If I speak in human or angelic tongues, but do not have love, I am only a resounding gong or a clanging cymbal. If I have the gift of prophecy and can fathom all mysteries and all knowledge, and if I have a faith that can move mountains, but do not have love, I am nothing. If I give all I have to the poor and give over my body to hardship, that I may boast, but do not have love, I gain nothing.
1 Corinthians 13 1-3
This has to be one of the most widely quoted passages of the bible. We’ve seen it (usually in its longer form) on posters, wall plaques, and fridge magnets. We’ve heard it read at weddings, in fact my wife and I had this chapter read out at our wedding. The meaning is clear: Love is all, love conquers everything.
All together now: All you need is love — ra ta tata tah.
Or are we missing the point?
As Dennis Prager says in his excellent commentary on the Ten Commandments, anything can become an idol, including love. The idea that, in the words of The Beatles, “All you need is love” is making an idol of love. People who put love of country above love of good often commit great evil. Love of a pet might lead you to save it rather than a human not known to you. Love of a friend or family member might lead you to hire them rather than a more qualified and deserving stranger. Love is beautiful, but it is not good in itself.
There is a condition called De Clerambault’s syndrome where someone, usually but not always a woman, falls insanely in love with another person. Although the other person does not love them (or quickly falls out of love) nothing will convince the patient that their love is not returned, and they will relentlessly pursue the object of their affections. This has recently been portrayed in the miniseries Baby Reindeer. Though most of us will, thankfully, never suffer from this syndrome or been the object of someone who does, we have all suffered the pain of unrequited love, had to accept that the one we love does not and never will love us, and had to move on.
Clearly love does not conquer all.
So, what did Saint Paul mean? This was part of his first letter to the Corinthians. Ancient Corinth was a rich and highly cosmopolitan city, a one-time rival to Athens. Though under the shadow of Rome by Paul’s time, it still maintained much of the Greek tradition of philosophy as well as being a major trading centre, hence the letters to the Corinthians are very much letters to us today. I believe that what Paul is saying to us is not that love is everything, but that without love to direct it, gifts such as intellect, prophesy and even charity are worthless.
I have already talked about the danger of an intellect not driven by love, but it is worth restating. Milton in his Paradise Lost and Paradise Regained saw Lucifer as the personification of a cold, prideful intellect stripped of any concern for others. The being who might have been the brightest star in God’s firmament, became the devil precisely because he had no love for anyone else. Dante took this one step further where we find that the wings that should have carried Lucifer to the stars provide the cold that keeps him frozen in the ninth circle of hell where he has nothing to do but gnaw at his own resentment. Sometimes a great intellect can cause terrible harm when driven by diabolical inspiration. The theories of Karl Marx led to the deaths of well over a hundred million people and are likely to kill as many again in years to come. Did he have love for his fellow men? Absolutely not. His favourite quote from Goethe was “All that comes to be deserves to perish wretchedly” attributed, appropriately enough, to the devil. If ever there was a man who did the devil’s work it was Marx.
There are so many philosophers who stand up on street corners or in theatres and pronounce their theories on the world, society, humanity. It was true in Corinth and it’s true to this day. The question you should ask yourself about all of them: Jordan Peterson, Dennis Prager, Michel Foucault, Jacques Derrida, Greta Thunberg, Ibram X Kendi, and all the others is: do they have love for humanity, for their fellow man, for you. If the answer is no, then for all their eloquence, their philosophy is at best no more use than the sounding of an empty brass vessel.
This principle also applies in your personal life. If someone is criticising you, ask “does this person want the best for me?” if yes, then listen to them, if no, their criticism is probably useless or at least should be treated with great caution. Similarly, when you criticise someone else, ask “Am I doing this out of love or do I have another motive, such as envy or spite?” Always let your criticism be driven by a genuine desire to help, and if you realise that your true motive is spite or envy, hold your tongue.
Even faith without love is useless. There is an old debate around faith vs works. While it is true that you cannot get to heaven purely by works, the reality is that true faith will lead to works if prompted by love. If you love other people, how can you face your god if despite your faith, you never lifted a finger to relieve the other person’s suffering?
What about the third point, if I give all I have to the poor and live a life of hardship, it’s nothing without love. How can that be right.
Imagine this; you have just died and find yourself face to face with Jesus. He asks,
“When I was hungry, did you feed me? When I was thirsty did you give me drink? When I was naked, did you clothe me? When I was a stranger, did you welcome me? When I was sick or in prison, did you visit me?”
You say,
“Yes lord, for many years I gave to charities that fed the hungry, clothed the poor, cared for strangers and looked after the sick.”
Then he looks at you and says, in a voice like a sharp, two-edged sword.
“But did you love me?”
What does love mean in this context? In my parable of the good conservative, I talked about a politician and a social worker; both saw a homeless man and were moved to do something. Unfortunately, they had no real love for the man in front of them, any love they had was for an abstract mass known as ‘the poor’. Because they loved ‘the poor’ rather than real, flesh-and-blood poor people, what they did was at best useless and at worst harmful to the people they claimed to be helping. This is so often the case with people who claim to champion ‘social justice’. They act, but not out of love. Many philanthropists who give vast sums of money to charities do so not out of love, but out of guilt. They are doing what in the Middle Ages was called, ‘buying indulgences’. Without love, it is all worthless. God is willing to forgive if we approach him in the proper spirit of remorse and humility, but he cannot be bought off, even with everything we own — after all, it all belongs to Him anyway.
Love in this case does not mean empathy either. I am, to use a modern term, on the autism spectrum, something for which I do not want or deserve sympathy. I see it as a unique perspective God has given me on the world. It’s a common misconception that people on the autism spectrum lack empathy, I can tell you from my own experience that this is not true. I have no more desire to hurt others than anyone else. Empathy, fundamentally, is asking “how would I feel if it were me?” This is not a bad place to start, after all, Christ said
“Do unto others as you would have them do unto you.” (Luke 6,31 and Matthew 7,12).
What I can tell you, is this is only a place to start. Empathy only works if the other person thinks like you. You may see a person sitting at a table by himself and think “He must be lonely; I should go and talk to him.” you do it because you would be lonely, but he may be enjoying a quiet moment alone with his thoughts (or listening to an audiobook or podcast) and the last thing he wants is to be disturbed. Empathy, I believe, is in the end a cold, selfish, and essentially narcissistic quality. All too often, rather than caring for others, empathic people simply project their own feelings onto the object of their supposed care. No one is more surprised than they when their efforts to help are met with hostility and ingratitude. This is why we have the old expression “The road to hell is paved with good intentions.”
Does this mean we should never try to help someone? Of course not. If we try to help people, inevitably we make mistakes. One who truly loves the other will learn from their mistakes and do better next time. One who does it only for their own reasons will double down when they hear they have only made things worse, or not even bother to find out.
Should we not give to charities? No again, We cannot personally help everyone who needs help, and a good charitable organisation is a way of delivering help to people who would otherwise be neglected, but we should be careful. If we truly care about helping poor or less fortunate people, we should take care to see them as people, capable of agency and deserving of dignity. We should ask, how much of my donation goes to the people in need? We should also follow up to see if people are truly being helped. Is this charity helping these people or simply keeping them as dependants to elicit more donations? If you love the people then you help them because you want the best for them, not merely to feel good or salve your conscience.
Love is not everything, but without love, intellect, philosophy, faith and charity are useless — or worse.
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