My teacher asked me to write a paper on love, I liked a few parts of it so I figured I'd post it here.
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What is love? This question has baffled mankind for millennia as try to understand the powerful emotion at one time felt by us all. Ironically, few people have been able to fully answer this question and I, for one, know that I cannot as well. I tend to look at love from a biblical perspective; therefore, my focus will be on the types of love mentioned in the Bible and its relation to our own lives. I firmly believe that the Bible provides some of the best definitions of love and makes wonderful distinctions between the different types of love. The Bible makes many distinctions between the different types of love. The different types of love are Eros, erotic love, Fileo, brotherly love, Agape, unconditional love, and Storge, family love. I will be focusing on Eros, Fileo, and Storge.

Eros is the highest level of love an individual on Earth can attain; it is human love in its most complete form. True Eros love is a complete appreciation for another person to the point where one wants to enter a lifelong bond with them and, ultimately, become one with them. Sex is the ultimate expression of this love and seals this bond in a profound way. Therefore, sex is a sacred act and, as any sacred act, it should be treated with reverence and used appropriately. Too often in our culture people recklessly practice sex merely for pleasure or make such a bond with a person when we are not truly ready to give ourselves to them yet. When we make such a powerful display of love when Eros is not present in its fullest, we lose a part of who we are and take something away from the sexual act and, ultimately, our humanity. The reason I have mentioned all of this is because the sexual act is the ultimate expression and seal of Eros and should not be used when a full Eros bond is not present. Eros is a love that we as humans cannot experience on our own, it takes three to make an Eros bond. It takes you, the person you love, and God, without these three, one can never attain a true Eros state. God is present in all forms of love, but He is most visible in this form. Through this form we are able to better see God in humanity as we [should] see God in the other person. We better understand why God created us and why He loves us, even though we so often falter. Indeed, we should live out our Eros love as we would our faith. We must remain faithful to the other person as we must remain faithful to God, having no other. We may have rough times in our relationship with the other as we sometimes encounter hardships within our spiritual lives—but we must not abandon the other as God has not abandoned us. We can always choose to abandon God, but doing so not only ends (at least until we return to Him) our Eros relationship, but it also takes something away from us as a person. Our bodies are a temple of the Holy Spirit and if we deny the Spirit, we will feel His sorrow throughout our lives, especially after we have felt His joy.

The second kind of love is Fileo, brotherly love. Unfortunately, brotherly love is somewhat taboo in modern society. With the wave of homophobia that has swept through our world, people are often afraid of identifying themselves as close friends with a member of the same sex. This is most unfortunate as we have begun to lose the sacred ties of bortherhood. Brotherhood is so essential to our lives; we need to experience this type of love in order that we might have a strong bond with our fellow human beings. We desire these strong bonds and, indeed, Fileo is a strong bond. While it is not quite as strong as Eros, it is very close and people often fail to understand this. The heart of Fileo is one of a selfless care for others; the only big difference between the two is the absence of the erotic nature of the love and the absence of the ultimate expression of love. Still, even without these present, this bond is very powerful. We know by experience just how powerful these bonds are and how much we cherish these brotherly bonds. We simply must maintain these bonds as we thrive on the selfless love of others and in turn love others selflessly. This beautiful expression of love, therefore, not only helps the person who is the object of our brotherly love, but it also in turn helps us live our live to the fullest and, ultimately, it better helps us understand our Christian life and aides us in the ongoing process of Sanctification. Without this basic yet potent form of love, we will find it difficult to grow in our faith. As Saint Paul tells us, we are nothing without love.

Storge is one of the types of love which is not often mentioned by most theologians; however, I feel it is one of the essential types of love. Storge, family love, is often taken for granted by most people, except those who experienced little or none of it in their lives. Storge is the first human love we will ever experience and the Storge love we receive helps build us up as we lay the foundations of our live in our youth. We will always remember the love, or lack of love, that our parents had for us no matter what happens to us in life. This love encourages us to not only do something productive in our life and make a difference in whatever way we can, but also to love one another as our family. After all, we are all a part of one family—we are a part of the Body of Christ together. While many people might argue that Storge is limited only between families, I firmly believe that Storge applies to many
other types of relationships. I believe the bond between a priest and his parish best illustrates this idea. While he is not their earthly father, his parishioners look to him for guidance like they would a father and he, in turn, looks out for his children. This bond is clearly an example of Storge love. Any love we express to another person and receive in return is a type of Storge love, even if we are not related to them at all. All of us are a part of a larger and more important family—we are the image-bearers of God. The bond we share with other image-bearers is not at all dissimilar to that of a bond between families and thus we must take care not to separate the two.

What is love? God is love. Perhaps we do not always interpret this statement as it was meant to be, we think that God is a being filled with love—but this is not what the Bible is saying. God is love! Without God, there is no love. Love cannot exist without God being present in some form. Let us reconsider the forms of love. Eros is a sacred bond and without God, we cannot attain such a true Eros relationship. Fileo is an expression of brotherly love but, without God, it would be difficult for us to truly appreciate other human beings. Why would we fully love one another if we are here simply by chance and are simply experiencing chemical reactions? Storge is a type of love that cannot happen without Eros, which we have already established is a gift from God. Again I must reiterate what Saint Paul said, faith without love is nothing! Through our study of love and with the understanding of God’s role in love, we are better able to understand this passage. God is love, and through these different types of love we can better know Him and move forward in our spiritual walk.