We worked our way through Hero and Leander, Ywain and Gawain, The Squyr of Lowe Degre etc, and for the most part we were a happy haven for the maudlin. But part-way through the semester we had to make presentations on different texts. As I waded through the Middle English of Foris and Blancheflur I made a shocking discovery. The would-be swooning had ceased and I was sitting on some new and significant information; what would my classmates think when I shared my findings with them?
Eventually my week rolled around to present and I nervously took the floor. Like a young Nicholas Copernicus, I stammered through my script. I started by celebrating the characters, the plot, the piece as a whole and then I said it:
As far as the narrative goes, the antagonist in all of this is not the emir, but it's 'love'. The love in this story isn't real love, isn't true, but the infatuation parading as love is in fact the enemy.
In all of this drama and adversary no one had questioned or evaluated this relationship. Maybe it was an implicit criteria for the class that we would always side with romance, or maybe the gender imbalance had finally caught up with me – either way it felt inappropriate to call people to reanimate their disbeliefs. But I made the case because I believed it.
Who is love anyway? And why does he (she/it/they?) get to permeate the planet in vaguely defined terms, claiming some infallible goodness and hold a monopoly on song lyrics? It was all too simple for me, too neat. An emissary from the group eventually spoke up with the only question that could be asked at that point: "If you're so sure that this isn't love, then what is?"
In 2010 I interviewed a few dozen teenagers with this very question
"What is love?" I posited from behind the lens; to which (many replied "baby, don't hurt me" but) all eventually gave an answer dominated by uncertainty. This central 'force', this highly valued energy, this entity that we chase and are shaped by, this concept that we need and crave at the very essence of who we are – and none of them really knew what it was.
"I can't explain it" they said, "it's what comes from your heart, like what you feel inside for someone else". "It's hormones", "it's chemicals", "it's an action", "it's blind". "It's trust and a bond and it's like happiness", "but you only know it when it's gone", "it can't be explained", "it's inexpressible".
For something so foundational, love seemed to be like one of those magic-eye images. As soon as a picture starts to form with some clarity, you look directly at it and it disappears; as if you can only know it by not focusing on it. Maybe love is felt more than defined, experienced more than explained. We all love and are loved, just because we can't put words to it, does that really matter?
But this is the problem we are facing today; we are evolving into a society that throws all the weight and significance of 'love' around without any clarity as to what it actually is. People will tell you that love is a sort of limitlessness, the acceptance you received for doing anything you want. Love is painted as a vague permissiveness, some key of entitlement to any desire. But in our jejune community we need to be re-educated that love is other-person-centeredness.
Just as a parent sets limits for their child out of loving concern, so too the authentic weight of love is in its pursuit of the good of another. The person who allows you to do whatever you want doesn't love you, they nothing you. It isn't loving to let someone pursue their desire of self-destructive behaviour in that same way that it isn't loving to pursue a relationship with someone based solely on your desire or benefit (take note Floris). Love puts another's good first, sometimes in difficult ways. It is not the lukewarm apathy of perceived liberties, but it is the absolute commitment to what is best.
This has been the message of the Bible for centuries; that God has a love for the world that seeks our good and meets our needs. It says "this is love: not that we loved God, but that he loved us and sent his Son as an atoning sacrifice for our sins." God's love isn't an infatuation with our good looks and witty humour, it is a sober diagnosis of our condition and an infinitely costly solution. But the world rejects this message in a tantrum, demanding the apathy that masquerades as love.
The 'love' that never inhibits their own wants, and permits them to worsen in their disease. That love is the antagonist and enemy in our story, it seeks to seduce and destroy us. Whereas the weighty and costly love of God is what we need to be made whole.
Sam Manchester is currently a theology student with an inescapable sociology degree behind him. In an attempt to reconcile the two, he reflects and writes about their coalescence in everyday life.
Sam's archive of articles may be viewed at
www.pressserviceinternational.org/sam-manchester.html