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Be Happy! Day 4

Get real about love

If I speak in human or angelic tongues, but have not love, I am only a resounding gong or a clanging cymbal. If I have the gift of prophecy and can fathom all mysteries and all knowledge, and if I have a faith that can move mountains, but have not love, I am nothing. If I give all I possess to the poor and surrender my body to the flames, but have not love, I gain nothing. 1 Corinthians 13.1–3

It’s just after Easter in Tenerife. I’m on holiday with my gorgeous godchildren and their family. Mum and Dad have gone to a meeting because some chav in a Primark suit is trying to sell them a timeshare. So I’ve had seven-year-old Anna and five-year-old William since breakfast. We’ve done the mini golf, we’ve done the swimming pool, and now we’re going for a walk along the beach. And a charming little voice floats up: ‘I do love you, Peter.’

I reply, ‘Oh what a lovely thing to say! I love you too. Both of you!’

There is a brief silence, and then I hear, ‘Have you noticed that the beach shop is selling chocolate ice creams?’

The little rascal – I nearly fell for it!

It gave me a problem, because Anna and William have a strict holiday rule about having only one ice cream per day. Anna is the biggest girl in her class, but William is a minute scrap for his age. When they are playing on the beach they look a comical pair. William doesn’t look like her brother; he looks like her lunch. So you can understand why Mum and Dad want to make sure they eat well and wisely. It makes me miserable to say no to such terrific children. But I think it is genuinely more loving to stick to the rule than to sneak in an extra Cornetto.

Sometimes we say I love you, and it has nothing to do with authentic love. Sometimes we say, ‘You can’t have what you want,’ and we do it because we love the person. Love is so complicated. We have got used to love having a price-tag attached to it. We expect something back.

Love is patient, love is kind. It does not envy, it does not boast, it is not proud. It is not rude, it is not self-seeking, it is not easily angered, it keeps no record of wrongs. Love does not delight in evil but rejoices with the truth. It always protects, always trusts, always hopes, always perseveres. Love never fails. 1 Corinthians 13.4–8

‘Love is complicated’ does not appear in the long list of facts about love that Paul wrote in one of his letters, twenty years after the life of Jesus. But it should have done!

Just like you can mistake ice cream for love, people seeking happiness are wide open to mistaking other things for love. So Paul wrote to his friends in Corinth about how you tell love – the real thing – from the ice cream versions. This is actually the subject of most chick flick movies. Teenagers could save themselves six quid and ninety minutes with Kirsten Dunst, and instead use Paul’s words as a checklist to find out what is going on with a girlfriend or boyfriend. Is what is happening in this relationship patient, or am I being pushed too far too fast? Is it self-seeking, or are both people preferring to seek each other’s happiness? Is the other person using this relationship to boast to friends? Or am I?

Well, if love involves any of those things it is not going to lead to lasting happiness. Paul knew that – twenty centuries before we had Sex and the City to tell us. ‘Love is patient, love is kind. It does not boast, it is not self-seeking.’

But Paul’s words are a practical guide for worshippers as well. He is very scornful of people whose highlight is to go to a church service because they like a good sing. Or a good sermon, or any kind of emotional high! These things are not, according to Paul, what being a Christian is about.

Christ has made love the stairway that would enable all Christians to climb up to heaven. So hold fast to love in all sincerity. Give each other practical proof of it. And by your progress in it, make the ascent together. Fulgentius of Ruspe, bishop in North Africa, 468–533

And nor (and this is rather unsettling) is faith the most significant thing about a Christian life. I suspect Paul may have been thinking of that hard-nosed, intolerant kind of Christian faith that despises any other point of view except a particular version of the truth. The kind of faith that allows someone to give every last penny to a charity for converting the poor of Africa, but cuts off a family member because he or she has made a moral decision that doesn’t fit a particular version of the truth.

For all the good that kind of worship or that kind of faith does, you might as well stand in a corner and bang a gong. Or as he put it: ‘If I speak in human tongues or sing in angelic tongues, but have not love, I am only a resounding gong or a clanging cymbal. If I have a faith that could move mountains, if I give all I possess to the poor, but have not love, I’m nothing.’

This is all a bit disconcerting. You hear the part of the Bible in which Paul wrote about love read at weddings. But, to be honest, you’re not really in the mood at a wedding to think troubling things about what it means to be a Christian. You just want the moment to be romantic and the best man not to drop the rings!

But the famous words are actually a plea to a Christian community to get its priorities right so that there can be genuine happiness among them. Be driven by love, not by ice cream – in your romantic relationships, in your worship of God, in your relationships with others in the church, in the way you treat everyone with whom you engage from tomorrow onwards.

Please, says Paul, don’t have relationships with your parents ruined by resentments for things they did years ago that have shaped your life. Try to find a way through that with love, because ‘love does not keep an endless record of wrongs’. Please don’t have no-go areas in a church so as to avoid people with whom you have fallen out over the rota for flower-arranging. Try to find a way through that with love, because ‘love is not easily angered’. Please don’t find yourself secretly pleased when a friend doesn’t get the promotion that would have got them to a place one better than you. Try to find a way through that with love, because ‘love does not envy, it does not delight in evil’. Please don’t give up when your attempt to reach out to a fellow human being is met with a lack of gratitude. Try to find a way through that with love, because ‘love always perseveres; it never fails’.

Risk getting real about love. It may lead to some things you assumed to be love melting like a choc ice. It may lead to you recognizing as love some things that you had thought were just unremitting hard work. Love almost certainly won’t look like what you expect it to be. But the real thing, even at the cost of sacrifice and tears, will make you happy.

In front of me on the desk is a lilac envelope. Inside is a drawing of a man with an exceedingly round, bald head. There are hearts fluttering all around it like butterflies. The message says, in very wobbly handwriting, ‘Please come on holiday with us again soon.’ I believe I am loved.

‘And did you get what you wanted from this life, even so?’ I did. ‘And what did you want?’ To call myself beloved. To feel myself beloved on the earth. Raymond Carver, North American poet, 1938–88

Lord God, fill my whole being with love. Not the slushy kind or the greedy kind, but the kind that will help people I know be sure that their lives are worth living. Amen.

Be happy! Make a mental list of those you love. (This is not the same as the list of those whom you feel you ought to love.) It will probably consist mainly of people, but there is no reason why you shouldn’t include animals or even places and activities if it is easier to think of them than men and women. Read the list of qualities of love from the Bible that appears earlier in the chapter, and dwell on how it relates to those in your thoughts. For the situations where you recognize that the love you have is absolutely real, be happy. If you have ended up with some challenging questions, I am hoping that the chapters to come will help you work out what to do in response.