‘What Is Love?’ by Nigel Bird
Spiritual insights from a unique Christian journey
A summary of content
What is love? is a series of articles that seek to clarify what love is particularly from a Christian viewpoint, considering how with faith and hope it forms the bedrock of such belief and its practical outworking. Fundamental characteristics of love are examined together with apologetics for the difficulties that arise from its definitions, in particular referring to what the Bible says and how Biblical scholars may interpret it. Included are explanations of atonement and a look at reconciling common challenges such as God allowing suffering, freewill and sovereignty, and love and the devil.
About the author
The author has an MA in Mathematics from St. John’s College, Cambridge, where he first relapsed into mental illness that has affected his life, but he claims ‘success’ in being a survivor. He became a Christian at age 26 and worked successfully in the city for a while having gained a distinction in Actuarial Science at City University. He endured spells of severe suffering mentally while also building faith from the conservative evangelical tradition, growing towards a less intellectual and more practical ‘open evangelicalism’.
Watching Arsenal, playing Bridge, and travelling have kept his interest and been helpful to his health as has gaining some insight into mental illness. Writing has also been therapeutic in itself, as well as by receiving encouragement from others.
See his previous book – The Arsenal of Grace
For more information on Nigel see Nigel’s Facebook page and and his LinkedIn profile
Nigel can be contacted by email: nigel@nigelbird.com
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The ethos of the book is very much shaped by the quote below from Elton Trueblood.
The Strategy of Jesus
Jesus was deeply concerned for the continuation of his redemptive work after the close of His earthly existence, and His chosen method was the formation of a redemptive society. He did not form an army, establish a headquarters, or even write a book.
All he did was to collect a few unpromising men and women, inspire them with the sense of His vocation and theirs, and build their lives into an intensive fellowship of affection, worship, and work. One of the truly shocking passages of the gospel is that in which Jesus indicates that there is absolutely no substitute for the tiny redemptive society. If this fails, He suggests, all is failure; there is no other way. He told the little bedraggled fellowship that they were actually the salt of the earth and that if this salt should fail there would be no adequate preservative at all. He was staking all on one throw.
What we need is not intellectual theorizing, or even preaching, but a demonstration. There is only one way of turning people’s loyalty to Christ, and that is by loving others with the great love of God. We cannot revive faith by argument, but we might catch the imagination of puzzled men and women by an exhibition of a fellowship so intensely alive that every thoughtful person would be forced to respect it.
If there should emerge in our day such a fellowship, wholly without artificiality and free from the dead hand of the past, it would be an exciting event of momentous importance. A society of loving souls, set free from the self-seeking struggle for personal prestige and from all unreality, would be something unutterably precious. A wise person would travel any distance to join it.
Elton Trueblood
Why not try the strategy of Jesus? Other options do not seem to work.
The cover of the book – back then front
