Volume 3, Issue 5, May 1995


LOVE VERSES SELF-INTEREST

In Plato we find the doctrine of love as the power which drives to the union with the true and the good itself. In his interpretation of the ideas as the essences of everything he saw them as the "power of being."

Love is the moving power of life. The power of love is not something which is added to an otherwise finished process, but life has love in itself as one of its constitutive elements.

Love is a passion. It gives drive, strong interest, enthusiasm to life. It develops wholesome relationships. It goes beyond physical attraction to friendship to unconditional benevolence.

Desire is the lowest quality of love. The Greek word is epithymia, meaning to set ones heart upon, to long for, to lust for. The New Testament Christians coined the new word agape to mean unconditional love, without thought of reward or return.

Read for yourself the New Testament description of the gift of love; patient, kind, unselfish, and generous. These can come only to the mature person, the highest and best gift of life. It is the epitome of success. (1 Corinthians 13).

A drop in the bucket
Is only a drop -
A minor and moist detail;
For a drop can't change
The colour and taste
In a ten litre watering pail.
But if the drop
Has the colour of love
And the taste of tears divine,
One drop, dropped into
The vessel of life
Can turn the water into wine.

Search Articles by Keyword

 


Back to Issue Summary || Issue Index || Home

"Religion NOW" is published in limited edition by the Rev. Ross E. Readhead, B.A., B.D., Certificate of Corrections, McMaster University, in the interest of furthering knowledge and participation in religion. Dialogue is invited and welcomed.