Knowing that people were thinking about Valentine’s Day, we took the opportunity to speak about aspects of love as described in Paul’s letter to the Corinthians. I could have just gone with ‘love is patient, love is kind’ but am acutely aware that this particular phrase is one that is already so very well known to women in the church, and has been used by male and female religious leaders alike to create a culture in which it is impossible for a woman to speak out about her husband’s abusive controlling behaviour in the home. 

Women in bible study groups regularly nominate patience during the prayer time, and they pray for more patience all the time – patience with the children, patience with the husbands, because the situation is often very difficult and there seems no way for it to change. Do the men sit around in their bible study groups and pray for patience and forbearance too? I don’t know.

Furthermore, there are many women across our society who do not know what respectful mature adult love properly looks like because they have seen it only rarely or not at all. Myths and half-truths abound in our culture (He’s possessive because he loves you; he wouldn’t want you to stay if he didn’t love you; he can’t control himself because he loves you so much) that are very damaging to women. 

I deliberately chose to add the extra three characteristics – also mentioned in Corinthians – because I didn’t want one single woman to walk past that sign and think that she had to continue in a relationship because of her responsibility to keep being loving and kind regardless of the treatment being meted out to her. Rather than have her think, “I say that I love him, but I’m not being patient enough so I need to be more patient when he behaves like that”, I wanted her to think about whether his claim of love stacked up against the other measures: envious, conceited, arrogant. These words can, and should, serve as warning bells for domestic abuse and violence. 

The Uniting Church in Australia has created a range of resources to encourage congregations and their communities to raise awareness around what domestic and family violence is, and how to respond to and support survivors. You can watch a short video and read more here.

Why did I avoid ‘proud’ in favour of ‘arrogant’? Biblical translators have done their best with getting Ancient Greek into English, but we need to be careful which English words we choose to use in particular situations. Addressing past injustices and oppression involves allowing and encouraging people to take pride in who they are rather than having to hide it in order to avoid opprobrium. In Australia in 2021, it is very common for Aboriginal people – particularly women – to introduce themselves to a formal meeting or group of people by saying, “My name is x, and I’m a proud (name of people group) woman”. So at this point it is less helpful for us to say ‘love is not proud’, lest we inadvertently rebuke an individual or group for whom it is very important to develop pride in their cultural background or sexuality, for example, especially if they are a Christian and well aware of these key passages in Scripture. The word ‘arrogant’ is used in some translations and works pretty well.