Greg

Last Updated on Wednesday, 31 December 1969 16:59 Written by Greg Saturday, 19 December 2009 04:51

I've heard that love is a verb, not a feeling.  It's something we do, a choice we make.  That's an important thing to understand if you plan to love your enemy, or even just your neighbor.  This jives well with the other proverb I've heard.  I don't have to like you, I just have to love you.  I guess that liking in that scenario is the feeling and love is the doing.  The point is, we must choose to act in love even in the absence of positive feelings toward others.

I wonder, though, if the real force of Christian teaching isn't undermined by the idea of loving without liking.  Looking at myself, suspicion arises when the enormous feeling of relief follows the realization.  I can still despise you?  Loath you?  All I have to do is take the moral high road and treat you nice?  Whew, that was a close one.  Now, I'll admit, treating an enemy with love is no small thing.  But somehow it's not as hard if I don't have to stop feeling disgust, scorn, resentment or animosity.

Maybe that is the sense of Jesus' comparison of murder with anger, insult, and contempt.  Maybe it's not so easy to compartmentalize emotion and action.  Maybe like is a verb too.