Carey Dillinger, February, 1995
The Daily Commercial
Yesterday was Valentine's Day? I mean, yesterday was Valentine's Day! It could have been Christmas, an anniversary, a birthday or Mother's Day. Most of us menfolk approach these occasions with less emotion than we usually portray. As a matter of fact, those of us who do keep up with these "Hallmark Holidays," basically check them off like a grocery list. "Let's see now, Valentine's is over, so we have a few months off until Mother's Day. Cool!" Sorry to say, but this attitude is a male character flaw that really needs changing. We better get serious.
You didn't get one of those silly cards for your sweetie, did you? Those wacky ones are fine for birthdays and the fourth of July, but for V-Day you better keep it serious. Too late, huh? File this column for Mother's Day (another holiday that doesn't lend itself to Tom-Foolery).
Couples deserve their own holiday and Valentine's Day fits that bill to a Vee. It's all about love. The kind of love only a man and a woman were meant to share.
Try as they might , most teenage couples will have a hard time possessing the God-given bond formed when a man and a woman unite their lives. Whatever they do possess is a model of love. By the way, a model in this context is a small, cheap, plastic imitation of the real thing. Usually the boy is more "in lust" than in love. The girl is the one who is in love, but often this love is of the motherly variety. So-called sex education is not the answer to the problems caused by "teenagers in love." It is more important to teach kids how to love, than how to "make love." If a child can learn to love, then it is more than just an emotion. It is as much a teachable characteristic as cleaning your room and personal hygiene. For someone to truly have the kind of love for their mate that Valentine's Day was designed for, let's consider amending our human growth and development curriculum to include a unit on love.
To begin with we need a lesson on the different kinds of love. The ancient Greeks had a different word for each type of love that is expressible by humans. A discussion of three of these words is in order here.
First we have phileo, the root word that makes Philadelphia, the "City of Brotherly Love." Embodied in this word are all the aspects of familial love. That is, parental love, natural affection for relatives (the reason blood is thicker than water) and just plain kindness. It is obvious from observations in the public school classroom that many of our children are not learning these attributes at home or at church, the places where most people that possess these characteristics first came to appreciate them. Additionally, it is apparent, even to the casual observer, that the reason these attributes are not being absorbed into the hearts and minds of the younger generation is because they are not in the hearts and minds of their parents. As parents we need to reevaluate our priorities concerning what is important to our families. Food, shelter and phileo must come to the top of the list. Possessions need to be moved down to a position that allows for everything else that pertains to love to take precedence. Time well spent with our children is the only way to teach them familial love. Whoever said that "quality time is more important than quantity time," probably wasn't spending much of either with their children. Most quality moments in a family relationship are spontaneous and occur at the strangest moments. Rarely, do they happen during a period of parentally masterminded "quality time!"
The second Greek word for love is agape, which basically means to set aside one's own best interests to pursue the best interests of another. This is the love from which heroes are made. The kind of love where a five year old dives into a swimming pool to save his drowning three year old brother. The kind of love where people run into a burning building to save someone they don't even know. Jesus Christ summed up true agape best when he said, "Greater love has no one than this, that one lay down his life for his friends" (John 15:13, NASV). When parents refuse to work out their differences, get divorced and say it's for the good of the children, it makes you wonder just whose best interests are really being taken into consideration. When children are treated like boarders or unwelcomed house guests it doesn't take them very long to figure it out.
Agape is the kind of love that not only allows, but demands that we correct our children.This correction could involve punishment of some sort and in many instances mandates it. To say that a child is left unpunished because we love them too much, is actually saying that we do not know how to love them enough.
Another Greek word for love is eros . This is the love that gets talked about at the water cooler and on the street corners. This is the love that catches our attention in the movies, on television and in magazines, books, and yes even this beloved newspaper. This is the love that gets written about in "How -to" manuals and on bathroom walls, and yet for our children's well being it is the least important.
The world has it backwards as usual. Having our phileo and agape in order first will allow our eros to be what God meant it to be: an expression of love between a man and a woman that confirms the true all encompassing love that they have for one another.
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