Agape

One thing that I have always found difficult about the concept of agape love is how does one keep it from becoming a duty, something one must do?

Agape, if you're not familiar, is the love that we as Christians are called to express to one another. It's the love Christ has for us. It represents a commitment of the will to do the best for the other person, regardless of how one feels. This is in contrast to the other 3 words for love in Greek - Phileo (affection), Storge (Easiest definition is the kind of love friends share), and Eros (Sexual love).

Agape, as the Bible defines it, is the love which is represented by Christ's love towards us: committed to sacrificing Himself on the Cross for the forgiveness of sins. He counted the cost - and went forward.

The struggle I have is that so often agape becomes like a duty. We do things because we made a commitment, because we are committed to the best for others, no matter the cost to ourselves. The point that always breaks over my head is "This is will - but where is emotion?"

At one time I used to be the proverbial "Hopeless Romantic" - at least until I was 23. Then, I had a really bad relational experience, one that left me personally embarrassed and heart. It's odd, but I time out my loss of "emotional romantic love" - that kind of gooey, breathless feeling - to that date. Doesn't mean I haven't had emotion, doesn't mean that I don't love the Ravishing Mrs. TB and the children - but it makes me I've lost something from time to time.

This plays into my first thought, as what at one time might have been done for emotion is now done as a choice of the will. The genesis may be very well different as well - wanting the good for the other, rather than how it makes one feel. The rub comes in that with the second kind, the payback is generally self evident in the process i.e. I give flowers, my wife responds, we have a pleasant evening. In the other place, one may well do something that it a good, and it goes unnoticed or unappreciated - yet in the benefit to the other, one chooses to do the loving thing. Yet without the immediate emotional payback, and continuing to do it, it becomes much more like something which must be done.

I don't have an answer - but sometimes I wonder, where that emotional romantic chap went to...