For This Reason 23

[HKHaugan]

For This Reason 23

Depending on the age you live in you can read part of a culture’s relational influence through its music. I had a mixture of Scandinavian, American country, classical and romantic ballads. In my early years radio and a 78rpm record player were the media for home entertainment. Movies were second about once every two weeks. The 1930’s, 40’s, 50’s and early 60’s marked the ‘Golden Age’ when baritone crooners reigned. Songs by the likes of Bing Crosby, Perry Como, Dick Haymes, Frank Sinatra, Vic Damone, Mel Torme, Nat King Cole and Vaughn Monroe topped the “Hit Parade.” Oh, and don’t forget Johnny Mathis at the tail end of that time. They floated the boat carrying the belief in romantic love as the feeling ‘that would never end’ because it was a “Many Splendored Thing” that would last through the “Twelfth of Never.”

One song, “Prisoner of Love” was a 1931 song that became a mid-40’s Perry Como classic hit. Young hearts were wrapped in its sounds. It was a slow dance special. Dancing close, cheek to cheek, was the style of the day. You can still hear it today on easy listening stations. Let’s check out its lyrics:

“Alone from night to night you’ll find me too weak to break the chains that bind me.
I need no shackles to remind me, I’m just a prisoner of love.
For one command, I stand and wait now from one who’s master of my fate now.
I can’t escape for it’s too late now, I’m just a prisoner of love.
What’s the good of my caring if someone is sharing those arms with me.
Although she has another, I can’t find another for I’m not free.
She’s in my dreams awake or sleeping, upon my knees to her I’m creeping,
My very life is in her keeping, I’m just a prisoner of love.”

What’s interesting about this song is how you read its lines. If you didn’t know it was a romantic ballad the first four lines could very well be spiritually discerned. If we take its words and dissect them watch what happens:

“Alone from night to night you’ll find me”…aloneness, a condition we all know. “Too weak to break the chains that bind me”…sin is our master until we have been freed from its power. “I need no shackles to remind me”…true, physical chains already have their spiritual counterpart. “I’m just a prisoner of love.”…The question is, whose love? Perhaps in the next lines we find out. “For one command, I stand and wait now from one who’s master of my fate now”…everyone is looking for a master to define life, to sort out the light from the darkness, to give certainty and security for the future which here is called ‘fate.’ But alas, “I can’t escape for it’s too late now, I’m just a prisoner of love.”…agonizingly lost in the fantasy world between desire and reality. What we have here in these lyrics is the recognition that love is what everyone needs.

The problem is which love are we talking about?

C.S.Lewis wrote about the four uses of ‘love’ in Greek, storge, philios, eros and agape. Storge is family love, ---philios, brotherly love, ---eros, romantic love and agape, which Jesus used exclusively for God’s love. Clearly, the above music fell under the ‘eros’ description.

Actually we need all four of the loves the Greek words describe. We were built that way. It is not so much a matter of which one but rather the one that gives balance to all the other three. We’ll look at that balance after we visit the first three. But first look at the last four lines:

"What’s the good of my caring if someone is sharing those arms with me.
Although she has another, I can’t find another for I’m not free.
She’s in my dreams awake or sleeping, upon my knees to her I’m creeping,
My very life is in her keeping, I’m just a prisoner of love.”

They show the song’s mooning moaning morose subject has veered away from the balance and gotten swallowed up in ‘eros,’ romantic love. The slavery that follows is first to the ego’s desire for possession and then to the fantasy that affection, emotion, deep feeling, prove the desire is real. “Can’t she see how much I care?” Here begins the justification for self-pity dissolving into obsession with unreality and the lonely fixation that builds a stronghold to prevent further emotional pain, “All women hurt you in the end” or “She just uses guys like they all do” and whatever excuse pride manufactures.

Becoming self-absorbed is exactly what turns others away. Dependent weakness leaves most women cold. In their heart of hearts they want a man of strength in whom they can place long term trust unless, of course, they are manipulators. What woman really wants a man who creeps on his knees begging for her affection? Underneath, what we really see is a man trapped in a culturally manufactured stronghold defining inner desire for romance as love. He blindly follows its falsely promised satisfaction if he just begs and pleads for acceptance. He can’t admit that he is enslaved to his pride, his desire and his fantasy so “What’s the good of caring if someone is sharing those arms with me?” Thus his personal conclusion to justify his sad self-inflicted hopeless plight---“I’m just a prisoner of love.”

What he needs to see is that he’s in a one act play that is self-authored and self-directed with all the accompanying drama and angst obsession brings. He rationalizes his agony and longing as proof of his love. What happens in the end is his self-imposed conclusion that he has been wrongfully rejected which opens up justification for jealousy, envy, anger and whatever other spirits find their way into the script. He will never grasp the truth that the object of his affection is his fantasy in which he has dressed her. And that is where we have the real issue. His real need is for a person outside himself he can trust to not only define love but also show how it is experienced.

We move on to ‘storge’, family love. While the family is the basic unit that holds any society together, the word ‘family’ can be used in any context to bring people together to promote a cause thus it can become an idol. “The Martins and the McCoys was reckless mountain boys…’ as the old folk ballad begins the story of the feuding families that were built on pride preservation. People who take sides on any moral or social issue will describe they are a family. Then we have the darker meaning when used by ‘The Mafia.’ Sports teams build a unity they have come to call family. Ethnic and national clubs bill themselves as family in order to continue a common heritage experience.

But the word has its real roots in the father/mother/children concept held together by a natural bondedness of familial affection that is family love. The love of a parent for a child is a special kind of love. It is caring, protective, defensive and both the relational and social model for children to learn the nature of authority and self-discipline. And there’s far more. Who can verbalize what one feels when ‘Mom and Dad’ are mentioned or what parents feel when they tell their children they love them. That’s ‘storge’ love.

Now we look at philios. We all know that Philadelphia is supposed to mean “The City of Brotherly Love.” It may have had its beginnings with friends working and sharing lives together. Its present condition is like any other large city where urban pressure tends to isolate and alienate away from its original intention. But ‘philios’ love is the affection friends have for one another. It can be seen in the David/Jonathan relationship in the Old Testament. It’s the kind of love that we call ‘hangin’ out together’ to watch a game, talk about ideas, dreams and other deeper sharing. It’s buddies going fishing. It’s pals leaning on one another in hard times.

Ultimately everything we do is based on personal relationships. Without a moral definition and foundation for relational living the first three, eros, storge and philios, are left to imperfect individuals to do what they want. They can be so redefined and distorted as to end up destroying the objects of their affection. Individuals left to their own devices, left alone in their sin, will rely on self-justification and rationalization which in turn can and will produce social and political upheaval that can bring down whole civilizations. Recorded history is proof.

This is where the fourth love, agape, the spiritual love from God, brings relational balance. It provides the limits, the freedom and the endless possibilities available to the other three. It is love in its deepest sense expressed in the person of Jesus. Agape love brings spiritual life into friendship, family and romantic loves. It reshapes them and redirects them with a fullness that perfects each. Agape love recaptures the Creator’s intention for family, friends and romance bringing them into the kind of balance where each serves the other for their best interests and the interests of society in general.

Agape love as seen in Jesus puts others before self. It’s relational and spiritual. Agape love is all about Jesus, His presence, the way He loves, the truth He brings and the life He offers. “Love one another as I have loved you,” He says. Simply put it’s this, “God first, others second, me third.” Apply that principle to storge, philios and eros; family, friends and romance and you have all the shades of love in balance.

First, Jesus upholds the Genesis understanding of husband, wife and children as a family. Second, He defines friendship as the willingness to lay down our wants and needs for the sake of the needs of others. Third, to give romance a purpose He takes part in a wedding ceremony of a man and woman in Cana and even emphasizes its importance by changing water into wine, His first recorded miracle, to bless the people there. The basic force behind agape is His resurrected presence through His Word in the power of the Holy Spirit. The basic commandment Jesus teaches is relational on every level of human interchange, “Love the Lord your God with all your heart, mind and strength. Then love your neighbor as yourself.” Having a personal relationship with God gives the context for all relational activity. Everyone you meet is a neighbor. Everywhere you go is a possible relationship in the making. Everything hangs on those two.