Peter said "I 'phileo' you"

English is a most imprecise language. That becomes apparent in the Gospel of John when Jesus asks Peter three times if he loves him. I don’t know how it works in French or German or Spanish or Italian or Swahili or Chinese or Tagalog or any other language. But English has only one word to express the two different kinds of love expressed in that Gospel of John.

Greek, the language in which the Gospel was composed, uses the word agape to express the question of Jesus – do you love me? Agape refers to a very self-sacrificing love, the kind of love in which one person would be willing to give their life for the other. But Peter responds to the question of Jesus with another verb – philo – which suggests a very deep friendship, but not a self-sacrificing love. The third time Jesus makes the request of Peter, Jesus uses the verb philo. He understands that Peter is not yet capable of responding with a self-sacrificing love. But he will in time.

Americans love everything and everyone. We love our wives and husbands, our children, and parents, and cousins and aunts and uncles. We also love our cars and our TVs, our IPods and IPads, our toys and gadgets, our clothes, our furniture, our vacations, our cleverness, our guns, our food, our gardens, our wars, our peace, and so on and so forth. We love it all.

 

Once upon a time it seemed as though we could distinguish the difference between all of these. But today we live in a culture of fairness and equality. So why shouldn’t we love our wives and husbands just as much and with the same kind of love as our IPods and IPads, etc.? Why shouldn’t we think of our wars and peace as equal as our children? Isn't it fair to pick a vacation over church going or praying? As long as I make a choice, my choice is what counts. That I make the choice. That I have a choice. Praying isn’t any more important than going to a bar.

That’s the American way of loving today. The language has gotten more imprecise as time has passed. And as long as everyone recognizes that it makes no difference, then I can recite along with the poet the following:

            “all ignorance toboggans into know

            and trudges up to ignorance again;
            but winter’s not forever, even snow
            melts; and if spring should spoil the game, what then?”