Transcript: Episode 0072
This transcript:
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WEBVTT 00:00:37.292 --> 00:00:39.472Welcome to the Stone Choir Podcast. 00:00:39.772 --> 00:00:40.752 I am Corey J. 00:00:40.772 --> 00:00:41.172 Mahler. 00:00:41.792 --> 00:00:43.012 And I'm still, whoa. 00:00:45.912 --> 00:00:51.832 On today's Stone Choir, we're going to be in the first of a three-part series on various facets of love. 00:00:53.012 --> 00:00:57.732 Love is a word that's present in the English language and every other language, duh. 00:00:58.372 --> 00:01:02.692 It also has lots of variables and adjectives and modifiers to it. 00:01:03.012 --> 00:01:07.772 And then there are related words that we don't typically think of as love, at least in English. 00:01:08.292 --> 00:01:16.392 But when we look at some of the other older languages that fed in English, we do find that there are different words that we consolidated into one. 00:01:16.952 --> 00:01:22.552 And so this three-part series is for the purpose of talking about some of those different facets. 00:01:23.072 --> 00:01:26.672 Just a very brief introduction, I want to lay a couple ground rules out. 00:01:27.532 --> 00:01:33.432 One, I think the term facet is a really vital part of how we're trying to explain this. 00:01:34.092 --> 00:01:45.972 If you've ever been in a nice jewelry store with, you know, the white lights and maybe the salesman hand you a loop and you look at a nice stone under that loop with that light shining down, it just pops as sparkles. 00:01:45.992 --> 00:01:52.132 You see incredible variety of light shining through, reflecting through the facets in the gemstone. 00:01:53.272 --> 00:01:58.252 The way we're handling love in the next few weeks is that love is basically that gem. 00:01:58.552 --> 00:02:04.572 And in the various words and aspects that we're talking about in these sequential weeks are the facets. 00:02:05.332 --> 00:02:11.292 And I highlight that because these things are not an exclusivity to each other. 00:02:11.832 --> 00:02:20.952 So as we talk about, you know, words like agape and eros and others, we're not trying to subdivide them to the point that we're making them exclusive. 00:02:21.272 --> 00:02:27.632 Because as we talk about them over the next few weeks, what we're going to find is that frequently you'll have a couple of them in play at the same time. 00:02:28.072 --> 00:02:45.792 But when you properly understand the nature of them, it becomes clear that although they're all facets of love, you won't have them all simultaneously for the purpose, for the reason that different aspects of love have different people on both sides. 00:02:46.132 --> 00:02:52.212 Their relationships, you know, love is fundamentally a relationship, and a relationship between two different people. 00:02:52.632 --> 00:02:59.472 And so the love of a parent is different than the love of a spouse is different than the love of a brother is different than the love of a neighbor. 00:02:59.972 --> 00:03:03.572 And at some point, you know, the words that we use in English cease to be love. 00:03:03.812 --> 00:03:10.112 We use words, for example, like friendship, but it fundamentally means the same thing, but it means different facets of the same thing. 00:03:10.712 --> 00:03:15.072 So the love that you have for a friend, you typically just call friendship. 00:03:15.092 --> 00:03:19.772 Sometimes you might say you love your friend, but friendship really properly encompasses all of that. 00:03:20.152 --> 00:03:27.352 So as we're talking about all these various things, I just don't want people to think that we're reducing all of this to a spreadsheet or a bunch of check boxes. 00:03:28.132 --> 00:03:29.792 Different things come into play at different times. 00:03:29.812 --> 00:03:32.252 It's important just to understand that they're all there. 00:03:33.232 --> 00:03:39.592 The other important point to lay as groundwork for all these episodes is that these are human things. 00:03:39.772 --> 00:03:42.132 They're things God has put in creation. 00:03:42.432 --> 00:03:44.072 They're not explicitly Christian. 00:03:44.332 --> 00:03:46.412 They're not explicitly philosophical. 00:03:46.912 --> 00:03:49.372 They're not tied to certain vocabulary. 00:03:49.652 --> 00:03:50.492 It's all there. 00:03:50.712 --> 00:03:57.512 Whether you have the word for it or not, you have the inherent behavior, the inherent attitude towards others as you're just living your life. 00:03:57.892 --> 00:04:02.392 You're going to have friends, you're going to have family, you're going to have different relationships with them. 00:04:02.652 --> 00:04:05.472 And those will have varying degrees and natures of love. 00:04:06.092 --> 00:04:10.292 So the different words are because those different aspects all matter. 00:04:10.752 --> 00:04:26.332 Part of the problem that we're trying to solve by tackling these subjects in this episode series is that the misapprehension of the words in our minds is causing us to make substantial categories where some will come along and say, you must love X because of Y. 00:04:26.592 --> 00:04:28.272 And usually Y is something in the Bible. 00:04:28.912 --> 00:04:32.372 And everyone's like, well, the Bible says I gotta love, so obviously. 00:04:33.452 --> 00:04:50.412 It's a good argument if it's true, but the problem is that when someone uses the collapsed English word love to encompass things that perhaps have different duties in nature and in scripture, then the person who's trying to convict your conscience says, you have to be careful. 00:04:50.432 --> 00:04:56.752 Be careful, because you can actually end up sinning inadvertently by being sloppy about this stuff. 00:04:56.932 --> 00:05:06.732 You know, we talk a lot about 1 Timothy 5, 8, where God says that the duty that we have inside our family is greater than the duty that we have outside our family. 00:05:06.972 --> 00:05:10.372 And someone who despises that is worse than an unbeliever. 00:05:11.052 --> 00:05:16.912 That's, it's talking about love, not in that explicit term, but it's also talking about scope of duty. 00:05:17.432 --> 00:05:26.832 And so when we're tackling these things that are political, they're religious, they're social, it's important to get the scope of duty right as we're looking at these subjects. 00:05:27.192 --> 00:05:42.212 So the reason we're breaking up into three different parts over a few weeks, we're going to end with marriage, with Eros, and a couple related things, but we want to sequester that by itself, as I said in the last episode, specifically because that one is going to be not at all child-friendly. 00:05:42.532 --> 00:05:54.852 We're going to have Frank talk about those specifics because it's basically going to be the talk, because for centuries there have been so many euphemisms around some of those things, that people have forgotten what it actually means. 00:05:55.392 --> 00:06:06.112 So as I said online, and I think I said last episode, we're going to make a lot of people angry and uncomfortable with that, but we're going to say specifically what scripture says and what we find in nature about it. 00:06:06.132 --> 00:06:09.572 So that's going to be sequestered for your safety and your children's safety. 00:06:09.852 --> 00:06:12.272 So you can just skip over it entirely if that's not your cup of tea. 00:06:12.772 --> 00:06:17.392 This week and next week we'll be basically tackling everything else that doesn't kind of fall into the marriage bed. 00:06:18.272 --> 00:06:25.112 And so as we go through this, just keep in mind that we're not trying to isolate these things from each other. 00:06:25.612 --> 00:06:28.812 We're just trying to help lay out kind of on a board. 00:06:29.272 --> 00:06:30.852 Here's how these things are related. 00:06:30.872 --> 00:06:33.512 You have a person over here with an arrow drawn over here. 00:06:33.812 --> 00:06:45.792 And once we finish this series, Corey is going to be publishing a finished version of the very nice flow chart that he made to kind of collapse his thinking, the explanations that we're working through. 00:06:46.792 --> 00:06:50.632 It's going to look like the guy in front of the crazy board with all the arrows and stuff. 00:06:51.492 --> 00:06:52.992 Sometimes that's how the stuff looks. 00:06:53.352 --> 00:07:03.372 And part of the reason that he did that is that we started looking a few weeks ago when we decided to do this particular series, we looked at some of the other explanations from throughout history, and they're kind of rubbish. 00:07:03.652 --> 00:07:06.012 They don't tackle all these things at once. 00:07:06.032 --> 00:07:14.012 So we wanted to just do it all in one place and consolidate it so that, not that this is going to be authoritative, but this is another way of looking at it. 00:07:14.412 --> 00:07:18.852 And it will give you some ideas about how you can evaluate your own life. 00:07:19.832 --> 00:07:27.072 When you have various facets of love in your heart for your family and your friends and your neighbors, how do they play out? 00:07:27.332 --> 00:07:35.872 Because their duties associated with these shows and their limits, their limitations, where the type of love that you have for one person is in fact forbidden for another. 00:07:36.352 --> 00:07:41.112 And that's not a failure of love, that's just the scope of the nature of the thing that God has given us. 00:07:41.532 --> 00:07:48.152 So these are fundamentally about God's blessings and about his obligations and about how we relate to them as humans. 00:07:49.012 --> 00:08:08.832 Again, this isn't just Christian stuff and it's not philosophical, because throughout history, before Jesus came, when the Jews were just kind of off in their own corner, the Romans and the Greeks were also tackling these subjects philosophically and they're playing things through and trying to come up with good answers to how man naturally acts towards man. 00:08:09.352 --> 00:08:22.872 It's a worthwhile endeavor, and it's something that's worth keeping in mind as we're living our lives, because if you're sloppy and you don't think about it, you don't pay attention, you can very easily drop something on the floor that if you just gave it a little bit of thought, you would have done it well. 00:08:23.232 --> 00:08:25.392 I often give the example of nutrition. 00:08:25.952 --> 00:08:27.152 You're going to eat something. 00:08:27.292 --> 00:08:38.312 If you think about what you're eating, you think about not eating too much, you think about the nutrient balance you're getting, you will have a better life simply for having been cognizant of what you're putting in your mouth. 00:08:38.652 --> 00:08:46.252 Whereas someone who's never cognizant, just shoveling out of the box or out of the bag, is inherently going to be worse off because they didn't think. 00:08:46.752 --> 00:08:51.272 So, as with Stone Choir in general, we just want people to think about this stuff. 00:08:51.512 --> 00:08:54.912 So as we lay this out, I hope people won't get confused. 00:08:54.932 --> 00:08:58.752 I hope you'll come along as we present the various facets of this. 00:08:58.772 --> 00:09:07.132 And just keep in mind, this is all about love in the broad sense, in the love encompassing all the various things that are part of being a human. 00:09:08.772 --> 00:09:24.492 So one way in which you can think about this all being facets, all of these different terms, aspects of love being facets of the same thing, is you can relate it to the transcendentals, which we have mentioned many times before. 00:09:25.032 --> 00:09:32.532 Goodness, beauty and truth are not different parts of God's nature, because God does not have parts. 00:09:33.072 --> 00:09:35.152 They are facets, they are aspects. 00:09:36.392 --> 00:09:42.132 To some degree, that is, of course, just so that we as human beings, as limited creatures, can understand it. 00:09:42.472 --> 00:09:43.852 But the same is true here. 00:09:45.272 --> 00:10:11.152 There are some topics that are sufficiently expansive that you have to address them in pieces in order to understand them, not because those pieces are actual parts, not because they are discrete, but because you have to look at the different facets one at a time or two at a time, three at a time, however many it happens to be, in order to build up that understanding of the whole. 00:10:11.872 --> 00:10:15.272 And that is why we're doing this as a series, why we're doing three episodes. 00:10:16.052 --> 00:10:20.272 In this episode, we are going to be discussing agape and caritas. 00:10:21.552 --> 00:10:34.472 Now, these terms are obviously first Greek and then Latin, but the reason we're using these terms is because it helps to distinguish the different facets one from another. 00:10:34.752 --> 00:10:40.212 We're also going to use the English equivalents, because there's nothing special about the terms. 00:10:40.752 --> 00:10:47.412 It's not that this language has a concept and that language does not, particularly for something like this. 00:10:48.232 --> 00:10:58.192 I won't go so far as to say that there are not untranslatable words in certain languages, because there are, but they can always be translated with a paragraph, an explanation. 00:10:59.552 --> 00:11:05.372 In the case of the terms we'll be using in this series, most of them can be translated with one or two words. 00:11:06.232 --> 00:11:08.152 Caritas, for instance, is charity. 00:11:08.812 --> 00:11:12.492 We have that word in English because we took it from Caritas. 00:11:12.512 --> 00:11:14.252 We took it from Latin and just used it. 00:11:14.592 --> 00:11:18.652 The same is true of piety, pietas, which we will get into in a later episode. 00:11:19.692 --> 00:11:38.552 Agape, however, has to be translated as two or three words instead, not just as one word because we simply don't have a one-word version of it in English, other than just using the Greek term agape, which many Christians are going to understand from looking at the Greek of Scripture. 00:11:40.192 --> 00:11:45.592 But what agape is fundamentally is self-sacrificing or sacrificial love. 00:11:46.112 --> 00:11:52.492 It is a love that puts the good of the other first, that seeks the good of that other. 00:11:53.352 --> 00:12:00.072 And so it is a particular facet of love because not all love rises to that particular level. 00:12:00.512 --> 00:12:04.932 It's not necessarily to say that agape is the best or the ultimate form of love. 00:12:05.672 --> 00:12:14.272 To some degree it is because it's at the far end of that spectrum in terms of the intensity of the sacrifice of the individual for the other. 00:12:15.532 --> 00:12:22.492 But that's not to say that it's superior, say, to shtorghe, to familial love, to the love you would have for a sibling or a parent or a child. 00:12:22.892 --> 00:12:28.092 Of course, a parent for a child is going to be agape, and we'll get into some of the nuance of that. 00:12:29.072 --> 00:12:32.232 Some of it in this episode, most of it in the next episode. 00:12:33.612 --> 00:12:39.872 But both of these terms, both of these facets of love, are closely related and yet distinct. 00:12:40.252 --> 00:12:42.152 And that distinction is important. 00:12:42.172 --> 00:12:46.392 It's why we are doing these two facets of love in this one episode. 00:12:47.532 --> 00:12:52.792 Because agape is not charity, and charity is not agape. 00:12:53.792 --> 00:13:02.652 At the edges, they may shade one into the other, because for instance, when you are being charitable, you are seeking the good of another, most certainly. 00:13:03.372 --> 00:13:14.692 You are giving of yourself, whether it is in terms of your time or your resources, to aid another, but it is not agape, it is distinct from it. 00:13:14.732 --> 00:13:22.492 And part of the reason for that is that agape necessarily flows from some sort of relationship. 00:13:23.372 --> 00:13:24.452 Charity does not. 00:13:25.292 --> 00:13:29.532 You can have charity for someone with whom you have an arm's length relationship. 00:13:30.112 --> 00:13:34.072 You don't have agape for a person with whom you have an arm's length relationship. 00:13:35.032 --> 00:13:41.632 And so, I mentioned one of the examples of agape would be for a child from a parent. 00:13:41.992 --> 00:13:44.432 That is, the love a parent has for a child. 00:13:44.892 --> 00:13:47.732 That is, of course, its shtorge, which is familial love. 00:13:47.752 --> 00:13:49.292 We'll get into that in the next episode. 00:13:49.692 --> 00:13:55.892 But it is also agape, and every parent knows this, and every child, which is to say every human being, should. 00:13:57.092 --> 00:14:13.192 Because parents sacrifice of themselves for the good of their children, whether it is the father who goes out and sacrifices his time and his sweat in order to provide for his family, or the woman who does the same in her household in order to raise her children. 00:14:13.652 --> 00:14:14.972 That is agape. 00:14:14.992 --> 00:14:17.292 It is a self-sacrificing love. 00:14:17.852 --> 00:14:22.032 It is giving of oneself for the betterment, for the good of another. 00:14:23.112 --> 00:14:26.852 Now, the inverse of that is not true of young children. 00:14:27.452 --> 00:14:30.952 A young child does not have agape for a parent. 00:14:30.972 --> 00:14:35.932 Now, of course, for a very young child, it's simply because there's no way a very young child can have that. 00:14:38.232 --> 00:15:01.292 However, once children are grown, and particularly once parents are aged, and then it becomes a duty of the child to care for the aged parent, then things sort of switch, because now it is agape on the part of the child for the parent, because now it is the grown child who has to sacrifice in order to care for the aged parent, which is how this is supposed to work. 00:15:01.312 --> 00:15:03.052 We've gone over that in a previous episode. 00:15:04.332 --> 00:15:07.652 Primarily and usually it falls to the eldest child, but not always. 00:15:09.112 --> 00:15:13.512 The grown child is supposed to care for the aged parent. 00:15:14.092 --> 00:15:27.732 And so you see sort of an inversion of that relationship as the ages change over time, because the parent no longer has the capacity to have that sort of self-sacrificial love. 00:15:28.352 --> 00:15:38.232 A man in his 90s can no longer go out and work to provide for his family, and so he relies on his children to care for him, at least if things are ordered as they should be. 00:15:39.792 --> 00:15:47.472 Contrary to agape, distinct from agape, is the concept, the facet of love, that is charity. 00:15:48.512 --> 00:15:49.832 Now we all know what charity is. 00:15:50.512 --> 00:16:01.172 Charity, very simply, is to provide for the needs of another, usually the poor, because that is typically the correct target for charity. 00:16:01.192 --> 00:16:04.072 The correct recipient of charity would be the needy. 00:16:04.692 --> 00:16:08.092 You are not going to provide charity for the wealthy. 00:16:08.652 --> 00:16:09.652 That wouldn't be charity. 00:16:10.072 --> 00:16:13.272 That would be typically political corruption, but that is not charity. 00:16:13.892 --> 00:16:23.092 And that highlights an important aspect of all of this, a way to break down and to understand these concepts. 00:16:24.832 --> 00:16:26.212 You have really three aspects. 00:16:26.232 --> 00:16:33.292 There are essentially two that are vitally important, but there's a third that is just inherently an aspect of almost everything in life. 00:16:34.152 --> 00:16:45.032 And so we'll go over that one first, which would be who is doing the loving, who is doing whatever it happens to be that constitutes the facet of love. 00:16:46.172 --> 00:16:51.172 And so in many cases, that's going to be you are the one doing it because you are analyzing your own actions. 00:16:51.672 --> 00:17:08.292 But if we are analyzing the actions of another, that person is relevant because you have to have, for instance, in familial love, there has to be a relationship, a familial relationship between the who doing the action and the whom receiving it. 00:17:08.852 --> 00:17:10.632 And of course, that is the second part of this. 00:17:12.452 --> 00:17:18.412 There are appropriate targets, appropriate recipients for each kind of love. 00:17:19.732 --> 00:17:27.972 And if that love, supposed love, is directed toward a recipient that is not appropriate, that is a disordered love. 00:17:28.652 --> 00:17:34.612 And if it is sufficiently disordered, it rises to the level of sin and may very well not be love whatsoever. 00:17:35.272 --> 00:17:43.572 This, of course, is more obvious for some forms of love than for others, Eros being probably the most obvious example, which we will get into in the third episode. 00:17:45.292 --> 00:17:52.272 But in addition to who and whom, we have the nature or scope of the type of love in question. 00:17:53.172 --> 00:18:00.452 And so again, I mentioned that the wealthy are not an appropriate target for charity, the poor are. 00:18:01.212 --> 00:18:04.772 And so that is who and whom, but there's also a scope there. 00:18:05.472 --> 00:18:10.172 What is the extent of the charity that is appropriate to give to the poor? 00:18:11.712 --> 00:18:24.512 Scripture says, the one who does not work, let him not eat, and so it is not appropriate simply to provide endless so-called charity for those who refuse to work. 00:18:25.512 --> 00:18:41.612 Endless welfare is not charity, it is not love, it is in fact hate, because not only are you wasting the resources of those who have given or have had that money taken from them, you are also harming the one who is just doing nothing. 00:18:42.192 --> 00:18:45.052 It is harmful to sit and do nothing. 00:18:45.472 --> 00:18:46.712 Man was made for work. 00:18:47.372 --> 00:18:52.792 Now, of course, there's the distinction between labor and work, and we live in a fallen world, but that's for another time. 00:18:54.172 --> 00:18:57.412 Man must do something productive with his time. 00:18:58.632 --> 00:19:16.092 If you are providing endless so-called charity for one who is not doing anything with his time, it is no longer charity because you have exceeded the scope, you've corrupted the nature of the thing, and that person, that whom, is no longer an appropriate target. 00:19:17.332 --> 00:19:28.272 And so those are the three aspects, as it were, of each of these facets that has to be analyzed when you are determining whether or not something is a particular kind of love. 00:19:28.972 --> 00:19:30.252 Who is doing the thing? 00:19:31.052 --> 00:19:32.732 Whom is receiving the thing? 00:19:33.232 --> 00:19:37.992 And what is the appropriate nature or scope of the love in question? 00:19:39.012 --> 00:19:45.012 Because if any one of those is absent or wrong, it is a disordered love at best. 00:19:46.032 --> 00:19:48.492 Now, as I said, that's a spectrum. 00:19:48.892 --> 00:19:50.232 That's the case with much of this. 00:19:50.252 --> 00:20:11.852 Well, when I were discussing this before we started recording, one of the reasons that this topic is complex, that there is some challenge in order to map out all of these connections between the various kinds of love, is that each analysis more or less falls along a spectrum. 00:20:13.252 --> 00:20:24.932 And so, charity, you can have the abject poor, the destitute, who are of course the strongest case in terms of whom to receive charity. 00:20:25.532 --> 00:20:35.692 And then you can have those who are just marginally below the level that we would consider the appropriate level for someone living in our society. 00:20:35.872 --> 00:20:36.752 That's a spectrum. 00:20:37.412 --> 00:20:40.772 The charity should of course go first to those who are in dire need. 00:20:41.452 --> 00:20:50.432 For instance, if you are going to provide clothing to those who need it, you probably provide it to the person who is naked first, because he needs it most. 00:20:50.972 --> 00:20:56.732 The person who is liable to freeze to death, if you do not clothe him, needs your charity first. 00:20:57.572 --> 00:20:59.572 But that is the case for all of these. 00:20:59.592 --> 00:21:01.532 There is a spectrum underlying it. 00:21:02.732 --> 00:21:10.392 And so, as Woe said in his introduction, we cannot necessarily give you a set of rules. 00:21:11.072 --> 00:21:13.632 If this, then that, if that, then this. 00:21:14.412 --> 00:21:15.752 That's not how any of this works. 00:21:16.632 --> 00:21:22.972 As is the case with so many of the things we cover on this podcast, this is a matter of wisdom. 00:21:23.832 --> 00:21:30.672 You are going to have to apply the gifts that God gave you to the facts as you find them, to the things set before you. 00:21:31.832 --> 00:21:41.272 And so, for instance, when it comes to familial love, you are going to have to decide the extent of that with each one of your siblings, each one of your family members. 00:21:41.592 --> 00:21:43.152 How much do I aid this person? 00:21:43.172 --> 00:21:44.712 How much time do I invest here? 00:21:45.232 --> 00:21:48.712 Do I have to pull back because this is causing problems? 00:21:50.092 --> 00:21:51.332 There is wisdom involved. 00:21:52.492 --> 00:21:58.852 For instance, you know, as we've used as an example previously, you don't give money to a sibling who is a drug addict. 00:21:59.592 --> 00:22:00.452 That's not love. 00:22:01.172 --> 00:22:02.072 That's not charity. 00:22:02.892 --> 00:22:04.992 You're not actually helping that person. 00:22:05.652 --> 00:22:08.252 The same thing holds in general with charity. 00:22:08.912 --> 00:22:14.152 If you are giving money to drug addicts, you are not helping them. 00:22:15.252 --> 00:22:22.132 Now, if you get them a job or help them to get cleaned up, help them to get treatment, that's charity. 00:22:22.412 --> 00:22:23.692 That's appropriate charity. 00:22:24.152 --> 00:22:25.032 That's a good thing. 00:22:25.672 --> 00:22:35.692 But you can see that in each case, society, at least our fallen corrupt society, would call both of those things charity. 00:22:36.812 --> 00:22:43.192 If you give money to, in this case, poor drug addicts, many will call it charity, but it's not. 00:22:44.212 --> 00:22:52.192 Because the nature, the scope of the thing you are doing isn't appropriate, even if the target is appropriate as a recipient of that charity. 00:22:52.852 --> 00:23:05.512 And so each one of these aspects has to be correct for the kind of love in question to be love, because otherwise, again, it is disordered or it may very well just not be love. 00:23:06.352 --> 00:23:10.172 And again, the most obvious examples will be in the episode on Eros. 00:23:11.992 --> 00:23:17.552 One of the substantial aspects of the ancient definition of agape has to do with preference. 00:23:18.052 --> 00:23:23.112 As Corey said, agape love is necessarily relational. 00:23:23.552 --> 00:23:26.932 There's a subject and there's an object, and it's a known object. 00:23:26.952 --> 00:23:30.732 There's some reason why you extend agape love to someone. 00:23:31.172 --> 00:23:41.112 And even though there's self-sacrifice involved and you're willing to give up something for the person for whom you express this type of love, it's a preference. 00:23:41.612 --> 00:23:47.012 Because we are not omnipotent, it is necessarily a limited preference. 00:23:47.552 --> 00:23:51.352 What I mean by that is I can't possibly agape everyone in the world. 00:23:52.032 --> 00:23:55.072 It's impossible and it's stupid to want to try. 00:23:55.252 --> 00:24:00.332 It's actually evil to think that I can have the same amount of love that God has. 00:24:01.072 --> 00:24:03.352 Because that's not how God made us. 00:24:03.352 --> 00:24:04.372 We are not infinite. 00:24:04.392 --> 00:24:05.132 We are finite. 00:24:05.632 --> 00:24:09.752 We are situated in certain places with families, neighbors, communities. 00:24:10.172 --> 00:24:13.292 The whole hierarchy that we go through so frequently. 00:24:14.032 --> 00:24:23.692 In our situation, we have the obligation from God to love our neighbor, to care for those who are around us, to care for family, and to care in different ways. 00:24:24.232 --> 00:24:26.832 And so, all of those are expressing preference. 00:24:28.132 --> 00:24:46.492 Yet, what you find in the wicked corners of the Church, which are not corners anymore, it's the majority of the Church today, and almost the entirety of the secular world, is that there can be no preference, which is itself inherently a preference, because they are always expressing a preference. 00:24:46.932 --> 00:24:50.792 But what they will do is they will say, you can't prefer your own. 00:24:51.352 --> 00:24:55.772 You have to prefer the far away, and then that means it's agape. 00:24:55.932 --> 00:24:56.732 What's nonsense? 00:24:57.332 --> 00:25:03.972 Having it be alienated from your own personal situation doesn't make it more loving, because you're finite. 00:25:04.352 --> 00:25:05.392 You're not omnipotent. 00:25:05.692 --> 00:25:08.072 You can't love everyone the way God does. 00:25:08.552 --> 00:25:17.472 There's necessarily a trade-off when you give to one when you love one, preferentially, someone else isn't going to get it. 00:25:18.152 --> 00:25:24.552 Now, there are situations where that subdivision doesn't really apply nearly as much, for example, inside a family. 00:25:24.572 --> 00:25:28.472 But again, that's going to be another facet of a different type of love. 00:25:30.332 --> 00:25:35.352 When we're talking about agape, we're talking about, I prefer to do this for this type of person. 00:25:35.372 --> 00:25:40.592 And as Corey is saying, another facet of another flavor of love is charity. 00:25:41.092 --> 00:25:52.572 And so there's a preference involved in charity, but it tends to be more externalized, because the duty of charity, and in one particular case in Scripture and historically in the Church, has been almsgiving. 00:25:53.412 --> 00:25:55.432 You give alms to a stranger. 00:25:55.772 --> 00:25:57.472 You don't give alms to your family. 00:25:57.892 --> 00:26:01.192 Your family's needs fall under 1 Timothy 5, 8. 00:26:01.632 --> 00:26:05.732 If you're not caring for your own household, you're not failing to give alms. 00:26:05.932 --> 00:26:10.072 You're failing on a much more basic, much more crucial level. 00:26:10.532 --> 00:26:11.592 And so it's a different thing. 00:26:11.872 --> 00:26:28.172 It's the absence of love, but that opportunity cost of, well, I'm going to give alms to the poor person, you know, across the road or 10,000 miles away when your own family is suffering, the world will say, oh, that's wonderful. 00:26:28.192 --> 00:26:29.412 Isn't that a blessing? 00:26:29.632 --> 00:26:43.632 Well, no, it's not, because the opportunity cost is that you've deprived those to whom God has situated you most closely and where you may well have greater duties, because all of these facets have different types of degrees of duties. 00:26:44.192 --> 00:26:56.532 As we'll get into in the third episode, the duties of love that a spouse has to each other is very different than the type of duties of love that you have to a neighbor or to a sibling. 00:26:57.492 --> 00:27:07.712 They're fundamentally different, but they're all duties to some degree, and some of them are very particularized, and some of them are diffuse, and some of them are situationally random effectively. 00:27:08.492 --> 00:27:12.052 The example of the Good Samaritan was basically random. 00:27:12.932 --> 00:27:15.692 The man happened to be a neighbor for the moment. 00:27:16.032 --> 00:27:21.112 When the Samaritan passed by and saw the man who had been beaten and bloodied, he took care of him because he was right there. 00:27:21.592 --> 00:27:23.632 It was happenstance that he came by. 00:27:23.652 --> 00:27:25.692 He was situationally his neighbor. 00:27:26.072 --> 00:27:27.392 He showed love for him. 00:27:27.412 --> 00:27:30.612