Meditation ~ Eros and Agape

It's really, really hard integrating desiring love (eros) with self-sacrificing love (agape). Yet, without either one, we are not fully alive. To deny the first is to extinguish the motor force that connects us to others, creation, and God. In fact, the whole purpose of going to Heaven is because we desire God. No desire, no reason to prefer Heaven over Hell. To deny the second, is to become a menace to everyone else, using and abusing those around you. It means to take without giving back.

There is a sense in which eros and agape are mutually exclusive. It's much easier to just go all one way or the other. Most sincere Christians will not feel comfortable with outright hedonism, so they'll swing in the direction of asceticism or manichaeism, often without knowing, just to play it safe.

But we were never meant to merely follow rules and play it safe. We were created to love and desire with the heart of God. The beautiful thing about grace is that it exists to purify our desires and align them with God's own. That way, we can deeply desire and grow in holiness as we do.