Love One Another

by Tom Fairman

When Aladdin first meets the genie in the classic Disney film, the genie sets out some rules for the three wishes that Aladdin is allowed. One of these rules is that the genie cannot make anyone fall in love, not because it is unfair or that he does want to, but that he cannot. Falling in love is something magical that happens when two people zing which we have no control over, to steal another analogy from an animated film, Hotel Transylvania.

This is a popular view amongst pop culture that has been around for a long time. The Buzzcocks sang about falling in love with someone you shouldn’t have fallen in love with, but not before Elvis had sang about being unable to help falling in love with you. Traced even further back, this is taken from the legends of Cupid’s arrow striking you and then you are helpless to its charms. This narrative that love is something that happens to us beyond our control is so interwoven into the fabric of society that it has become a fundamental truth of life.

People live by the mantra of love in the sense that they are blown around by whatever feeling of love is strongest at that time and people nod understandingly when this means marriages breakdown as the love has grown cold or when one person is not feeling in love anymore. The bright lights of another capture our hearts and we can’t help it if we have fallen in love with someone us. It is not our fault or their fault, it is just love.

Yet this understanding of love is difficult to comprehend when Jesus gives us the commandment to love one another. If love is something outside of our control, how can we be commanded to love? Surely we cannot be forced to love? This is an incredibly difficult notion particularly in the West where the idea of arranged marriages, although once popular, is incomprehensible. For love to be a commandment, it needs to be a choice and one that is freely made, not based on zings or arrows, but by own free will.

We can try to explain this away by placing a different interpretation on this commandment of love. We try to understand it as being nice to one another, smiling and waving and tolerating all that others do. This is somewhat more palatable and easy to do. Tolerance does not require the same sort of sacrifice that say a deep, meaningful relationship entails. It does not require us to give of ourselves or offer anything above swallowing our criticisms and smiling superficially. Jesus foresaw this and so sort to clarify this commandment with how this love should look.

The commandment in full was given as love one another as I have loved you. Jesus choose to love us in the most extreme way. He chose to heal the sick even when He was forbidden to. He chose to teach us the way that would lead to eternal life even when people accused Him of blasphemy and to shut Him down. He chose to speak words of love when people shouted at him and argued with him. He chose to remain still when people struck Him and spat at Him. He chose to forgive them when they nailed Him to the cross. He chose to love us in the face of everything that is the anthesis of love that we threw at Him. This is how He commands us to love each other.

This is a difficult, self-sacrificial love, not a whimsical feeling that can change with the wind. This is a love that requires us to lay down our lives for not just our friends, but our enemies as well. This is a love that we have to choose in the face of grumpy children, tired work colleagues, infuriating politics and unfair life circumstances. This is true love and it is impossible on our own. However we are not on our own and nothing is impossible for God. We have been given the gift of the Holy Spirit to help us make these choices even when we feel like we cannot. This is why the resurrection is so essential for our faith because it shows us that the cost of love is worth paying and that it is possible in Him.

The genie is right that we cannot make people fall in love, but fortunately we can choose to love with the help of the One who is love. Let us choose this authentic love over the lie.