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Friday, November 24, 2006

Love and relationships

I read in Barth's Evangelical Theolgy that the word love in terms of "Eros" is the "powerful desire urge, impulse, and endeavor by which a created being seeks his own self-assertion, satisfaction, realization, and fulfillment in his relation to something else." It's a movement toward an object, trying to bring it "into its possession and power."

Am I like this in relationships and interactions in general?? Do I seek to achieve something so that I can feel good about myself? Is my motivation wanting to acheive a certain state that I'm not currently in? A certian level of familiarity, of benefits of being associated with certain people or certain types of friendships?

In comparison:

Agape love is different in that the "origin of its search" for the other is out of a freedom for the other one. "All it desires is to exist for him, to offer himself to him, and finally to give himself to him." It is a love that gives "sovreignty" to the one whom you seek to love.

What would relationships look like with this kind of Agape Love. Perhaps I wouldn't focus so much on getting to a place where I wasn't before. On gaining something. Achieving a certain state of being. Perhaps interactions and relations would come from a place of sacrifice, of offering.

Perhaps I would be more patient and kind, less jealous and boastful, less arrogant and rude, not insisting on my own way. Perhaps I would rejoice in truth, bear, believe, hope, and endure all things.....(Corinthians)