Was it Love at First Sight or Lust at First Sight?

Thanks to the Greeks, 8 different words translate to the English word love.

1. Eros: physical attraction; erotic; sexual want; lust
2. Pragma: practical love grounded in duty
3. Ludus: playful, flirtatious love
4. Agape: unconditional selfless love
5. Philia: friendship, brotherly love
6. Philautia: self-love
7. Storge: familial love
8. Mania: obsessive love

The focus of this article is on the differentiation between erotic attraction and unconditional love between a man and a woman.

Hookups are not a new idea. 993 years before Jesus Christ was born in Bethlehem, King David saw his neighbor’s wife bathing on her rooftop. Bathsheba’s husband, Uriah the Hittite, was away fighting a war. David’s lust for Bathsheba moved him to send for her. They shared his bed that night, and he sent her back home after she cleaned herself. Within a few days, Bathsheba was pregnant. [Reference 2 Samuel 11:1-5, circa 993 BC]

In brief, King David set up Uriah to be killed in battle. Afterward, David married Bathsheba to hide his adulterous relationship. You can hide your sins from other people, but you can’t hide your sins from our omnipresent, omnipotent, omniscient God.

Is erotic love unwholesome? Only in unholy hookups. Erotic love is God’s design for procreation. According to World Population Review, more than 700,000+ babies are born in the world each day. Approximately half of all births are out-of-wedlock. Here in the USA, 40.5% are born out of wedlock.

Erotic love is not in itself sinful if experienced within the bond of holy matrimony. In fact, erotic love is absolutely essential to a lifelong healthy marriage.

God’s Plan for Marriage

Husbands, [unconditionally] love your wives, just as Christ also [unconditionally] loved the church and gave Himself for it, that He might sanctify and cleanse it with the washing of water by the word, and that He might present to Himself a glorious church, not having spot, or wrinkle, or any such thing, but that it should be holy and without blemish. In this way men ought to [unconditionally] love their wives as their own bodies. He who [unconditionally] loves his wife [unconditionally] loves himself. 

Ephesians 5:25-28 MEV

Finding Mr. or Mrs. Right

I suggest that the man and the woman always seek the approval of their respective families. Families are not always blood-related. Your family, whatever its constituents, knows you better than you know yourself.

John White
Rockwall, Texas