What’s Love Got To Do With It

Saint Louis, Missouri – Dr. Robert Scott

Famous R&B Singer, Tina Turner, is well known for her song, “What’s Love Got To Do With It?” This song became a movie starring Angela Bassett and Laurence Fishburne. The movie was a biographical depiction of Tina’s life, which chronicled her rise in the music industry and the violent, virulent relationship with her musician husband, Ike Turner. For me, the movie portrayed Ms. Turner’s realization that if she did not love herself, she could not love anyone else. And part of loving herself was getting out of the disastrous relationship with Ike before she suffered more abuse or was eventually killed.

While I love this song and like the movie, I have concluded that LOVE, this four-letter word is the most misused, misappropriated, and misunderstood word in the human language. I surmise we have many people who are engaging in relationships with family, friends, co-workers and lovers/significant others/spouses who don’t understand the authenticity and weight of real love. Too many people have become statistics and ended up damaged goods because we have been abused, mistreated, and disregarded by people who supposed to love us. I contend many have a warped understanding of love because love has different dimensions which most us of do not take into account. This is why people, claiming to love, enter a relationship but lack the internal capacity to live love  to its fullest human potential. I see it all the time within the context of ministry in marriages, family structures, friendships and church relationships.

What Went Wrong?

The warped understanding of love creates parents who think they love their children by being abusive to them when they are “disciplining” them. This contortion of love is evident in romantic relationship that is not based upon mutual respect, honor, and faithfulness, but sex and money, leading to the objectification of the human spirit. This distortion of love is seen in friendship when you think you can trust someone but that person entered into a relationship only with the intent to get, not to give; to take, not to serve; and to use, not to be a blessing. This warped, distorted, and contorted understanding of love is further exacerbated by the premise that love is an emotion. Thus, I can fall in and out of love. However, I want to give a corrective. Love is a choice, not a feeling. Love is a conscious, deliberate, cognitive act of the will that is demonstrated to the one who is beloved.  There has to be an understanding of what type of love is being bestowed.

Four Types Of Love

In the Greek, there are four basic types of love: Eros (romantic); Philia (friendship); Stergo (family) and Agape (spiritual/godly). Out of all these, the most important and foundational one is agape. This is the benevolent love God has showered upon humanity because God is love. This is a divine love whereby God looks beyond our faults and see our needs. If our relationships lack God’s love as the foundation, they will be empty and fail. Anytime you have relationships that are not undergirded by the love of God, you will have a mess on your hands. Romantic love without God is puppy love. Friendship love without God is mere association. Family love without God is relatives getting on your reserve nerve (that is the nerve past the last nerve). Spiritual love without God is IMPOSSIBLE! This is where the rubber meets the road in our everyday human interactions. If a person does not have a sense of the eternal, transcendent, unconditional love of God, the other relations will be diminished at best. God knows real love carries the risk of being betrayed. And who knows that better than God who still loves us even when we betray God with our disobedience and our idolatry.

The Perfect Love Of God

Since God IS love, God looks beyond the faults of a person and sees the needs of persons; looks beyond the wrongs of a person and sees the wounds of a person; looks beyond the trouble of a person and sees the tragedy of a person; and looks beyond the problems of a person and sees the pain of a person. When this type of love is part of our psyche, it empowers us to demonstrate compassion, mercy, and forgiveness.

Ultimately, we cannot love our family, friends, and even our enemies if God’s love is not the present guiding force in our lives.  Therefore, to answer Tina Turner’s rhetorical question, “What’s love got to do with it?” EVERYTHING!! When it is based upon the divine, spiritual love of God working in us, on us, around us, and in spite of us.