1 Corinthians 13 And The Philosophical Foundations Of Love

Without an idea being both true and knowable, whether or not it is "loving" to embrace the truth, a belief is nothing but a worthless, hollow assumption that emerges from stupidity, laziness, and preferences.  Absolutely nothing can be more important, foundational, or far-reaching in its ramifications than truth itself, and truth is just a byproduct of logic.  If some facts or ideas did not logically follow from others by sheer necessity because nothing else could be true, then nothing at all would be true.  There would be nothing to make anything false and make other things the way reality is.  In turn, this would mean nothing is loving and that there is no reason to strive to be loving.

It is intrinsically impossible for nothing at all to be true, because the only alternative, that nothing is true, would have to be true in order to be correct.  Moreover, it is not logically impossible to recognize the utter supremacy and inevitability of truth over all other things, including love, while also loving oneself and others.  Love simply is not the emotionalistic acceptance that so many people confuse it for.  Before someone can understand what a Biblical passage like 1 Corinthians 13, with its insistence that deep love is necessary to live as one should, even means, they must realize this.  The word love can refer to more than one thing, such as personal affection for a friend (or family member), which entails specifically getting to know and care for someone as an individual, or a commitment to someone's wellbeing or moral rights as a person, even though they might be a total stranger.

The only kind of love commanded by the Bible is the latter, although the first kind is clearly compatible with the high priority Christian theology places on positive relationships as early as Genesis 2.  A person is unloving by treating people hypocritically, cruelly, or through the lens of shallow or false philosophies.  Appeasing random, subjective desires of someone else is not automatically loving, for it might not be in their best interest to do so, if not morally wrong depending on their desires.  In contrast, a person is loving if they care about treating others as they deserve no matter how inconvenient it is.  In opposing and choosing to not carry out acts of selfishness or injustice, a person shows love whether or not they feel emotionally attached to or concerned for someone.

Love in the Christian sense is not emotionalism, subjective attachment or affection, or arbitrary kindness that is itself neither morally obligatory nor evil.  It is the desire to treat people as they deserve, and no one deserves illicit discrimination or cruelty even if justice sometimes calls for harshness.  Treating others as the Bible says they deserve is within the power of all people no matter how they feel.  In this sense--if morality exists and people deserve to be treated a certain way and it is loving to treat them justly--then of course a person is a failure and of lesser value than they could be if they adhered to the only objective moral obligations there are.  Biblically speaking, it is unloving to discriminate against people on the basis of gender or race, just as it is unloving to inflict legal penalties harsher than those called for in Mosaic Law.

Neglecting to tell a non-autonomous thinker a vital truth or provoke them into dwelling on matters of importance is likewise unloving if truth has significance, as is seeking peace for the sake of peace when fallacies, hypocrisies, and cruelty permeate a culture.  When 1 Corinthians 13 says that even great acts of charity and self-discipline are empty when performed without love in its third verse, it is not affirming the idea that a subjective sense of emotional satisfaction with or acceptance of others makes one a morally upright person, much less the asinine, contradictory notion that love could even exist without truth at its foundation.  It is affirming the idea that carrying out the various obligations the Bible speaks of is incomplete and insincere without a love of truth, justice, God, and others.  Without love, in the sense of either passion or commitment (or both), one is carrying out these acts apathetically or for self-gain.

Since 1 Corinthians 13:6 even says that love "rejoices in the truth," it is not saying love is somehow separate from or over truth--after all, it would already have to be true that some things are loving and that love is morally obligatory before it would be true that everyone should be loving.  Love cannot exist without truth, and there is no reason to contemplate or pursue it apart from truth.  Affection and kindness, though they are not what necessarily make something loving as explained above, do not make something true or even reveal if love itself has any sort of moral significance.  Something is true if it is how reality is, not because it is helpful, personally appealing, or even loving.  At the same time, neither personal affection nor commitment to the wellbeing of others is inherently in conflict with truth or the laws of logic that both ground and reveal it.