A New Look at an Old Rose: You Loved Me Not

“If in tongues of men I speak—and of angels too—but I don’t have love, I’ve become a noisy gong or a clanging cymbal. And if I have prophecies, and I’ve understood all mysteries and all knowledge—and if I have all faith, resulting in a mountain moving—but I don’t have love, I’m nothing. And if I gave away all my possessions—even if I gave my very body as my boast—but I don’t have love, I’ve profited nothing.”

—I Corinthians 13:1-3 (my translation)

*****

I Corinthians 13 has to be one of the most well-known passages in all of Scripture, save, perhaps, John 3:16 or Psalm 23. I think we’ve all had some part of this chapter stitched on a pillow, inked onto a journal, or verbally proclaimed into our lives by some well-meaning older person who has a fine dream in mind for our wedding day. “Love is patient, love is kind…” 

I have to confess right off the bat that it’s been a hard thing for me, all my life, to know what love is. Sometimes it’s such a vague concept. It’s a word with way too many meanings. And examples of love are shot out of cultural cannons like confetti; I grew up with so many pictures and definitions that things still feel like mingled colors of paper strips cluttering my soul. From Disney princesses being carried off by silent, enigmatic princes to the happy welcome of Mr. Rogers as he invited me again to be his neighbor, from the field trip zookeeper’s repeated explanations that petting the animals with two fingers was the nice way to my former pastor’s cold stares as we sat in the “wrong” seats in the church auditorium, from seethingly angry outbursts from teachers to manipulative convincings from family members—it was all portrayed as “love.” 

We all grow up in this milieu—or, if not this one, surely one equally chaotic, with multi-colored definitions of an elusive, overused word. It’s unfortunate. If we ever really needed a word to be specific, it’s this one.

For the first time in my life, this last week, I found a place where it is specific. It seems kinda obvious now, but for 27 years, it wasn’t. So I thought I’d share it. It may be old news to you. But my guess is that, somewhere, you’re probably needing this word to be specific too. 

My realization happened as I was reading I Corinthians 13 in Greek a few weeks ago. Any of you who know me really well will know that Paul’s epistles are probably the least comfortable place for me in Scripture. Tell me to go read Leviticus for an hour, and I’ll be nearly jumping out of my seat in excitement. Force me to read some Paul, and I get pretty antsy. But I’ve been trying, recently, to read his letters, in no particular order, in Greek—and the reason for it is just that reading in Greek forces me out of what’s known as the lullaby effect, that habit of listening mindlessly to something you’ve heard so many times that you’ve lost the ability to actually hear what it’s saying.¹ I’m so used to Paul’s words that it’s hard to actually hear them. So, Greek…

Greek also allows the text to become a puzzle again. It forces me to pay attention, to read slowly, to ask questions, to notice patterns, and to really dig. Part of my digging this time turned up a treasure my heart desperately needed.

Read again those first three verses of chapter 13 (this is my translation, given not because I see anything wrong with the other translations out there but because I hope it’ll get behind your own lullaby effect, allowing you to hear the text in a way you’ve never heard it before): 

If in tongues of men I speak—and of angels too—but I don’t have love, I’ve become a noisy gong or a clanging cymbal. And if I have prophecies, and I’ve understood all mysteries and all knowledge—and if I have all faith, resulting in a mountain moving—but I don’t have love, I’m nothing. And if I gave away all my possessions—even if I gave my very body as my boast—but I don’t have love, I’ve profited nothing. 

The typical “takeaway” from these verses is the idea that we really ought to make sure we ourselves are doing all of our doings in love. That is a valid and exceedingly important truth. However, I think there’s something else to notice here as well.

What’s interesting to me in all those “if’s” (if I speak, if I prophecy, if I have faith, etc.) is that, in all of them, stuff is happening. (I know, real theological language right there. Bear with me.) Look at it: Tongues of men and of angels are being uttered. Prophecies are spoken. Mysteries are unraveled. Knowledge abounds. Mountains are moving. Generosity is undeniably demonstrated. The utmost testimony of faith is given.

And yet, even as all of these activities are happening, Paul implies that it is entirely possible for them to happen without love.

Let me put this another way. When I was in junior high, my softball coach once had us do a full practice without any softballs. And it wasn’t a conditioning practice either, where we were just running or doing pushups or whatnot. This was a softball practice. We did all of our normal drills, the catching, throwing, base-running—everything—without any balls. We were supposed to act it out; we were supposed to pretend that he was hitting a real ball to us, pretend that we were fielding a real grounder, pretend that we were making a perfect throw to first base, pretend that the first baseman caught it, and pretend like the play was splendidly made. We did this for two hours.

Silly? Maybe. But in the context of that sport for that team, it was helpful. It gave us a chance to practice in our minds the confidence we needed to handle the same drills with a real ball. It gave us a chance to focus on mechanics in a low-stakes setting; there was no pressure of seeing unfortunate results to dash our weak hopes of success.

But you know what we did the next day? We played with real balls. And you know what we did every other day? We played with real balls too.

Why? Because we were a softball team. If I told you that we never practiced with balls—ever—we’d be walking disasters out there. We’d have been a total joke. You have to know how to actually throw a softball if you want to play the game. It doesn’t matter how flawless your mechanics look without the ball. In the real game, what matters is whether you can actually get it to the first baseman’s glove to make the play.

So let’s take this back to I Corinthians. Paul says that, apparently, it’s possible for a person (or, taking his context into consideration, a group—specifically, a church) to have an exceedingly nice display of mechanics that totally look like the Kingdom of God. You can take lots of photos and think, “Oh, wow. They’ve really got it going on. Look at how they bent their knees and scooped their glove in the dirt there. See how they followed through with their arms after their throws? Man, that swing looks really good: head down, weight balanced. It’s all there.” And you might think, “Wow, what a great softball team.” In church words: “Wow, look at them go: speaking in tongues, prophesying, unraveling great mysteries, displaying great faith, abounding in generosity. It’s the Kingdom!”

But mechanics are nothing without the ball.

And, if you haven’t guessed in my cheesy analogy yet, the ball is love. 

Note that what Paul is talking about are basic mechanics. He doesn’t mention the well-funded children’s ministry, the prison outreach program, the women’s luncheon, or the theology seminars. He’s talking about the barebones basics here: faith, generosity, speaking words and wisdom through the Holy Spirit. These are the equivalents of learning how to open your glove before trying to catch the ball—baby-level basics.

But he’s also saying that these baby basics can be present without love.

I used to think that seeing these rock-bottom basics in a church community were evidence that the Kingdom was present. I have been completely duped (and incredibly hurt) in the past by this mistake.

I used to think that, when I saw these Kingdom basics, whatever relational surroundings I found around them must be “love,” because love is in the Kingdom, right? And if this is the Kingdom, then whatever they’re doing, however they’re treating each other, surely that must be love?

Paul says that logic is backwards. Love is externally defined. Love is not whatever sort of relating exists between people when Kingdom-looking activities are present. Love has its own specific, independent definition; and love itself defines whether those Kingdom-looking activities are indeed Kingdom activities or if they are mere obnoxious noises, empty identities, stark pictures of fruitlessness, naked nothings. To return to the analogy: If there’s no softball, the mechanics are worthless. You’re not even playing the game.

So we’ve gotten this far: The presence of Kingdom-looking activities does not mean the Kingdom is present any more than some softball-looking mechanics mean the game of softball is being played. It all depends on if the ball is actually there—on if love is present.

So, then, we’ve got another question to ask. What is love?

And, thankfully, Paul doesn’t leave us waiting long. We’ve all heard the next verses in I Corinthians 13: “Love is patient, love is kind…” But let’s break up the lullaby. What is love? It’s this, to paraphrase (and I encourage you to read it slowly):

• Love can wait a really long time for a breakthrough without ever ceasing in its committed stance of rooting for wholeness.
• Love reaches out in joyful generosity to thoughtfully add value to others’ lives.
• Love doesn’t look at others with hatred or anger when they are blessed in ways we’re not. It doesn’t see either destruction or consumption of others as options on the path to inheritance of blessing; it is, in a word, content.
• Love doesn’t brag. It doesn’t talk about how great it is in comparison with all those not-so-great “others.”
• Love isn’t haughty. It doesn’t inflate itself like a balloon, and it doesn’t need to be seen by everyone in the room.
• Love isn’t rude. It doesn’t shove itself into or out of others’ lives in a way that leaves them feeling missed and snubbed. Love has manners.
• Love doesn’t have a strategy map for self-benefit. Its end goal is not its own interest.
• Love isn’t irritable or touchy. Love doesn’t have short nerves or a quick temper; you can’t make it burst into consuming flames over a few prods and pokes.
• Love doesn’t bother stewing on evil. It doesn’t have a calculated list of others’ misdeeds.
• Love does not celebrate unrighteousness; it doesn’t rejoice at the type of character expressions that come out of lives unshaped by apprenticeship to Christ.
• Love exuberantly delights and dances, hand-in-hand, with the truth. No self-deception here: truth is its deepest joy.
• Love keeps on welcoming, embracing, and covering even when its arms are tired.
• Love remains convinced, steadfast, and serious in its persuasions, orientations, and mission.
• Love keeps hoping. Love doesn’t flinch or worry when skies are gray.
• Love persists. It always keeps on fighting.
• Love doesn’t bow to circumstance. It doesn’t fall down. Ever.

How’s that for some specificity? You learning some things? Me too.

Somebody somewhere started a strange tradition of climaxing romantic tension with that all-too-typical picture of a lovesick girl picking petals off a rose to determine the answer to her heart’s quest for clarity. You know it, don’t you? Petal after petal: “He loves me…He loves me not…”

But you know what is absolutely ludicrous to me about this picture? It perpetuates the confetti cannons I mentioned above; it proclaims that love is something we wonder about, something that’s elusive, something that’s hard to define, something we have to guess about and assume exists whenever we see the “stuff” that other people tell us should exist when love is present.

Paul says that love is different. Love is identifiable. He lists out its characteristics, saying, “This is love. You don’t have to go around looking for it, wondering about it. This is what it is, and anything that’s happening without love is not the important stuff it claims to be. Without love, mechanics, activities—the barebones basics of religious expression—are nothing.”

So why am I saying all this? Why is this a thing we need to know? Three reasons:

Reason #1: It’s worth a glance at your own life. If you say you’re loving someone, and the characteristics of your relatings with them don’t match the list above, I’ll put it frankly: You’re not. You’re not loving them. If you want to play softball, you need a real ball. You’ve got to lay down your mechanics and your opinions and actually ask, “Do I line up with what love really is? Does what I call ‘love’ actually look like Paul’s definitions?” And if it doesn’t? If you’re out of line? Well, then I suggest you take a look at Reason #2.

Reason #2: It’s worth a glance at how we conceive of God. We’ve all heard from I John: “God is love.” But that can be confusing when we don’t know what love is, when our vision is blurred by the confetti images shot at us by the cultural cannons. I John has another truth for us: “We love because he first loved us” (4:19, ESV). If we need some assistance aligning our actions and dispositions with Paul’s descriptions (which, honestly, we all do), the best place to start is to realize that this is how God has loved us. Maybe go back through that list and replace the generic “love” with the specific “God’s love” at the beginning of each sentence. I think you’ll find yourself changing as you let that sink in.

And, lastly…

Reason #3: It’s worth a glance at the contexts in which we’re steeping. I’ll be transparent: In the back of my mind, the context I’ve been thinking about this whole time has been a church (a past church, thankfully—not my present community). Maybe that’s what’s been in your mind, too, or maybe you’re thinking about a family situation, a romantic relationship, a work context, or your local grocery store. Whatever it is, please hear me when I tell you that there’s going to be a place in your story, at some point, where you’re going to bump up against Paul’s list, and you’re going to have to say, “Hey, wait a minute. That person (or that group or that “whatever” it is) has not been loving me. They said they were. But they haven’t been patient with me. They haven’t been kind. I’m afraid they’ll get angry. I’m afraid they’ll walk away. I’m afraid…”

My friend, I’m so sorry.

A realization like that is a brutal one. It shakes you to your core. What do you do when you realize you’ve given your time, your heart, your energy, your body, and your very self to something that was lying, something that was never love from the start?

I’m not about to pretend that I have all the answers for this. I’m still working through this myself. But one thing that has made a world of difference: the clarity to define. I can look at that church context I was thinking of, square in the face, and I can say, without anger or exaggeration, “You loved me not.” I can say, “You said it was love. All the manipulations, all the abuse, all the lies—you lied. You loved me not.”

Why is this important? I can’t forgive something that isn’t defined. I can’t heal from a wound I haven’t acknowledged. The first step in letting the Lord into my pain is acknowledging that there really is pain there.

Friend, however this hits you, I pray that you might realize, in it, that the Lord is near. I pray that He will give you strength to look clearly, through His lenses, at how you’re loving (or not), at how you’re perceiving His love (or not), and at how you’ve been loved (or haven’t). I pray that He will guide your asking and your defining, your processing and your forgiving. I pray that you’ll be able to hold up Paul’s mirror, look in it honestly, and take the steps to walk out of the cultural clutter and into the clarity of love defined.

May you, seriously, be able to look at yourself and others and rejoice with truth, this truth, which is what love sees every time:

“I see you dressed in white, every wrong made right. I see a rose in bloom at the sight of you—oh, so priceless. Irreplaceable, unmistakeable, incomparable—darling, it’s beautiful. I see it all in you—oh, so priceless.”²

That is love, my friends. Let’s pick up a new rose and let it bloom. 

———————————————

¹ For more on the lullaby effect, see Rabbi Dr. Samuel Landau’s article, “The Lullaby Effect that Stops Us Reading Torah” (April 2021). https://www.thejc.com/judaism/all/the-lullaby-effect-that-stops-us-reading-torah-1.514048.

² for KING & COUNTRY, “Priceless” (2014).