“You’ve got to love your students” advised emeritus Professor D.K. Smith in spring 2006 to members of Middlebury’s economics department during a lunch in his honor, several months before he passed.
What did D.K. mean? Can his advice help create a better Middlebury, a better liberal arts, in troubled times?
Love’s multiple meanings — admiration, adoration, romantic longing, lust — obscure what we know to be true: one form of love — agape — transcends all. In Paul’s letter to the Corinthians, we learn that this love is patient and kind; neither envious nor boastful nor proud. It’s the love that does not dishonor others; is not self-seeking or easily angered. This love keeps no record of wrongs; it does not delight in evil. Rather, it rejoices in the truth. This love protects, trusts, hopes; it perseveres.
This truly is good news. Agape is accessible to us all. For who can’t be patient and kind? Stay away from envy and boasting (most of the time anyway)? Who can’t hope? When I teach Paul’s letter in my social entrepreneurship courses, I ask my students: “Put up your hand if you can’t do these things. If you can’t be patient, kind, and so on.” A hand rarely goes up.
Yet there’s much more to this love than, say, being nice. For Paul also tells us that this is the force more powerful … well, than just about everything! Can you “fathom all knowledge?”, he asks? Move mountains? Do you give all you possess to the poor? Even give over your body to…
