particular and gratuitous
some thoughts on what it means to love
I recently finished Makoto Fujimura’s Art and Faith: A Theology of Making. One of the themes that runs throughout the book is on why God created humankind. His thesis is that God created out of gratuitous love. He did not need to create human kind, he did not need creatures to reflect or image his character and glory. He created out of gratuitous love.
I have been thinking lately, as my little family prepares to expand, on what love is like. I’ve been thinking both how to ensure Little Man continues to feel loved amid the transition, and how to teach him to love his baby sister.
I have also been reflecting on my recent trauma, processing it with a counselor and godly friends. I have realized how wide the disparity between my convictions about love and my experiences of it have been, at least in the most intimate of relationships.
Two thoughts have emerged in my musings. Love, is at its core, always gratuitous. And, love is, at its core, always particular.
gratuitous
Love, be it between lovers, or families, or friends, has to be gratuitous. God’s love always is. He created out of love, out of a desire to bring life and beauty forth. He created, knowing how risky and costly it would be. He created because he could not help himself, because his nature is love, and love is gratuitous.
The word agape is oft used in Christian circles. Sermons and books explain it as “unconditional love.” We use it describe how God’s love is based on his character and not our choices, and how he longs for us to love others in our community. I fear that we have sanitized the meaning with ‘Christian-ese.’ Agape is a word that historically, both in the Septuagint and in the cultural context of the New Testament outside of Scripture, can have a very negative connotation. It carries this idea of obsession, of passion, of a desire so intense that it goes beyond reason or wisdom. It is a-i-can’t-help-myself-i-am-going-to-love-you-no-matter-the-cost-or-consequences love. It is the sort of love that so overwhelms and captivates that nothing on earth can persuade the lover to give up his beloved, no matter how unworthy she might be. It is used sometimes to describe unhealthy obsessions, ones marred with sin. One of the most uncomfortable uses is how it is used to describe Absalom’s desire for Tamar in the Septuagint.
God is not a god of darkness. There is nothing unhealthy or evil in his love for us. But it is inordinate, it is tremendous, it is gratuitous. It is the love that makes the God of the universe choose to create human beings in his own image, knowing that they will one day turn against him, knowing that one day he will have to sacrifice his beloved son to save them.
And he creates out of love anyways. It is unreasonable, it is unfathomable.
That is agape.
John 21:15-19, the reinstatement of Peter, is very interesting in the Greek. Jesus asks Peter twice, “do you love me?” He uses the verb form of agape agapao. Peter, however, uses a different word for love. He uses the word phileo to describe the love between brothers or possibly close friends. The third time Jesus asks if Peter loves him, he uses the same word as Peter. It is then that Peter is grieved. Many scholars and commentators have wondered what this exchange means. Why does Jesus ask Peter about agapao, and Peter respond with phileo?
There are theologians with much greater experience and wisdom than me, so I recommend exploring their work, but here are a few of my thoughts-
This word has both negative and positive connotations. Imagine your friend asking you, “hey, are you passionately and obsessively in love with me?” You know they aren’t asking in a romantic sense, but you also don’t know quite why or what they’re asking. You might very well respond, as Peter does, with “I love you very dearly as a friend and brother.” Peter doesn’t yet fully comprehend the love of God. Peter doesn’t realize that Jesus is showing him, the disciple who has so recently betrayed him and broken his heart, that God’s love is still the same. Jesus still loves Peter with the can’t-help-himself-would-give-up-everything-to-be-with-him love.
But - Peter eventually gets it.
In 1 Peter 1:22, he uses both of these words for love.
“Now that you have purified yourselves by obeying the truth so that you have sincere love (phileo) for each other, love (agapao) one another deeply, from the heart.”
In 1 Peter 4:8, he uses agapao.
“Above all, love each other deeply, because love covers over a multitude of sins.”
He realizes that the love of God is that gratuitous, and that we should emulate it. He sees that both the familial love and the unconditional love are essential aspects of God’s love, and provide insight into how we are to love one another.
what does God’s gratuitous love look like?
What does gratuitous love look like?
The word gratuitous can sometimes have negative connotations itself. It seems to conjure up images of extravagance and lavishness and wastefulness. It seems something that Christians should approach with caution.
Yes, and no.
Fujimura explains that acts of love and making are only foolishly gratuitous if the person or object held in high esteem is unworthy of this affection. He recounts how London lined the streets with roses to mark the passing of Princess Diana, for she was so very beloved. Did the roses wither quickly? Yes. Could the money for the roses been spent on more practical things? Yes. Was this show of grief and love, strictly speaking, necessary? No.1
Indeed, this seems a gratuitous act. Yet, as Fujimura points out, we see Jesus praise such an act in John 12, when Mary anoints Jesus with costly perfume, perfume that might very well have been her dowry. She then wipes his feet with her hair. She is so full of love for him that she risks shame to render him service and display her devotion. It is beautiful. It is good. It is right.
It is gratuitous. One of the lines of the Book of Common Prayer, during the Eucharist is “it is right to give him thanks and praise.”
It is right to respond to the fullness of the love he has poured out on us.
And it right to love others…
I am still learning what it is to love and be loved. But on thing I have been reminded of, oft and forcefully, is that everyone is created out of God’s love, and everyone is deeply loved by God. If I wish to love God well, then I am to love the others around me well. This means to love them deeply, fervently, and fully. It is to love others even knowing that they might hurt us, abuse us, abandon us, betray us. It isn’t giving people permission to treat us that way, as loving someone well can also mean enforcing good and godly boundaries.
But it is to choose to love in spite of the risks, just as God, motivated by his love, chose to create, knowing the risks.
particular love
Love is particular.
I don’t mean in the sense of being choosy or difficult to please. Rather, love is particular in the sense that it can’t have an unknown, hazy sort of object or ideal as its desire.
Dostoevsky, in The Brothers Karamazov, a character vents “the more I love humanity in general the less I love man in particular.” This character is undergoing a crisis of worldview and faith, and ultimately, he realizes that in lofty attempts to ‘love humanity’ he has actually come to love no one at all. He does not love his neighbor, nor perhaps even himself.2
God’s love is particular. He doesn’t love humanity in some intellectual lofty idealistic sort of way. No, his love for humanity led him to become incarnate in Christ, descend into the world, and serve and love real, actual people. He didn’t love from afar, or in a general sense. He came to love individuals as they really and truly were. He loved Peter, as he was, probably with missing teeth, smelly armpits, and a quick temper. He loved John, as he was, with his philosophical musings and strong running legs. Christ came to save the world, but to do so by knowing, redeeming, and loving individuals. His love is expansive, for it is for everyone, but it is still particular, for his love is also distinctly for you.
Love requires distinction.
In The Little Prince, a sweet wild fox approaches the Little Boy. The two discuss what it is to become ‘tame.’ The fox explains it this way, “To me, you are still nothing more than a little boy who is just like a hundred thousand other little boys. And I have no need of you. And you, on your part, have no need of me. To you I am nothing more than a fox like a hundred thousand other foxes. But if you tame me, then we shall need each other. To me, you will be unique in all the world. To you, I shall be unique in all the world.”3
To choose to love someone, to choose to be with them, is to see them as unique in all the world. Not because they necessarily have a surplus of unique characteristics, but because by the intimacy and time spent together you have come to know each little quirk and distinction. You come to think of their eyes not as ‘blue,’ but as the exact shade of blue that you’ve only seen in them. You come to know their tone of voice, and can hear it the moment you enter a building, guessing their mood before you even see their face.
God does not need us, anymore than the fox and the Little Prince actually needed one another. They certainly could have continued to live without being in each other’s lives. There was no real necessity. No - the need comes from the desire of love itself to be gratuitous, to pour out.
God did not need to create us; he could have continued in his existence, fully sufficient and enough on his own. Yet - his nature being love, he felt a desire to create, and not create automatons or carbon copies, but create unique individuals that would be capable of real relationship with him, to create out of gratuity and particularity.
Love isn’t satisfied with generalities. For love, it’s not enough to buy a friend who likes coffee a bag of coffee. It has to find out the kind you like most, the costly kind, and purchase it, even if means approaching a random barista with, “hey - I know this sounds sort of weird, but my friend frequents this shop, you wouldn’t happen to know what they like best, would you?”4
learning to love
Loving and being loved are both very hard. I am in a season where being loved is perhaps harder than loving. I am filled with deep gratitude and tenderness for so many people in life, and I want to love them well. Pregnancy hormones have perhaps heightened these feelings, and I have to remind myself that NOT everyone in my world wants a hand embroidered bit of artwork or to be platonically but passionately embraced by a weepy pregnant girl.5 But - where my spirit draws back is being loved. It feels frightening to accept gratuitous care after what I’ve experienced. It feels frightening to let others see my particularities. Will they think it peculiar that T.S. Eliot is one of my favorite poets and I’ve started to carry a copy of The Four Quartets around? Will they think it bizarre that I have a few select ways that I really enjoy honey (a certain lip balm, honey-sweetened herbal tea, a honey and wildflower perfume) but really don’t enjoy it outside of these oddly specific contexts?
Let me illustrate - Little Man and I cause a certain level of chaos no matter where we go. The level fluctuates on many variables. But… we cause chaos. I have noticed that for one particular person, our chaos seemed to be a little… unappreciated. I could understand.
This person often looks at Little Man and me the way Mr. Brown looks at Paddington.
That being said, recently, Little Man was throwing an absolute fit. I had had no sleep, waking up with vivid nightmares. It was not a good day for us.
To my infinite surprise - it was our Mr. Brown that came and spoke tender words to Little Man, telling him he was loved, and that it would all be okay.
I was both deeply grateful and deeply surprised. Our Mr. Brown may not appreciate all the chaos we bring, but cares for us in spite of that. It was not necessary for him to enter into our little moment of chaos, to take the time ‘to tame’ Little Man, but he did so.
God is showing me in this season that isn’t enough to try and love others well, I must also learn to receive love well. For to be willing to love, but not be loved, is nothing more than fear and pride. All my love for others ultimately comes from the Holy Spirit’s shaping of my heart, and to refuse to accept love from others is to refuse to allow him to continue shaping theirs or mine.
To refuse to let others love us hurts them. I had a close friend in high school. We spent a lot of time together, but even so, there were parts of my story, mainly my past trauma, that I held back. I didn’t confide in her about it, fearing that I would lose her friendship if I did. One day - she told me that she felt like I only allowed people close to a certain point, but then it was as if there was a wall in my heart, one saying “come no closer!” And that no matter how much time we spent together, that wall was there. I didn’t know how to respond. She was absolutely right. I wish I could say that her words of wisdom broke down my barricaded heart right then and there. It didn’t. It still took a few years after that before I began letting people in, sharing my story fully. The painful irony of it is - my refusal to accept her care ended up costing me our friendship, the very thing I was afraid of losing.
God calls us to love and be loved. He loves with gratuity and particularity. He calls us to receive it and give it, moving past both fear and pride.
I wish I could close today with some deeply profound and artistic benediction. But I’ve been up since the wee hours of the morning, Azalea Bloom performing Swan Lake and triggering a few contractions.
So I’ll close with this song, and make it my prayer for us all…6
Fujimura, Makoto. 2020. Art & Faith: A Theology of Making.
Dostoevsky, Fyodor. 1880. The Brothers Karamazov.
de Saint-Exupéry, Antoine. 1943. The Little Prince.
If you ask this out of breath and nine months pregnant, running late to a doctors appointment, so having parked very poorly, you will startle the poor barista.
In my defense, we are now in the ‘any day’ stage. Each hug could be my last. For weeks. My friends tease that I am the cuddliest introvert one could find, and pregnancy certainly makes this more so.
If Spotify confuses you, here’s the link on YouTube.