Love Extravagantly
My most recent post at my U2 Substack is directly relevant to our focus here at The Greatest of These, so I’m sharing it with you all this week. Hope it is helpful!
Love extravagantly
And without regret
If there’s anything better
I’ve not heard it yet
~ Resurrection Song, U2
These lines captured my attention and landed deep in my heart the first time I heard them.
Love extravagantly.
In the past 10 years or so, I’ve been struck again and again, in deeper and stronger ways, by the centrality and significance of love for human life. I recently turned 57. I’m nearly a decade younger than Bono, and missed sharing a birthday with him by just one day. I’m ridiculous enough to really wish I’d been born on the same day as Paul Hewson!
Anyway, as I look back on different times of my life, it strikes me that I have a lot more opinions and beliefs now than I did at 27, 37, or even 47. But I also have a lot fewer convictions. I’m much more comfortable with not knowing things and admitting that to myself and others than I used to be. I think that’s a good thing.
While I have fewer convictions, the ones I have go all the way down. They are deep. Non-negotiable. Central to how I see the world (and I hope increasingly to how I live in it).
One of those convictions is that love, even extravagant love, is central to a fully human life. Another one is that God is love. These two convictions are connected for me. Of course, one need not believe in God to think that love is central to human life, and plenty of people profess to believe that God is love yet rarely exhibit love in everyday life.
Early in Resurrection Song, Bono sings
If love is in the air
Let’s take a breath
If I sound ridiculous
I’m not done yet.
He certainly isn’t done, he’s only getting started. He’s got some more ridiculous things to say about love, like love extravagantly and without regret. Love extravagantly. What does that mean?
It means to love beyond the bounds of reason and beyond the limits of what is necessary. It means to love in immoderate and excessive ways. It means to love without restraint, beyond what’s deserved or even justifiable in some sense. Ridiculous. But there’s more. Extravagant can also mean something like “extremely high or unreasonable in price or cost.” So to love extravagantly means to love beyond the limits of reason, love when it is not deserved, not needed, even when it costs us something, even something significant.
In many of the ways that this world operates, none of this makes sense. It won’t necessarily win you friends and help you influence people. It certainly is not efficient. It won’t necessarily increase the bottom line or get you many of the things that you want.
The economy of love is unique, even ridiculous. It runs on different principles. In that economy, extravagance makes perfect sense. We can lose many things because we love. But we nevertheless can love without regret. The results don’t determine what, who, and how we love. The sheer truth, goodness, and beauty of love do that.
There really is nothing better than extravagant love. If there is something better, I haven’t heard it yet, either. I suspect that I, and however many future generations of human beings are to come, will never hear of something better, either.
Because it doesn’t exist.