Love Actually - Ed Drew
The film, “Love Actually” has it wrong. If you want to see love, don’t go to Heathrow Airport, head to Piccadilly Circus. There in the middle of the bright lights, confused tourists and big buses is the statue of Eros. Except it isn’t. Everyone thinks it’s Eros, but that’s because they’ve got the wrong brother. They look very similar. Even their mum probably got them mixed up. The statue is Anteros, the brother of Eros. Eros is the Greek god of love and sex. Anteros is the Greek god of selfless love. This matters. The statue of Anteros was paid for by the people of London to remember the life of the 7th Earl of Shaftesbury, who died in 1885. Please don’t give up on me. I know I have moved from obscure Greek mythology to obscure dead aristocracy but I am going somewhere wonderful.
I reckon Shaftesbury is one of the greatest ever Britons. He is responsible for outlawing children working in factories. He also took the children out of the mines. Both of these laws were bitterly opposed by his rich mates, whose fat profits depended on being able to employ children on miniscule pay to do their hard work. He also outlawed children going up chimneys, because what Mary Poppins never explained is that sending boys up chimneys was abusive and frequently lethal. And there’s more. Shaftesbury also drove through the legislation to improve the conditions of the mentally ill. They used to be chained to their beds for the whole weekend, while the staff went home. You can imagine what those wretched people looked like on a Monday morning, when Shaftesbury took a tour of their hospital. And finally, Shaftesbury was responsible for the first schools for the poorest children. He took the children of our nation out of mines, factories and chimneys and put them into schools.
Stand at the statue of Anteros and you can look down Shaftesbury Avenue. Because he flattened the slums that stood there to give London’s poorest better homes. The grand avenue that took their place was named after him. Where did Shaftesbury’s passion for the poor come from? Christ. Where did his Christian faith come from? Not his family. For a large part of his life, his father refused to speak to him, because Shaftesbury’s care for the farmers on his estate, meant that the family’s income dropped through the floor. He spent money on the poor instead of squeezing them to pay him more.
The nameless nanny, who sat the toddler on her knee and spoke to him of Jesus Christ, is where Shaftesbury’s Christian faith came from. So lesson one: If anyone ever questions the value of preschool ministry, please send them to Piccadilly Circus and don’t let them come back until they’ve got the message. 40% of the UK church in 2017 said they came to faith under the age of 5. Boom!
Do you see why Shaftesbury needed a statue of Anteros, not Eros? Anteros is the god of selfless love. Shaftesbury was the embodiment of selfless love. He didn’t worship the god of selfless love, he worshipped the God who IS selfless love.
“God is love” (1 John 4:8)
That word “love” is the Greek word ‘agape’. God’s agape love is always selfless. Because God does not need to receive love. He is enough without the love of others. He didn’t create us because he needed our love. He created us because he chose to love us.
C. S. Lewis put it bluntly,
“God is a ‘host’ who deliberately creates His own parasites; causes us to be that we may exploit and take advantage of Him. Herein is love. This is the diagram of Love Himself, the inventor of all loves.”
That picture is painful to read and ponder. God chose to be the rotten meat so that the maggots could have life. He created us so that we could have life, not so that he could benefit. That is true selfless love! I am sorry to describe you and me as maggots. All of us take exception to that description at first glance. It’s offensive. But Shaftesbury lived that offensive story. Why did he show love to the children, to the mentally ill and to the poor farmers? Was it because he longed for their love? Was it because they would one day pay him back? Did he crave popularity? Was it his get-rich plan? No. He loved the weak, the forgotten, the oppressed and the hopeless because God had shown him that love first.
“This is love: not that that we loved God, but that he loved us and sent us his Son as an atoning sacrifice for our sins.” (1 John 4:10)
