Valuing others because of who they are.
I’ve repeated the routine of knocking on a hospital room door, walking into the room, congratulating the parents, and examining the baby time and time again. It’s a routine that never gets old. Every time I see a new baby, I have a unique and magical experience. These experiences are “magical” because they seem extraordinary and enchanted each time, even though they are routine.
My friends Javier and Mariah welcomed a beautiful new daughter, Vanessa, into their family last week. I was excited to see them and meet Vanessa, and as I picked her up from her bassinet, the moment became enchanted because of her. Immediately, I felt love for her because of her hair, because of her smallness, because of my relationship with her parents, because of her similarity to my daughter, and because of her newness.
There are many different expressions of love. In his book Pluriform Love, Thomas Jay Oord identifies ways love is expressed based on three Greek words for love: eros, philia, and agape. In this and the next two posts, I’ll discuss each of these as they relate to parenting.
Eros is an expression of love Oord refers to as because-of love. Eros is often thought of as referring to erotic or sexual desire but can also mean “desiring what is valuable.”1 Plato separated eros from pleasure and sexual desire, viewing it instead as a broader longing for what is good and beautiful. His shift in meaning is why we call non-sexual friendship “Platonic love.” Someone who experiences this desire values, treasures, appreciates, enjoys, delights, and cherishes another. Eros values something or someone because of something about them.
God uses because-of love by delighting in creation and calling it “good” (Gn 1). When we respond to God’s call toward overall well-being, God experiences and treasures that response. God also shares our joy when we delight in another person or part of creation. Unfortunately, people sometimes choose evil over good, resulting in violence and suffering. When that happens, God still sees all as intrinsically good despite bad decisions. One of the ways God loves creation is by delighting in its inherent goodness using because-of love.
Parents naturally use because-of love with their children. Like Vanessa’s parents, from the moment children are born, their parents cherish them because of their inherent value. They delight in first smiles, bites of food, words, and steps. They treasure plaster handprints, watercolor sunsets, and dinosaurs crafted from clay. Because-of love is easy in these moments.
Sometimes, life gets busy, and we become distracted by the seemingly urgent details of life. Sometimes, because-of love gets ignored. In these moments, open-relational parenting reminds us to pause and cherish our children because of who they are and what they have accomplished. Because-of love brings us joy and lets us practice thankfulness for our relationships with our children.
Parents can express love for their children by enjoying them because of who they are. When they do, God sees their joy and values them because of who they are. Because-of love leads to the well-being of the child, the parents, and God.
1 Thomas Jay Oord, Pluriform Love: An Open and Relational Theology of Well-Being (Grasmere, ID: SacraSage, 2022), 136.
photo: vanessa
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