Recently I ran across agapé quotes in a book by psychiatrist, Thomas Moore. The following quotes are from his book Writing in the Sand. There he recognizes that many people use the word ‘love’ to mean so much more than the usual understanding of love, that what helps is to use a different word in order to avoid confusion. The word that is the best to use is the old Greek word ‘agapé.’ That is the word used in ancient Christian scriptures.
“If you read the Christian Gospels in Greek, you find the word agapé used again and again to describe the love that defines ‘the kingdom.’ The word appears over 300 times in the New Testament, such is its importance. In context, it connotes a communal feeling of connection, which Paul spells out as being selfless and which is the opposite of narcissism. It goes against conventional wisdom, the ways of the world, and plain, unrefined passion.
“In the context of the Gospels, agapé is different. Agapé doesn’t depend on the other’s actions. The shift in worldview from power to agapé is so radical that one can hardly imagine what the change would be like in practical terms.
“The agapé that Jesus teaches and demonstrates is a spiritually refined form of love. It is not romantic love, nor it exactly friendship. It is an experience of communal enjoyment of another that doesn’t demand conformity or even a return to love. This kind of loving requires an education in the spirit, a healing of mind and heart, and a true baptism — coming into a new level of being by entering the flowing stream of vitality.
"Agapé is an alternative to hatred, suspicion, judgment, and paranoia. It is less an emotion and more an orientation toward life. You face the world with an open heart rather than with a suspicious or punitive one. The agapé of the Gospels is not just a feeling; it’s a stance, a position, an evaluation that generates respect.
“The mystery of who Jesus is will be revealed in the context of spiritual and mundane agapé — only by discovering the power of agapé and how it can operate as a basic life principle.
“You may have to learn how to open your heart without fear and live the philosophy of agapé that is central to the Gospels. You may have to find a conduit to the source of your life, an abiding spiritual awareness that brings you up out of the small perimeters of your mind and your life.
“Your way out of suffering is to reimagine and reinvent your life. That is what Jesus is all about: reinventing your worldview so that you become less paranoid and narcissistic and unleash the creative power of agapé, a base of human interaction that is loving rather than competitive and power-driven.
“In ancient Greece, agapé referred to the value placed on jewels and other precious objects. This nuance fits the Gospels, where Jesus places high value on people who are normally rejected. He sees through surface problems of illness, weakness, and failure to the jewel at the core of the person. Jesus’ example shows that agapé is genuine acceptance of those who are rejected and judged, a warm embrace of a variety of people, and consistent attention to close friends.
“This capacity to see the value in every kind of person, of every level in society, from any place on earth, and with any problem or neurosis imaginable, is central to Jesus’ character and philosophy and his way of walking through life — living in paradox, being open to life’s variety, not judging; walking slowly and attentively through life, offering agapé and kindness in the most combative conditions.
“You can imagine Jesus, completely given to the world of wakening and enlivening humanity through a philosophy of agapé, being profoundly disturbed by our current situation. Imagine Jesus as speaking to the people of the world, not to convert them to a theology or, worse, an ideology, but to persuade them to mature spiritually, to arrive at a point of civility and imagination that allows them to live in peace and under the rule of agapé. Jesus is revealing a truth that everyone knows but forgets or sets aside: if the world could live by the principle of agapé, it would find its healing and would come to life.”
(An example of the verb form of agapé is shown in John 13:34-35 when the Greek is left untranslated: “I’m giving you a new commandment, that you ‘agapate’ each other. As I have ‘agapate’ you, you ‘agapesa' each other. In this everyone will know that you are my disciples: that you have ‘agapen’ for each other.”)
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