Published on: 12/01/2026
It annoyed me.
It was a long time ago and the school in question was going through tough times, so I was sat with the Headteacher and an advisor. The Head was new, and as is common in this Diocese, one early step in leading a Church school was to set forth a clear and distinctive Christian vision for the school.
So as is often the case when working through this I was asking her team questions about what made the school tick. What motivated them. What made education the thing they believed in.
They’d come up with ‘Learning’ and ‘Achievement’ as well as ‘Respect’ but these were not enough for this Head, who spoke with a deep compassion of some of the tough lives children in that community faced, her own experience as a child at school, and then she alighted on the word that summed up her job:
“Love!” she said. “We love them. That’s top of the list.”
It was the advisor who bristled: “You can’t say that, though.”
She pushed back: “Why not?”
and he blustered a little and then said the word aloud in a cheesy, sappy, slushy song style: “Luuurrvvve.”
At the time it was moderately funny – but she stuck to her guns.
He stuck to what became the annoying joke, repeating the word in the same voice every time it was used, displaying, not a joke, but a discomfort.
It’s a basic tenet of Christian faith that “God is love” and when asked which was the greatest commandment, Jesus responded: ‘You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your might’ and ‘You shall love your neighbour as yourself’ (Matthew 7:12, 22:36-40; Luke 10:27)
Yet, admittedly, there is an issue with the use of that word in public service, but that is primarily because it has become over-defined by one strand of its meaning – a bit like trying top define the whole United Kingdom by saying “It’s like Cornwall.”
Some pop songs give advice that you can’t hurry it, others want to know what it’s got to do with it and at least one wants to know what it is in the first place.
For one generation it will immediately mean a Beatles anthem, another will actually think about Hugh Grant and the arrivals lounge at Heathrow Airport (admit it, that crossed your mind).
In the 70s there was a popular strapline for a dreary film: “Love means never having to say you’re sorry.” (This is clearly nonsense – if love somehow negates having to apologise then, given my general need to apologise about as regularly as time itself – I clearly have lived a wholly loveless life.)
In so many attempts to give the word meaning romantic love dominates – but we also use it quickly and maybe even flippantly. As some of you will know “I love ‘Eastenders’!”
How do we account for a word that carries so much power and yet it’s use can be so steered in one direction.
In his ‘Summa Theologiae’ (1.20) Thomas Aquinas explores the nature of love, defining it as wishing a person good. It’s got those two strands: the wishing of good and the person to whom one wishes it: “to love a person is to wish that person good.” Aquinas observes this can include the healthy love of self, but is also seen in the wishing of good for another. When doing this Aquinas observes, I put the other in the place of myself, but also that I see the good that is done as somehow done to myself.
“So far love is a binding force, since it aggregates another to ourselves, and refers (their) good to our own.”
That, to me, is what I see it meaning in our schools.
It’s educational practitioners wishing the good – the best – for others.
The Church of England’s Vision for Education recognises that “Jesus and the love he embodies are at the heart of our faith” (p.10)
Though it’s interesting to note that quote above: when Jesus was asked which was the greatest commandment he disobeyed the questioner and refused to split love of God for love of one another.
As the Church of England Vision acknowledges: “Living before God and living with and for others go together in Jesus. He embodies the centrality of relationships in love, compassion, generosity, truth-telling, forgiveness, and gathering a community.” (p.11)
And those of you who expected another four letter word? You know what you can do!
Huw Thomas
Diocesan Director of Education
huw.thomas@sheffield.angllican.org