Chamomile symbolizes patience in adversity. The blossoms can be made into a soothing tea. At one time chamomile was grown as a herbal ground cover in gardens. The flowers release a pleasant fragrance when trodden upon.
I lost track of time working on this article. It was almost 5 o’clock in the morning when I went to bed.
In the first half of verse 4 of 1 Corinthians 13, we find a statement that affirms two important qualities of love. In the second half of the same verse, we find a statement which rejects three things that do not form a part of the love that Christians have for one another: “Love is not jealous, boastful, or proud.
The Cambridge English Dictionary provides six definitions of the word “jealous.” They are “upset and angry because someone you love seems interested in another person;” “unhappy and angry because someone else has something you want;” “extremely careful in protecting someone or something;” “unhappy and slightly angry because you wish you had someone else’s qualities, advantages, or success;” “fearing someone you love loves someone else or is loved by someone else;” “very careful to protect someone or something.” As can be seen these definitions describe a emotional or feeling state or an attitude.
Jealous people are often very insecure and very possessive. They want the attention of the person whom they love all to themselves. If the person they love shows any attention to someone else or someone shows any attention to the person that they love, jealous people become fearful. Their fear may quickly turn to anger. Fear leaves them feeling vulnerable and not in control; anger makes them feel full of energy and powerful.
A jealous person may try to isolate the person whom they love from other people, from family, relatives, friends, coworkers, anyone with whom they must share the attention of the persons whom they love. They may go as far as trying to control all that person’s decisions and to make that person completely dependent upon themselves.
A word related to jealousy is “envy.” It means “to wish that you had something that another person has.” It can also mean “the feeling that you wish had something that another person has.” It can mean “to be like and wanted by a lot of people.” “to wish that you had a quality or possession that someone else has,” or “the feeling that you wish you had a quality or possession that someone else has.”
While the word “envy” describes a attitude and a feeling similar to jealousy, it lacks the intensity of jealousy.
In some families, one or more members may get preferential treatment. This can affect the self-worth a child born or adopted into that family. They may develop low self-esteem and may acquire patterns of behavior that reinforce their low self-esteem. When they start school, they experience feelings of inadequacy when they do not receive as much attention as their peers. It can lead to feelings of envy, if not feelings of jealousy, later in life.
If we have low self-esteem and we develop a liking for someone, we may experience feelings of anxiety and envy when they show more attention to other people than they do to us. These feelings may not develop into feelings of anger and jealousy, but they do affect us and how we may relate to other people. They are more common than we think and rather than bypassing them, we may need to work through them.
Low self-esteem, whatever its cause, can, for some people, be a significant barrier to their giving and receiving love.
When we are boastful, we praise ourselves for what we have done. We have a tendency to praise ourselves and what we have done. This tendency is known as boastfulness. Boastful people are too proud of themselves and their actions and abilities. They cannot keep from bragging about their accomplishments, imagined or real. They act as if they are more important than other people. They are anxious to impress other people and they cherish inflated ideas of their importance.
The third quality that Paul tells us does not form a part of the love that Christians have for one another is being proud. Paul does not mean the pleasure and satisfaction that we or other people connected with us have done or gotten something good. He does not mean respecting ourselves, What Paul does mean is feeling better and more important than other people. It is one thing to feel satisfaction and pleasure because of something that we have achieved, possess or are a part of, to have respect for ourselves, or to show feelings of our own worth, it is something entirely different to be proud in an unpleasant way and to have too high opinion of ourselves.
The love that Christians have for one another has none of these qualities. It is not a jealous or possessive love. It is not the kind of love that modern-day psychologists describe as “toxic,” poisonous, unpleasant, and unacceptable.
While I can conceptualize toxic love, I have difficulty forming as an idea in my mind love that is boastful and prideful. Paul may have meant speaking too proudly about how loveable we are and liking to tell everyone about it. He may have meant thinking that we are more deserving of love because we are better or more important than other people. We feel that we have the right to have someone’s love just because of who we are.
Paul may be referring to narcissistic love, love in which we have too much interest in and admiration for ourselves. It is the kind of love that causes a man to see himself as God’s gift to women and to take the view that women should be honored to receive his attention.
What Paul may have had in mind in his description of love is love that is akin to grace, God’s goodwill and favor which is unmerited and undeserved. We love one another not because we merit or deserve one another’s love but our love for one another is an act of grace. We love because God loves us.
I love my friend Sally Ann not because she has shown any affection or caring for me, but it is the godly thing to do. (Sally Ann is, not by the way, a real person.) I feel affection and caring for Sally Ann because God does. I am being an imitator of God as his beloved child, in Paul’s words, and the love for Sally Ann into which I am tapping is God’s. God lives in me, as the apostle John wrote in his first letter, and his love is made complete in me.
I have touched on this idea in a previous article. The love that we feel for one another, and which is bubbling up within us is God’s love. The affection and caring that I feel for Sally Ann is real. It is not a product of hormones and brain chemistry. It is not a figment of the imagination.
Muriel James and Louis M. Savary introduced this idea in their book, The Power at the Bottom of the Well: Transactional Analysis and Religious Experience (Harper & Row, 1974).
Sally Ann may spurn my love. She may refuse to accept my affection and caring for her and go to any length to keep from experiencing it. But what she may be rejecting as attention that she does not welcome or want may be not mine but God’s. After all God uses us as instruments of his grace. God expresses his love for us through our brothers and sisters in Christ. God may also infuse our natural feelings with his love.
Martin Luther's explanation of Christ's presence in the sacrament of the Holy Communion was that it was like iron heated red hot by fire. The bread and the wine were the iron. Christ's presence was the heat which caused the iron to glow red. In a similar way God's love can cause our natural feelings to take in and be filled with his love. Our natural feelings can also be prompted by God's love.
The love for one another that Jesus enjoined his disciples to show, we must never forget, is godly love, love which obeys, honors, and respects God, not carnal love, love related to the physical feelings and wants of the body. Jesus was not providing his disciples with a rationale and license for sexual misconduct of any kind. He was not providing his disciples with justification for sexual harassment, sexual assault, non-consensual sexual contact, or stalking. The love that we show one another as Christians is God-obeying, God-honoring, and God-respecting. It respects one another’s personal boundaries and does not intentionally do harm or deliberately cause offense.
As in the previous article, much of the credit for the explanation of words and phrases in this article goes to the Cambridge English Dictionary (officially the Cambridge Advanced Learners’ Dictionary.) I find it a very useful resource. I belong to that generation who were encouraged to read the dictionary and learn and memorize new words every day. Early in life I acquired a love of word and a fondness for dictionaries. I could happily peruse a dictionary for long periods of time, discovering new and unfamiliar words. In middle school my seventh grade class was required to write out pages of the dictionary as a punishment: our teacher would punish the entire class for one person’s infraction. What was a painful chore for my classmates was a pleasure and delight for me!
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