even the simple word love can create problems.10 In English and Greek, we’re used to talking about love as an abstraction, without anyone actually doing it. But in the New Guinean language he studies, love is always a verb, an action between two people. God loves you. You love your neighbor. Love can’t be used in a sentence without specifying who is doing the loving and who is being loved. In the Hebrew Bible, love can be a noun but it is always attached to a person: “God’s love” or “the love of Jacob for Rachel.”11 Love is never spoken of as an abstract idea on its own.
