Clingy
For those left out of the loop, there's this part in the Bible where Jesus asks Peter three times in a row if he loves him. As a kid, I thought this was really weird of Jesus. Like, HE SAID YES THE FIRST TIME, OKAY?????? The common grown-up explanation is that Jesus asked Peter once for every time he had denied him, thus giving him metaphorical redemption from his sucky-discipleness..... but it's also fun to imagine Jesus as that scary wide-eyed girlfriend from the internet. I think he would probably laugh about that too.
I actually studied this passage a bit when I wrote a paper for it my first year of college. The thing is that there are 4 different words for love in the Greek (and many variations on those). Jesus asked Peter if he loved him unconditionally the first two times (the word used was agape). Peter responded that he loved Jesus as a friend (phileo). Here's a link to a short article about it: http://www.gotquestions.org/Jesus-Peter-do-you-love-me.html
ReplyDeleteJust thought it was interesting since I too did not understand why Jesus asked so many times until I learned about the different kinds of love used in the Bible.
Thanks, Corrie! Now that you mention it, I think I had heard something about Peter only saying he phileo-d Jesus..... the last time, did he say he agape'd him?
ReplyDeleteNope. He continued with phileo all three times. Which I think is actually kind of sad :/
Delete