amorous, romantic, and “turned on” by the person who is the object of these feelings. Follow this up with a little oxytocin (often called “the cuddle chemical”), and you have the lovemaking sensations of relaxed pleasure and attachment. Then, for the relationship to endure, endorphins must be released in the brain. If they are, then the love relationship endures.

The Greeks described three types of love, using the Greek words eros, philia, and agape. Eros refers to love that is passionate, intense, and sexual. Philia love is fondness and appreciation of another beyond self. It is friendship, family loyalty, community ties, love for one’s work, and the like. Thus, Philadelphia (phila-delphi) is the city of “brotherly love.” Agape love does not seek anything in return for its expression. It is a pure expression of love. However, agape love has an ethical standard. It may, therefore, impartially determine another’s warranting love – something we acknowledge today as “tough love,” meaning a love that calls the other to higher levels of behavior.

In the New Testament, written in Greek, many “love” statements used the word agape. When the monks translated the King James version of the Bible, they were concerned that the English word “love” was too vague, not as clear as the Greek word, so they translated agape as “charity”! Agape love is akin to charity: caring for others without seeking anything in return. St. Thomas Aquinas called charity “the foundation or root” of all Christian virtues. Of 900 English translations, the King James Bible is the only one with “faith, hope, and charity.” All the others have “faith, hope, and love.”

The Holy Scriptures are filled with encouragement to love. In the apostle John’s epistle (1 John 4:7-12), he wrote:

“Beloved, let us love one another, for love is from God, and everyone who loves is born of God and knows God. The one who does not love does not know God, for God is love …. If we love one another, God abides in us, and His love is perfected in us.”

Jesus said, “No one has greater love than to lay down his own life for his friends”  (John 15:13). Most have come to understand that Jesus did not mean literal death but rather thinking more of what another may need than what self may want. Yet, this must not become self-destructive love. No one could accuse Jesus of being a doormat of self-deprecating love. He often radiated a tough love. Those around Him needed to hear the truth and a clear position on God’s ways, not pampering. One example was when Jesus explained that “he must go to Jerusalem, and suffer many things of the elders and chief priests and scribes, and be killed, and the third day be raised up.” Upon hearing this, Peter countered by suggesting that they don’t go into the city and thereby avoid the authorities: “Peter took him, and began to rebuke him, saying, ‘Be it far from you, Lord; this shall never be for you.’ But Jesus turned and said to Peter, ‘Get behind me, Satan; you are a stumbling block to me for you mind not the things of God but the things of men” (Matthew 16:21-23). For Peter’s sake, he must realize that his thinking was akin to Satan’s, desiring the ways that seem best to humans over those that are known to be God’s ways. Jesus loved Peter, but the higher truth also had to be maintained.

The two greatest commandments in Western faiths are to love the Infinite, Eternal Source of Life, or God, as well as our neighbor as we love ourselves. It helps when we see others as part of the Divine plan, even the least among us. This view makes all of us eventual companions in the eternal condition may be.

“In spite of all indignant protests to the contrary, the fact remains that love, its problems and its conflicts, is of fundamental importance in human life and, as careful inquiry consistently shows, is of far greater significance than the individual suspects.” –Carl Jung, Two Essays in Analytical Psychology

Spiritual love is a connection between souls that is based on a sense of oneness and is beyond physical and emotional love. Spiritual love is not transactional and has no limitations. It is a love that reaches out to the divine spirit in all people.  This is the love that brings true serenity and contentment. It is also the love that makes our little world and the greater world a better place for us having lived in it.