Love

It is an irony that people believe that God is love, by which they mean a mere niceness. CS Lewis wrote in The Prroblem of Pain, "We want, in fact, not so much a Father in Heaven as a grandfather in heaven — a senile benevolence who, as they say, ‘liked to see young people enjoying themselves,’ and whose plan for the universe was simply that it might be truly said at the end of each day, ‘a good time was had by all.’” We have falsely divided the God of the two testaments, disapproving sharply of the hard old-fashioned one, while wanting to hug the New Testament one and watch him hug everyone else as well in a great circle of love.

Then we discover that the world is not an entirely nice place. For some people, nearly all their existence is hard, and few of us escape without tragedy. Our own troubles occupy first place in our consciousness, of course, but we also notice that there are great tragedies and even horrors in the world.  As this is incompatible with a God of Hugs, we are limited in our subsequent conclusions. We might choose to believe that not only our enemies, but even our competitors for control of our world, must be especially evil people to be thwarting the will of Hugs. Our hatred for them deepens. Or we might decide that because that god cannot be all-powerful then no real god exists at all. Or thirdly, we decide that the stories about Hugs and the rules s/he/it insists on must have gotten garbled somehow, and everyone should follow a new set, loosely based on the old ones.  This new set, coincidentally and miraculously, is just what is best for people like us to succeed in and get more power. They frame a world in which we can move most easily.

I think that in a dispute, Christians should no longer be allowed to use the word "love," because it has taken on meanings so far afield from its original that it is sometimes even its opposite. Most especially, it should be banned from titles and mottoes of organisations involved in disputes, so that none can consider itself the Love Faction - which would automatically imply that the other side is the Hate Faction, which is a rather hateful thing to say. Rob Bell's book had some good points, but its eventual title was Love Wins, which I thought had a clearly implied subtitle, So Fuck You. 

This isn't new, certainly.  It goes back at least to Chaucer's Prioress with her pendant that read  Amor Vincit Omnia, which we learn fairly quickly must mean something different than we originally thought. It may not even be worse now, I just may be wholly sick of it because I happen to be living in it.

Choosing which of the many synonyms is most appropriate for what we mean to say is likely to be a good exercise in revealing that meaning, even in spite of ourselves.