The Opposite of Love

Someone asked a group of us what we thought the opposite of love is. Hate, Selfishness, Rebellion, Apathy, and Fear all came up as possible answers. Good answers. Even some fairly interesting theology shuffling around in there. I prayed on it a bit and thought it over and after a while I decided perhaps LOVE does not have an opposite, because it is at the center. If a planet is directly on the other side of the sun from the earth, maybe the earth has an opposite, but the sun does not. Opposites are interesting things. Clearly not everything has one. Tuna doesn’t, nor do I. Anti-matter-James is only a guy I made up to explain to my wife who left the toilet seat up.

To understand something about opposites, lets looks at the color wheel.

As you can see, the colors have opposites (in some sense at least). Red is the opposite of green and so on.

Fun facts about light and how we perceive light can lend to some cool illusions.  But certainly love is not like a hue? No, I don’t think it is, and that is where the confusion sets in. Emotions may have find shades between them and even ideals may have opposites. Hate, Selfishness, Rebellion, Apathy, and Fear, as we mentioned previously, all seem good candidates for opposites of love, but upon examination, it isn’t love as a whole they oppose, but only tools of love.

Each one of these “evils” really stands alone. You can be selfish, but not apathetic. You can be fearful and angry, but not apathetic. You can hate and be mean, but you cannot hate and disbelieve (how do you hate what you don’t believe in?) But kindness, belief, affection, friendship, faith and serving are all acts of love. You can serve without loving, certainly and you can believe without loving (sort of, but I think you would be surprised to find out your faith isn’t real), but you cannot love without being kind, serving, caring, etc.

Love is so big that I won’t even attempt to fill it out here. It won’t fit on the page. In fact, He fills the heavens and the earth. Nothing can contain Him. This is why God’s love will always win, because nothing can stand wholly against it. Even evil itself is only the lack of good not the opposite of it. See here and here for more on that. I think the answer to love’s “opposite” is perhaps “not-love.”

Though a thousand things may oppose love, it will win. A better question than what is love’s opposite is what prevents it? Because of the very nature of love, it won’t intrude where it isn’t wanted. It will however seep in and pervade the whole of everything. It will win you over if you let it.  Like Jesus said, the Kingdom of heaven is like yeast. It works its way through subtly, leavening the whole, raising it up. Raising us to the Kingdom of heaven.