The Spirit of Love

Editor’s note: A little while ago I wrote a post called The Resounding Gong and I wish to try again.

The Bible, it is full of verses. My favorite verses, my favorite written words of all time, are from I Corinthians 13. The whole chapter reads like poetry:

If I speak in the tongues of men or of angels, but do not have love, I am only a resounding gong or a clanging cymbal. If I have the gift of prophecy and can fathom all mysteries and all knowledge, and if I have a faith that can move mountains, but do not have love, I am nothing. If I give all I possess to the poor and give over my body to hardship that I may boast, but do not have love, I gain nothing.

Love is patient, love is kind. It does not envy, it does not boast, it is not proud. It does not dishonor others, it is not self-seeking, it is not easily angered, it keeps no record of wrongs. Love does not delight in evil but rejoices with the truth. It always protects, always trusts, always hopes, always perseveres.

Love never fails. But where there are prophecies, they will cease; where there are tongues, they will be stilled; where there is knowledge, it will pass away. For we know in part and we prophesy in part, but when completeness comes, what is in part disappears. ... Now I know in part; then I shall know fully, even as I am fully known.

And now these three remain: faith, hope and love. But the greatest of these is love.

These are powerful words. My experience is that it is a faithful map to the best of life, and it stands all on its own. Each day I try to reflect on each part, and then once again all together.

Programmers have an ancient ritual known as Unit Testing. They write a series of tests to run against their code to make sure it works as intended before it compiles.¹ The test throws a bright red block of text at your face if something is amiss, which can be a frustrating experience, but much less frustrating than a broken program running in the wild. It tells us exactly what needs more work.

Human behavior runs basically like a computer script. Most actions and words flow from source code written before the moment, forged from the experiences we’ve had and the intentions we bring, even from our DNA, our original source code. It takes too much bandwidth to choose each action and word on the fly, and we fall back on the habits and reactions that have worked (or not worked) in the past, and that is usually good enough for most things.

Like all source code, it comes with flaws, and perfection is not an achievable goal. The best we can bring is enough, but the best we can bring needs reflection. Some days, I am grateful just to get past the first two tests, they are powerful enough on their own. The test output for writing a blog post or getting on the bus or in the line at the grocery store might look like this:

✅ Love is patient,  
✅ love is kind.  
✅ It does not envy,  
❗️ it does not boast

LoveTest > itDoesNotBoast FAILED
    java.lang.IllegalArgumentException: Love was found boasting
        at Love.checkBoasting(Love.kt:42)
        at LoveTest.itDoesNotBoast(LoveTest.kt:17)

4 tests completed, 1 failed

When I am feeling uneasy or vaguely unhappy with myself, it is a sign that I need to check my test output, and often enough it will show me the source of the problem, at least as it relates to me and my actions. Broken program running in the wild is sometimes me.

Love, that might sound like a rather strong word for the spirit we might wish to bring to every day actions. I speak of the spirit of love in the broadest sense, the spirit of the kind stranger or the good friend or the loving parent. I think of the qualities of the people that have lifted me up. The human condition is one that is constantly directing us to focus on ourselves, but love lets us see a bigger picture. It is the spirit that calls us to sacrifice for others, to be a part of something greater than ourselves, to serve and give and defend and understand. It is the spirit of humanity at its best.

Love is a spirit that can be grand or simple. The spirit that the founders of our country spoke of often, because they understood it is vital if this great experiment in liberty and democracy is to work. Love is the spirit of On This Day. Love is the spirit of Jesus, and the spirit that unites people of many different faiths and beliefs. Love never fails. We can find it anywhere on this big rock that has people,² if we can’t see it at first it is because we aren’t looking for it. And of course, the best place to start looking is within.

This might sound strange, but I believe our latest iterations on AI have something to teach us about love. So do some key figures from history that might not immediately jump to mind when we think of love. But those must be topics for some other post, because it is time for the most important part of this one: 🕊️

1. This is as important as ever, now that robots help us write our code. 🤖

2. And certainly humans aren’t the only creatures who embody love, we aren’t even the creatures I’d offer as the best example.