“Now, as this suggests, Mike is not what makes your heart skip. I mean, you love him, but you’re not in love with him. That’s why you can’t say it. I’m right, aren’t I?”
Miranda S3
E5, ‘Three Little Words’ (2013)
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| Thanks to Vampirelover19 on the Miranda Hart Wikia for this delightful, if perhaps prematurely festive, image. |
‘Three Little Words’ was definitely a
highlight of the third series of Miranda Hart’s eponymous sitcom: the unnamed
customer-turned-emotional-workshopper continually explaining Miranda’s problems
to exactly the wrong person; Penny attempting to accost Raymond Blanc by disguising
herself as a coat-stand; Miranda finally overcoming her pushy-mother-itis and
acute Englishness-ness-ness to admit to Gary that she’s head-over-heels in love
with him.1
Reaching this conclusion takes something
of a process. Miranda realises she is unable to tell her boyfriend Mike that
she loves him: in response to his ‘I love you’, she stammers: “Well, I, um, I,
er, I – eyes are to see with, noses are to smell with,” before throwing a look
of horrified confusion – what am I
doing?! – at the audience. Workshopping the issue with her best friend
Stevie and the Unnamed Customer, she is forced to admit that she isn’t in love
with Mike after all. However, later in the episode, she is easily able to say
casually to her old friend Gary as he leaves her shop: “I wouldn’t laugh; it’s
one of the reasons I love you.”
“Er, what did you just say?” interrupts
Stevie.
“I just said ‘I love you’ – but, I mean,
just flippantly, like I say it to you,” replies Miranda.
“Well, that’s where you’re mistaken, my
massive friend2,” returns Stevie. “We say it in a silly way. Tell me
you love me.”
“Luvvou,” says Miranda.
I suspect we all have our own ‘luvvou’
equivalents. I sometimes go as far as ‘wuvvou’ with my sisters. Even sticking some
kind of plural addressee on the end of the statement – “I love you all,” or, “I
love you guys,” seems to make the phrase stick in the throat less. I happily write,
‘lots of love from Anne’ in birthday cards or at the bottom of letters, but ‘I
love you’ looks odd on the page. And I do wonder whether Miranda might have struck something rather significant as to the
reason: what if, sometimes, when we find it hard to say we love someone, it’s
because, to some extent, we don’t really believe we do? Or, at least, not in
the way we feel is expressed by the statement.
Last week, I suggested that, when it
comes to saying that I love something, changing the object of the sentence can
imply a change in the meaning of the verb: the statement, ‘I love peanut butter
milkshakes,’ doesn’t, or rather, shouldn’t, suggest the same relationship as the
statement, ‘I love God.’ Now, I propose that another way of implying a change
in meaning of the verb ‘love’ may be by modifying or framing the statement to
make it sound sillier, more inclusive, or less personal. Does ‘luvvou’ mean the
same as ‘I love you’? Or does it describe a different quality of love?
Of course, English is rather
disadvantaged among languages in this respect: elsewhere the queen of synonyms,
she nevertheless struggles to find verbs equivalent to any of the multiple
meanings of ‘love’. Ancient Greek, by contrast, has three very commonly used
verbs usually translated into English as ‘love. ̕εράω (eráō) refers to loving sexually, being in love with, desiring
passionately; φιλέω (philéō) refers
to regarding with affection, treating affectionately (often by outwards signs
like kissing), being fond of; and ̕αγαπάω (agapáō),
while having in many authors a similar meaning to φιλέω, is also used to refer
to being pleased or content, prizing, or having regard for3 – and out
of this grew a rather particular additional meaning when the translators
responsible for the Septuagint (the Greek translation of the Jewish scriptures)
settled on it as their favoured way of referring to loving relationship between
God and humans. It’s the verb used in, for example, Exodus 20:6, Deuteronomy
6:5, Hosea 11:1, Malachi 1:2, and Psalm 146:8.4 This meaning was
then carried over into the New Testament and other Christian texts.
So those working on an English
translation of the Bible hit a bit of a sticky spot when they come to passages
like John 21:15-19.5 It’s probably a familiar enough story: Jesus
asks Simon Peter whether he loves him and Simon Peter responds, “Yes, Lord; you
know that I love you.” What you don’t see in the translation is that when Jesus
poses the question, he uses the verb ̕αγαπάω – but when Peter answers it, he
uses φιλέω.
I think what Jesus is essentially asking
is, “Do you love me, value me, respect me, in a way appropriate to the relationship
between God and his people?” And I think what Peter is essentially replying is,
“Yes, Lord, you know that I … am really very fond of you.” In other words,
Peter meets Jesus’ “Do you love me?” with the equivalent of “Luvvou.”
This happens twice. Then, when Jesus
asks for the third time, he too uses φιλέω – at which Peter becomes upset.
Bearing in mind it was only a few days ago that he publicly denied Jesus three
times,6 he’s probably feeling like something of a failure. He can’t
bring himself to use ̕αγαπάω, because it just doesn’t sound true – his love
doesn’t feel good enough to merit the term – and he knows Jesus knows it. And I
suspect that Jesus’ switching to φιλέω on his third asking just makes Peter’s
sense of failure stand out to him all the more painfully – as if Jesus were
noting that Peter evidently isn’t up to the task, and stepping down the
difficulty level accordingly.
But Jesus isn’t frustrated, or
disappointed, or critical – and he isn’t stepping down the difficulty level. He
gives a reply along the same lines as his previous two: “Feed my sheep.” Jesus’
response to Peter’s feeling his love is inadequate, is to task him with the
immense responsibility of looking after his people.
The poem I posted last week began, ‘“I
love you,” and, frankly, it sounds like a lie’ – and indeed, we’re not capable
of love of the quality really appropriate to a relationship with God. But God
doesn’t seem to view that as a problem, or something that disqualifies us from
doing work for him. He’ll work with what we’ve got – φιλέω is clearly a
perfectly acceptable starting point.7
That means that, when we realise that
our love for God isn’t of the calibre appropriate to that relationship, the
last reaction we should have is Miranda’s upon realising her love for Mike wasn’t
of the calibre appropriate to that relationship. God knows we’re not capable of
love like his, and sees it as no reason to break up. In fact, he wants our
reaction to be to draw even closer to him; that’s the only way we’ll ever learn
to ̕αγαπάω.8
Start with ‘luvvou’. Work up.
1 Miranda Hart has actually posted the whole episode on YouTube
– splendidly nice of her. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nm0W2ll9_aY.
2 The running joke is that Miranda is 6’1’ tall – which is,
coincidentally, the same height as me. I have a sneaking suspicion that Big and
Long, the fictitious shop regularly mentioned in the sitcom, may be based on Long
Tall Sally, http://www.longtallsally.com/,
which is the only shop I’ve found that stocks 36” leg jeans.
3 I am greatly indebted to the Greek Word Study Tool offered
by the Perseus Digital Library, http://www.perseus.tufts.edu/hopper/search.
(Ask any Classics student – we would be lost without Perseus.)
4 I checked these using Elpenor, http://www.ellopos.net/elpenor/default.asp.
Isn’t the Internet a wonderful thing?
5 Read the whole passage here: https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=John+21&version=ESVUK.
Go on, you know you want to…
6 The episode is included in all four gospels, but John
recorded it three chapters earlier: https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=John+18&version=ESVUK.
7 I owe the basic idea of this explanation to a previous
issue – I can’t remember which one – of Word
4 U 2Day, which is an excellent devotional magazine with a cringingly awful
name, published by United Christian Broadcasters: http://www.ucb.co.uk/word4u2day.
8 Check out 1 Thessalonians 3:12, for instance: https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=1%20Thessalonians+3&version=ESVUK.
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