What is Love?—The Four Loves

1 If you could draw “love,” what would you draw?  

Let the students brainstorm answers and provide paper if they want to draw love. Then provide the dictionary definition below. Discuss how the students would define love.  

2 What is love?

The Merriam-Webster dictionary defines love as:

• (1) Strong affection for another arising out of kinship or personal ties // maternal love for a child

• (2) Attraction based on sexual desire : affection and tenderness felt by lovers 
  After all these years, they are still very much in love.

• (3) Affection based on admiration, benevolence, or common interests // love for his old schoolmates

Share:

“All these definitions focus on feelings towards a person. But is that all we use the word “love” for?” Brainstorm with your students how they use the word “love” in everyday life. For example, ask them if they “love” things as well as people.”

Use the following examples to help students understand the various ways we use the word “love.”

How many of you love pizza? After they answer, follow-up with these questions: 

• Would that be the same kind of love as when you say you love your puppy? (show slide)

• Or that you love math? (show slide)

• Or that you love grandma? (show slide)

• Or that you have fallen in love? (show slide)

At the end of these examples point out how obvious it is that there are different ways we use, “love” in the English language. We can use it to describe things we really like or people we deeply care for. Make sure to also discuss if love is just a feeling.

3 When you say you love something, is it just about a feeling?

Discuss as a group how love can’t just be a feeling. For example, when you love pizza, you don’t just express a feeling towards pizza. It also describes the amount of pizza you are willing to eat! In the same way, when you describe how you love a person, it also describes a relationship with them. You spend time with them, you do things with them and you talk to them. In other words, discuss with your students how love is relationship. And relationships need honesty and intimacy. Share with your students a quote from Dr. Michael Ramsden from Ravi Zacharias Ministries. He says, “Love does not exist in the absence of judgment; true love exists when someone has passed the correct moral judgment on who you are and is under no illusions as to what you’re like, but still loves you.”

4 Would it be fair to say that because people are different, the way we love them is different? As well, would it be fair to say that different people also love us differently? In other words, do different relationships need different kinds of love?

Show the students that there’s more than one way to love and be loved. For example, consider this video where a baby gets jealous when his dad kisses his mom. Help the students understand that the baby wants all the attention to himself and seems jealous of his dad. However, he doesn’t realize that his parents both love him and also love each other but in a different kind of way. Because his parents love him (as parents) which is different than how they love each other (in a romantic relationship), there is no need to be jealous. His parents can experience both kinds of love. In fact, the reason why they are able to love him as parents is because they first loved each other romantically.

VIDEO: Baby Gets Jealous when Mom Kisses Dad
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uSlCzkfX-7c

In contrast, get your students to discuss a common phrase when it comes to discussions on sexuality, “love is love.”

5 Often people make the claim that,“Love is love” (show slide). What do they mean by that?

Discuss how many use this statement to justify homosexual relationships and even other relationships such as polyamory (multiple partners). Steer the conversation to help students understand that even the baby needed to learn that not all love is the same. In fact, he needed his parents to experience one kind of love (romantic love) in order for him to experience family love. 

In his book, The Four Loves, C. S. Lewis argues that God designed us with four different needs for love; English can’t give us a precise definition of love because we use the same word to describe four different kinds of relationships. However, in the Greek language, there are at least four different words for love. In this session, we’ll discuss these four Greek words for love. For each definition, help your students see that not only do we need to experience these loves, we can share each kind of love. More importantly, at its best and most intimate forms, each kind of love reflects God’s love for us. Point out to students that the Bible actually uses all four kinds of love to describe how God loves us. 

These four loves are

A) Affection Love or Storge (pron: Stor-gay): The Natural Love

This is the love we use when we say we love pizza or animals or math. It is the love of the familiar, the safe, the kind of love that we grow up with as children. It is also the love we feel from family. It is the affection you feel when you meet a new baby in the family or when you get a new puppy. Read this quote below from Lewis and ask the students,

6 How do you express this kind of love and how do you experience it?

Affection almost slinks or seeps through our lives. It lives with humble, un-dress, private things; soft slippers, old clothes, old jokes, the thump of a sleepy dog’s tail on the kitchen floor, the sound of a sewing-machine…The affection for the people always around us, in the normal day-to-day of life, is the majority of the love we experience, even if we don’t label it. ~ C.S. Lewis

Get the students to discuss how everyday life involves this kind of love. When their parents drive them to school or make them lunch. It is the love they show when they obey their parents or when they clean their room. This love is what helps them take care of their bodies, their property and their family. 

Now point out to the students that God also calls us to be part of His family. Get the students to read this passage:

7 What does “Abba” mean?”

Abba is a familiar term you would use for your father such as “daddy” or “dad.” Remind the students that “Abba” is the term that Jesus calls God the Father in Mark 14:36: “And He [Jesus] said, ‘Abba Father, all things are possible for You. Take this cup away from Me; nevertheless, not what I will, but what You will.“ This passage says we can now have intimacy with God and call Him Abba too. We can have a family relationship with Him.

Remind the students that when we love the familiar things, we are loving the creation that God gives us and that this love of the familiar points back to Him.

B) Friendship Love or Philia love

VIDEO: Watch how Steve Rogers (Captain America) and Bucky Barnes (The Winter Soldier) interact in this clip. 
www.youtube.com/watch?v=7ASGNvvB2OE&feature=youtu.be

8 Based on this clip, how do you know that these guys are best friends?

The men show their affection for each other in what they say and do: Bucky cares enough for Steve to setup a blind date for him and to warn him not to do anything dangerous. Steve acknowledges this and tells Bucky to be “careful” in war. Though they talk to each other in a way that may not seem kind, it is obvious they deeply care for each other and want to help each other.

9 How many of you have or had a best friend? How do you know that this person is your best friend?

Get the students to describe the various ways friends express philia love for each other.

Philia is love between friends as close as siblings in strength and duration. This friendship is the strong bond existing between people who share common values, interests or activities. Lewis describes friendship love as “the least biological, organic, instinctive, gregarious and necessary...the least natural of loves.” He says our species does not need friendship in order to reproduce, but to the classical and medieval worlds it is a higher-level love because it is freely chosen.

Get the students to read the following passage, 1 Samuel 18: 1-3:

Their friendship is close and intimate. Many people today look at this kind of relationship as sexual because they think intimate relationships have to be sexual. But this has not always been the case. 

Using the slides provided, show images of Abraham Lincoln and Joshua Fry Speed, Lincoln’s best friend. Explain how, at that time, many students shared beds when they were in law school. Lincoln even revealed this in his speeches, because it was not considered scandalous—they were just saving money. Lincoln even wrote love letters to his best friend but their relationship wasn’t sexual at all. It was friendship love.

Did Abraham Lincoln’s bromance alter the course of American history?, http://theconversation.com/did-abraham-lincolns-bromance-alter-the-course-of-american-history-68031

Use the slides provided to teach this section on friendship. The other reason why Lincoln and Speed's friendship was not scandalous was because it wasn't unusual. According to a website called, “The Art of Manliness,” men between mid-1800’s to the early 1900’s, would often pose in intimate ways. Consider these images: www.artofmanliness.com/articles/bosom-buddies-a-photo-history-of-male-affection/

The site shows images of men posing with their best friends. These images are not those of male lovers but of friends.

10 What would you think of having a friend care this much for you?

God designed us to have same-sex friendships. It’s the reason why at school, we often feel more comfortable with people of the same sex. More importantly, we do have a friend who loves us that much. Jesus says that God calls us His friends. Get the students to read the following passage:

C) Romantic or Eros Love

C. S. Lewis defines this love as ‘being in love' or 'loving' someone. For him, this was more than just sex. Lewis uses was the distinction between a man 'wanting woman' and a man wanting one particular woman. He distinguishes it from friendship love by saying friendship love is about sitting side by side whereas romantic love is looking at each other, face to face.

VIDEO: Show the students this clip of a veteran who finds a long lost love. Watch it with the students and have them write down the words they say and the actions they take that show they are still in love. www.youtube.com/watch?v=YDlq8so0lU8

11 Where does the Bible compare God’s love to romantic love?

Husbands love your wives, just as Christ also loved the church and gave Himself up for her, ~ Ephesians 5:25

Get the students to talk about how God loved the church so much, He gave up what He had in heaven to come to earth and die to save her.  God passionately loves us. Discuss the ways God shows His deep love for us. Remind them that God loves us enough to create us, save us from ourselves and even die for us knowing that we would betray Him. 

D) Charity or Agape, is the Unconditional Love of God

Lewis says the last kind of love is agape (pronounced, a-GA-pay), God’s unconditional love for us. Lewis argues that because the Christian God is a trinity of Father, Son and Holy Spirit, He is already experiencing and giving love. The Trinity is all about a perfect, loving relationship. The Christian God is our example of how we can love others in relationship and how we can love God. 

VIDEO: The Long Silence. This video, produced by Faith Beyond Belief, animates a poem called the “Long Silence.” It explains the story of the cross and how much God loves us.

12 Ask the students to read this passage in 1 John that explains how God loves us. What does it say about love?: 

John makes it clear that if you want to understand how deep and powerful real love is, you need to know God. Now revisit with your students the idea that “love is love.” Have them discuss how love is so much more complicated than what that popular phrase means. Rather than saying “love is love” challenge them to say that “God is love” and because He is love, there are many different ways we can experience love.

Students should be encouraged to see that God willingly risked hurt in order to love us, something we understand when we see the price He paid on the cross.