The Opposite of Love

If you search for “the opposite of love,” you'll find a variety of opinions.

The obvious answer, of course, is that the opposite of love is hate. But there are other answers. According to Elie Wiesel, the opposite of love is indifference. His perspective certainly demands consideration.

But the formula that appeals to me is that the opposite of love is fear. Oddly enough, I first encountered this in a book about war—Google confirms “Gates of Fire,” a fictionalized account of Thermopylae—where the question was first posed the other way around: The opposite of fear is not courage, but love.

This is at first surprising, but if you work on it a bit, it makes sense. We know the fruits of love:

1 Corinthians 13:4-7 Love is patient; love is kind; love is not envious or boastful or arrogant or rude. It does not insist on its own way; it is not irritable or resentful; it does not rejoice in wrongdoing, but rejoices in the truth. It bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things.

The exercise of negating each of these properties, and attributing it as a fruit of fear is left as an exercise to the reader. Moreover, this is a position that has scriptural support:

1 John 4:18 There is no fear in love, but perfect love casts out fear; for fear has to do with punishment, and whoever fears has not reached perfection in love.

It seems to me that we have become a nation driven by fear. Fear of terrorism. Fear of job loss. Fear of disease -- be it HIV, or H1N1. Fear of change. Fear of government. Fear of the other. Sometimes, fear of all of these, all at once. We fear that the government we fear will fail to inspire fear into the terrorists we fear.

Fear drives out the possibility of love. It eliminates the possibility that we can convert enemies into friends. It makes us weak, vulnerable, and far indeed from the Kingdom of God.

2 Timothy 1:7 for God did not give us a spirit of cowardice, but rather a spirit of power and of love and of self-discipline.

Galatians 5:22-23 the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, generosity, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control.

Stated equivalently, the Spirit gives us love, with all of love's fruits.

It is time, time and past time, for us to set aside this childish thing called fear, and to take up our gift as Spirit-filled Christians, and love.

Peace