What is Love?

[Traveler]

@clbent04 started a thread titled the purpose of life is to learn to love.  That thread started me thinking and pondering about love.  I am thinking that love, like so many divine traits is dealt with in mortality more on the level of faith than knowledge.

Many years ago I was reading a book (forget the title and author) on the failures of the Christian religion.  One of the points made was that Christians are obsessed with going to heaven and yet they have no real defining clue or concept of what heaven is.  I have come to appreciate this criticism and think it applies to much more than just the Christian concept of heaven.  I think it applies to the very nature and being of G-d.  Foremost and critical to the nature of G-d is his love.

Generally, I strongly believe that love is more misunderstood than it is possible to achieved in this life or whatever existence.  The scripture talks about those that embrace evil as loving darkness rather than light.  We are also told in scripture to love our neighbor as we love ourselves.  I have never been able to wrap my mind around the logic of either concept.  It appears that love can be good or evil simply depending on what it is we love or have learned to love?  But then I wonder if the use of love in an evil context is symbolic and can be literally misleading?

I struggle a great deal with love but through my struggles and experiences I have leanings towards certain conclusions for which I am very open to discussion.

First – I am of the notion that love is a discipline that cannot be achieved through scholarship but rather perfected through practice. Like so many acquired traits – love is not “natural”.  Following a natural course is more likely to develop bad habits than an divine expertise.   The notion that we fall in love seems foolish and unproductive to me. 

Second – I am inclined to believe that love is tightly coupled to logic and intelligence.  It appears to me that those that fail to make the connections between logic, intelligence and love are most likely to be incompetent in all of the above.   When I hear that someone is following their heart – I know such thinking will result in a train wreak (broken heart) – dare I say a failure to achieve the skill of divine loving?

Third – I am impressed that love is primarily spiritual and not really physical.   When I say this – I think of spiritual as intelligence and logic (let’s not confuse intelligence with intellectualism).  I think of physical as being emotional.  It seems to me that most connect love to emotions rather than intelligence as with my first thought of love listed above.  I do agree that spiritual things can have a profound effect on our physical being and give an indirect impression of emotions but I have concluded that such emotions are more physical than spiritual.

Finally (for now) I am of the mind that the opposite of love is more abhorrence than hate.   I believe this because hate has an element of attraction whereas abhorrence has no inclination to disengage and not seek after.

 

The Traveler