For those of you who took the time to read Part 1 of this blog, you may recall that I spent a great deal of time talking about two different subject matters.  To recap, this is what I discussed: First, was love a choice in your relationship or was it based on the causality paradigm that I referred to and Second, that marriages are either under attack by the evil one or his battles plans are forthcoming.  As I concluded, the question that I posed was how and in some cases why would you fight for something in which love wasn’t a choice.

 First of all, I want to apologize if anything that I said caused you undue stress or offended you in any manner.  My intent is neither to cause problems nor to offend, rather, an opinion based on the struggles that I see in the world, in my own life and in an effort to be true to whom I believe God has called me to be.  Second, I am by no means an expert and have never claimed to be, so please understand that everything that I discuss is just an opinion.  Third, and probably most importantly, I believe that it is possible to fight for a marriage in which love is not a choice.  Having said that, and if you are so inclined, please read on.

 Someone, who is probably much smarter than I when it comes to matters of psychology, recently told me that you cannot love your spouse unconditionally as marriage was based upon the foundation of give and take and compromises.  That statement has really bothered me since I heard it as it completely invalidated my views on love.  From the moment that this statement entered my brain, I have been obsessed with defending my position and proving the statement wrong.  Having moved past the anger of the statement, I began to look at it with an open mind.  What I came up with is that this statement is talking about two different things.  One the one hand, you have the love that exists in the marriage and on the other hand, you have the marriage itself which is, again in my opinion, akin to love but its own living breathing entity.  Having discovered that, I calmed down some…..I know that this discussion seems out of place right now, but please bear with me.

 From what we know from the scriptures, there are three types of love: God’s love (agape), friendship love (philia) and romantic love (eros).  I believe that each of these types of love is realized in marriage.  Perhaps the easiest of these to identify initially in a marriage is romantic love.  This includes such actions and expressions such as gifts, acts of service and sex.  This list can go on and on but you get the idea.  The other one that can usually be identified with in marriage is friendship love.  Supporting your spouse in times of crisis, listening to them talk when they need to talk, comforting them when they are sad.  With those examples, I think that you can add several more to that list and see how it works in your marriage.  The last type of love, agape love, is the one that most people struggle with.  God’s love is perfect, it is endless, it is pure, it is unconditional, and it is everything that our Heavenly Father is, as demonstrated by Christ’s actions on the cross and then some.  It is also part of the language of love that we are to express to our spouses as identified in the Scriptures.  I will spend some more time talking about that in an upcoming blog so I don’t want to elaborate any further on that at this time.

 So, how does the evil one attack marriages and the language associated with love?  How do we defend our marriage and our spouse from the attack?  I will devote the next blog to this subject.  Until then, I leave you with 1 Corinthians 13:13.  “And now, these three remain; faith, hope and love.  But the greatest of these is love.”

Jim