Way of Agape

In The Call written by Os Guinness, he provides insight of the contrast between love that is of the world and the love of God.  God's love is truly foreign to this world, and it is revealed by Jesus coming to us sinners for our good though we are unworthy.  We look upon what we love with favour that is fickle and can quickly dissipate when our needs, desires or expectations are unmet, yet God is love.  He has demonstrated His love for us by sending His only begotten Son to die for us while we were sinners.  Consider the contrast between eros and agape explained in The Call:

"One view of love is the way of eros.  It sees the search as "the great ascent" of humans toward their desired goal.  For the Greeks in particular and the ancient world generally, eros was love as desire, yearning, or appetite aroused by the attractive qualities of the object of its desire--whether honor, recognition, truth, justice, beauty, love, or God.  To seek is therefore to long to love and so to direct one's desire and love to an object through which, in possessing it, one expects to be made happy.  From this perspective, seeking is loving that becomes desiring that becomes possessing that becomes happiness.  For experience shows that "we all want to be happy," as Cicero said in Hortensius, and reasonable thought would indicate that the greatest happiness comes in possessing the greatest good.

The rival view of love is the way of agape, which sees the secret of the search as "the great descent."  Love seeks out the seeker--not because the seeker is worthy of love but simply because love's nature is to love regardless of the worthiness or merit of the one loved.  This view agrees with both the Eastern and the Greek views that desire is at the very core of human existence.  But it agrees with the Greek view and differs from the Eastern in believing that desire itself is (or can be) good, not evil.  The legitimacy of the desire depends on the legitimacy of the object desired.  All human beings are alike in seeking happiness.  Where they differ is in the objects from which they seek it and the strength they have to reach the objects they desire.

The way of agape is the way introduced by Jesus.  It parts company with the way of eros at two points:  the goals and the means of the search.  First, the way of agape says, "By all means love, by all means desire, but think carefully about what you love and what you desire."  Those who follow eros are not wrong to desire happiness but wrong to think that happiness is to be found where they seek it.  The very fact that we humans experience desire is proof that we are creatures.  Incomplete in ourselves, we desire whatever we think is beckoning to complete us.

God alone needs nothing outside himself, because he himself is the highest and the only lasting good.  So all objects we desire short of God are as finite and incomplete as we ourselves are and, therefore, disappointing if we make them the objects of ultimate desire.

Our human desire can go wrong in two ways:  we we stop desiring anything outside ourselves and fall for the pathetic illusion that we are sufficient in ourselves, or when we desire such things as fame, riches, beauty, wisdom, and human love that are as finite as we are and thus unworthy of our absolute devotion.

The way of agape insists that, because true satisfaction and real rest can only be found in the highest and most lasting good, all seeking short of the pursuit of God brings only restlessness.  This is what Augustine meant in his famous saying in Book One of Confessions:  "You have made us for yourself, and our hearts are restless until they find their rest in you."

Second, the way of agape parts company with the way of eros over the means of the search.  Considering the distance between the creature and the Creator, can any de Vinci-like seeker--however dedicated, brilliant, virtuous, tireless, and however much a genius by human standards--hope to bridge the the chasm?  The answer, realistically, is no.  We cannot find God without God.  We cannot reach God without God.  We cannot satisfy God without God--which is another way of saying that our seeking will always fall shorts unless God's grace initiates the search and unless God's call draws us to him and completes the search.

If the chasm is to be bridged, God must bridge it.  If we are to desire the highest good, the highest good must come down and draw us so that it may become a reality we desire.  From this perspective there is no merit in either seeking or finding.  All is grace.  The secret of seeking is not in our human ascent to God, but in God's descent to us.  We start our searching, but we end up being discovered.  We think we are looking for something; we realize we are found by Someone.  As in Francis Thompson's famous picture, "the hound of heaven" has tracked us down.  What brings us home is not our discovery of the way home but the call of the Father who has been waiting there for us all along, whose presence there makes home home." (Guinness, Os. The Call: Finding and Fulfilling the Central Purpose of Your Life. Thomas Nelson, 2003. pages 12-14)