Love
- "Be faithful and diligent in keeping the commandments of God, and I will encircle thee in the arms of my love."
- "A new commandment I give unto you ... love one another; ... By this shall men know that ye are my disciples ..."
- 15) If ye love me, keep my commandments.
- 21) He that hath my commandments, and keepeth them, he it is that loveth me: and he that loveth me shall be loved of my Father, and I will love him, and will manifest myself to him.
- "This is my commandment, That ye love one another, as I have loved you."
- "Why Did Samuel Say the Lord “Hated” the Lamanites?", Book of Mormon Central: KnoWhy, 13 Sep 2018
- In ancient cultures, terms that got translated to "love" and "hate" are often technical terms describing a relationship with respect to a covenant or master.
- "Xenia (Greek)", Wikipedia
- κῆδος, Wiktionary
- Kêdos
- "Greek words for love", Wikipedia
Notes
This page covers the term and concept of love, somewhat distinctly from the term and concept of Charity.
Love as a Principle of Action
There is a similarity between love and faith, in that both love and faith are principles of action that are often replaced with principles of feeling.
The principle of faith is often misused as belief without works, Joseph Smith has taught us that faith is a principle of action, that motivates action, and hence, we can see that in many instances where Jesus praises the great faith of people who come to him, that he is recognizing the remarkable actions which their belief inspired. Similarly, love is often misused as a feeling, but as "Why Did Samuel Say the Lord “Hated” the Lamanites?" shows, the ancients thought of love as the honoring of an alliance, covenant, contract, or obligation. To commit adultery then, is the opposite of loving my wive, not because I can't still have strong feelings for my wife (some adulterous men, apparently, still do), but because it breaks the covenant. Hence, when Israel breaks its covenant with the Lord, the Lord compares Israel to an adulterous wife. Hence, punishing one's child properly is a form of love, because a parent is obliged to train and correct their child for the child's good. Hence, love is a kind of action, in harmony with obligations or alliances, whereas inaction or acting against an alliance of obligation, is hate.
Love, here, also, can be an opposite of fear, much as faith is often said to be. There are many parents, for example, who fail to punish their children because of fear. President Joseph F. Smith stated: "There should [not] be any of us so unwisely indulgent, so thoughtless and so shallow in our affection for our children that we dare not check them in a wayward course, in wrongdoing and in their foolish love for the things of the world more than the things of righteousness, for fear of offending them." (Joseph F. Smith, Gospel Doctrine, 5th Ed., p.286)
We could also make the analogy that in the same was that faith is the evidence of unseen belief; love is the evidence of an unseen emotional connection, and an emotional connection without acts of love is dead.
This is related to the principle I have recognized, that people are basically neurons. Similarly, our learning and interactions with the world take on the basic form described by Pavlov, and in the natural sciences, we have abstracted and formalized this method to the point that we can consciously handle it and wield it to pursue learning to a very disciplined and powerful way.
We form connections with other people based on "bids for attention" and responses to those bids for attention. We call the principle of action here, "love", and by application of this principle we strengthen bonds, and lose others. Similarly, we relate to the world, nature, and God through our interactions with it, and its responses to our interactions. We call the principle of action here, "faith", and by application of this principle, we gain knowledge, learning true principles and discarding principles that are untrue. Our "faith" in Christ, however is also termed our "love" for Christ, and similarly, we can "love" God and have "faith" in God. It may be that these principles describe separate aspects of the same thing, but that is unclear to me. It would seem clear that "faith" tends to be used with respect to principles and distant entities, while love tends to be used with respect to people or things we relate with intimately. If we try to tie in the word "charity", which we are said to require even when faith is needed no more, then we can see that "faith" embraces an element of uncertainty and learning, that perhaps equates to a kind of cognitive distance, whereas "love" does not have this element of distance, and that, in the end, we will need to act in accordance with out alliances, but the cognitive distance will be closed and the exploratory learning element of our relationships will have an end. Hence, then, we might say that faith represents an exploratory principle of action, whereas love represents an exploitative principle of action, reflecting the same explore/exploit dichotomy that is commonly associated with left-brain and right-brain thinking, or the left and right wings of politics.
Both of these words relate to principle of trust.
Greek Concepts of Love
- Agápe
- Éros
- Philia
- Storge
- Xenia
- Kêdos