Curtis Klingle

Facebook Post- August 9, 2022

I have been struggling with loss and a lack of understanding as I’m sure many of you do, at least that is from time to time. Loss is a fact of life. Seeking understanding is a way of life. What I’m coming to find is that there truly is a rainbow at the end of every storm. But, even in the midst of the most tumultuous storms there are often streaks of sunlight that break through the clouds. It is these brief glimpses of the light and the hope it conveys, that we must cling to while we endure the tempests of this life. They really are a Godsend.

I found as I was writing this that two topics arose. Try as I might, I could not separate them without making each lesser. Love and judgment are intertwined to the degree that they are inseparable. I had no idea just how much they were prior to this writing. As I’ve mentioned before, these essays are more for me than they are for you, as I seem to do my best thinking when I put pen to paper. I share these thoughts in hope that it may help someone else on their journey. All of our journeys are unique, and there is nothing corporate about them, other than the destination.

There is a question that is always on the forefront of my mind, and there is no question more important. What is love? Next to the holy scriptures, it is the subject I study the most. In my own life, I have found it to be elusive, and usually transitory. I have spent a lifetime trying to understand it. And because I do not understand it, I am troubled. The reason for my consternation is the greatest commandment and the one that follows both require love.

Matthew 22:37-39 “’You shall love the LORD your God with all your heart, with all your soul, and with all your mind.’ This is the first and great commandment. And the second is like it: ‘You shall love your neighbor as yourself.’”

There is a little book in my library titled, “The Greatest Thing in the World.” By all appearances, it is insignificant, small, and unworthy of reading. However, I have it nestled right among the great works of C.S. Lewis and G.K. Chesterton. Its size does not diminish its value or worth. “The Greatest Thing in the World” is a treatise on the subject of love. It’s author, Henry Drummond, lived a short, but remarkable life, and the great evangelist D. L. Moody referred to Drummond as, “The most Christ-like man I have ever known.” I could not begin to tell you how many times I have read it, studied it, and immersed myself within its pages over the last 20 years, always trying to glean what I may from someone who actually understood the subject, and abided in it. Drummond’s example was Jesus, and he emulated Him to such a degree as to earn that accolade from Moody. My favorite quote from the book is,

“You will find as you look back upon your life that the moments when you have truly lived are the moments when you have done things in the spirit of love.” If you think upon that, you too will find that Drummond was correct, those are the only times we truly live.

For further study, a few of months ago I finally obtained a copy of C.S. Lewis’ “The Four Loves.” In it, Lewis explains the four types of loves depicted in the New Testament. Remember, the New Testament was written in Greek, which is quite possibly one of the most beautiful and descriptive languages ever developed, but like all languages, it still falls a bit short in conveying the depths of our thoughts and emotions. While I will focus on the highest form of love, a short explanation of each of these four Greek words for love is in order.

The first word is Storge- this is a natural love, and the evidence of it is in affection. A brief example would be that love a mother or father has for their child. This is a love we also share with soulish animals, such as dogs, cats, horses, cattle, etc. You have likely witnessed that love yourself if you’ve ever seen a dog with her pups, or a cat with her kittens. This love actually crosses the borders between species. A man can love a dog, and the dog can reciprocate that love.

Philia- is love without romantic attraction. It is a love shared among people who have the same values or interests. An example would be that love shared between David and Jonathan in the Old Testament. Another exemplar is that love experienced between soldiers, most often seen in combat veterans. It is a rare love, and even rarer in our time. Few ever experience it.

Eros- this is the sensual or passionate love. The Greeks considered it an irrational and dangerous love. It is that love we experience when we are falling in love with someone. The object of our love consumes us and we find it difficult to think of much of anything else. Eros is where our word “erotic” comes from. The word has been perverted in our day to mean something much less that it did to the biblical authors. It seems the emotions have been left out and all that remains is a purely sexual connotation now.

Agape- This is the highest form. It is the love that places another’s needs before our own. It is a love that we can have for all others, not expecting anything in return. This love could be referred to as Christian love. In fact, I have come to believe that we cannot have agape without Christ. It is the love from God which flows through us and into the lives of others. The more agape we have, the more agape we will have to share with others.

All of our natural loves have a need attached to them, but this is not so with agape. C.S. Lewis said, “Love itself, God’s love, is utterly disassociated from need.” The other loves are tainted by our own needs, the need to care for and love the other, and the need to be loved. These loves are not wrong, they are just not complete. In fact, all of these loves must be transformed by agape. When they submit to change, they too can become weighted with agape in order that they become agape. It is this love that I find the most difficult to grasp, and yet it is the love we are commanded to have. When disappointments and trials come, the other loves will fall short. In fact, they can and do sometimes become the opposite of love if agape is not present. Hate is not simply the opposite of love; it is the absence of it. Hate, in its extreme is a vacuum where nothing can live. Nothing penetrates it, and nothing escapes. A man who does not love, will wither and die. He becomes an abomination. He is as far from the likeness of his Creator as the north is from the south.

Agape is what allows us to love the beloved even when they are not loveable. How does the victim of abuse care for the abuser that has now become an invalid? How does the parent love the child who has betrayed and defied them over and over? How does the father of the murdered child love the murderer? It is only agape that makes this possible. How does one love the unlovable? I come into contact with so many that fall into the category of the “unlovable” that I feel I am constantly being bombarded with this question from Christ Himself, “Do you have agape for my children?” And how does one love the liar? The maligner? The gossiper? The thief? The abuser? The violent? The murderer? In my career, I have seen the worst men and women can do to one another. Has the view I have of others been skewed? It certainly must have tainted my perception. Or, has it? Am I looking through the lens of a pessimist, or am I seeing people as they really are? One could alternatively say that my eyes have been opened to man’s depravity. It is possible that it could be giving me a clearer picture of who we really are, who I am, how depraved I really am. For we are all capable of the vilest of acts. The difference between us and “them”, is those acts have only been played out in our minds. Each of us has fallen into one or more of those groups of the “unlovable” at some point in our lives. For most of us, it happens regularly. Thus, we too are among the unlovable.

One of, if not the most inhibiting factor in our ability to recognize how unlovable we are, is in the act of comparison and judgment. We look at another and say to ourselves, “Well at least I don’t do that, so I mustn’t be all that bad.” Or, “They are such a terrible person to have committed such a heinous crime!” And therein lies the lie. In the comparison we are not just judging the other person, but we are doing something more. We are placing ourselves just a bit higher than they. This self-elevation is self-deluding. How can I remove the speck from my brother’s eye, while there is a plank in my own? This type of judgment is definitely not the way to loving others. We can, and rightly do pass judgment on the acts committed by ourselves and others, but we must resist the temptation to judge the person. The separation of the two can be extremely difficult, but we must make all effort to place a distinction between them. For with judgment comes condemnation, and what follows is punishment.

We should always bear in mind that we do not really know the struggles the person we are judging goes through. They may be giving every ounce of strength to overcome an addiction or some foul temptation that does not trouble us. We may not have any propensity towards drink or drugs, and we may have full control over our emotions, especially the ugly one, anger. I personally have no inclination to gamble, but the compulsive gambler certainly does. Every single one of us is “broken” in some way or other. There is something askew and not just right within us all. Now, don’t get me wrong, I am not condoning the behavior of the drunk, the addict, the angry man, or the gambler but, we can still love the person and yet hate the offense.

In describing the differences between us, I like to use the analogy of machinery. All of us are given a body, soul, and a mind, and these are the foundation of our specific piece of machinery, our equipment that enables us to walk through this life. Good genetics, nurturing parents, freedom from mental illness, and our interactions with others, all have a hand in fine tuning the machinery. On the other hand, abnormal genes, absentee parents, and being raised in the confines of abuse and addiction, can alter and or damage our machinery. Furthermore, our life choices, both the good and bad decisions we each make, all influence the operation of our machine.

Now some of us were given a machine that operates rather smoothly, few hiccups, all is operating at or near optimum conditions. Others among us may have a machine that has a bolt missing here, or a support structure that is bent, maybe a couple of gears are a bit rough and don’t quite mesh together properly. It is a wonder that what some are given even operates at all. But whatever we have been given, we must operate that piece of machinery to the best of our ability. To those that are given much, much is required. Keep that in mind if your machine operates relatively well.

I have come to believe that the operation of the machinery that we are given, is the filter through which we will be judged. That disturbed man, completely self-absorbed, who for years has been walking the streets yelling at himself and frightening all around him, one day steps out into oncoming traffic to save a turtle crossing the road. That simple act, may have been for him the most powerful act of selflessness in all his life, the equivalent of one of us storming a machine gun nest to save a fellow soldier. He pushed his machine to its limits. And because he did so, he may have a greater reward than the man who was a pillar of the community and went to church every Sunday, but in private was a cruel master over his wife. And notice what happened in those two descriptions. In the former we quickly, albeit subconsciously, elevated ourselves above the disturbed man. In the latter example, we were on an even playing field, that is, until the truth of the church man was revealed. We tend to judge those who do not fit our view of the norm much more harshly than those that do. In these descriptions, we have the luxury of seeing these men as the really are. In real life, that is impossible.

We never fully know the person we come into contact with. Even those who we have known and loved for years are really a mystery to us. There are hidden things within each of us that affect us, and many of those are dark things, ugly and horrid, buried so deep that we are not even aware of them ourselves. Because we do not know the person, we must never judge them. And because we do not judge them, we cannot compare ourselves to them. When we can set aside our judgment and realize that all of humanity is fallen, including us, then we begin to see a faint glimmer of agape.

Agape is an act of the will, there are no emotions needed to exact this love. Emotions can and often do accompany real love, but love is not an emotion. There are instances when the emotions may even attempt to overrule love, even agape. An example would be an unfaithful spouse. The offended party’s emotions may desire to exact punishment, but his agape not only forgives, but forgoes all retribution. The other loves come to us because others are drawn to us, or there is some need within them to give us their love. A good example is that of a mother’s love for her child. She bestows her storge love upon the child, but she also has a need to give that love. The love named agape has no need of reciprocation. Agape is something we must receive from God, and others, but unlike the other loves, we are hesitant to do so. Our “goodness” or attractiveness is no precursor to the receipt of agape. Agape is unconditional. And because there is nothing intrinsically loveable in us which causes God or others to share agape with us, we are resistant to it. We don’t understand a love that does not rely upon us, or our attributes. The receipt of a love that does not rely upon a “drawing” of others to us, including God Himself, is alien to us. But it is this love we need the most.

God did not need us, and He needs nothing from us, but yet He created us. He created us because He is love, and love wants to share of itself. Love is the most powerful force in the universe. God is love. I recall a story I once read many years ago, which I think was about Mother Teressa, but I cannot be certain anymore. Mother Teressa worked with the outcasts of society and among them were those suffering from leprosy. Leprosy is not only a disease of the flesh, but also of the soul. No one wants to come near a leper. You are cut off from all other people. Imagine the revulsion of seeing someone covered in ulcerous sores and lesions, not to mention the odors emitted by this malady. Yet, these are the people that Mother Teresa chose to work among, the suffering, the rejected. She exemplified agape. In the story she was changing the dressings on a leper’s wounds, and the man began weeping uncontrollably. Thinking she might have caused him pain, she stopped and asked why he was crying. The man slowly raised his head and looked into her eyes as the tears ran down his face. He replied, “It has been many years since someone has touched me.”

A father took his family out to a local restaurant one evening. As they began to enter the restaurant the father saw what was obviously a homeless man seated on a bench at the business next door. The father ushered his family inside and then quickly returned outside to the homeless man. The father explained to him that he and his family would be honored if he would join them for supper. A short while later, in walks the father with the homeless man in tow. The family and their new friend enjoyed their meal together. It is always easier to give a beggar money, rather than give him your heart. Never forget, some have unknowingly entertained angels.

A little boy saw his elderly neighbor seated in a chair in his backyard. The boy knew that the man’s wife had recently died. The boy went into the old man’s yard, crawled into his lap, and just sat there. His mother saw him as he sat with the old man, and later asked him what he said to their elderly neighbor. The boy replied, “Nothing Mom. I just sat there and helped him cry.”

All of these stories are examples of agape. Agape is love in action. Upon reflection, I now see that I can retract my statement at the beginning, that I do not understand love. While I may not fully understand it, and I don’t think any of us will on this side of eternity anyway, I do have at the very least, a working knowledge of it. It is only as we allow the natural loves to be transformed by agape that we really love. We cannot, we must not, ever allow the natural loves to become more than they were intended to be. As Denis de Rougemont said, “love ceases to be a demon only when he ceases to be a god”. God is love, not love is God.

Something to think about is this: our Creator, billions and billions of years ago, had the thought of creating beings whom he could love, and be loved by. It is not that He needed love, as I’ve already stated, love wants to love. Through all of the vastness of this universe, He created one perfect galaxy, with one perfect solar system, with one perfect planet. On that planet He created you and me. The Bible says He knew us from our mother’s womb. Translated, that means He knew all each of us were going to be. That would include all of our faults and shortcomings, not just the things about us that we deem “good”. With all of the evil things that we have each committed, He still loves us. John 3:16 is the epitome of love. That is agape. Receive it, bask in it, let it flow in you and through you, and into the lives of others. Then, and only then, will we know what love is.

“I shall pass through this world but once. Any good therefore that I can do, or any kindness that I can show to any human being, let me do it now. Let me not defer or neglect it, for I shall not pass this way again.” Henry Drummond

C. Klingle