If…we had to express in a sentence the meaning of human love as a reflection of and response to God’ sown love, it would be hard to do better than the formula of Josef Pieper: Love is a way of saying to another, ‘It’s good that you exist, it’s good that you are in this world!’
-Gilbert Meilaender , Bioethics: A Primer for Christians, 2nd ed., p. 48.
I actually do not agree that this is the best one sentence idea of love. But I certainly think it is a part of what love is, and a quote worth remembering. I can be happy and thankful for the existence of many things or persons without truly loving them. I am happy for the existence of the people who provide me with clean water every day, but that does not mean that I love them. I am thankful for their service but apathetic toward them personally. I am glad that they exist but might be hesitant to lay my life down for them (that’s a flaw in me, I know that). Yet I certainly will not love them if I do not think that it is good that they exist. It is good, then, I think, to ask yourself this question about the people you interact with daily: Am I glad that this person exists?
In other words, I do not think that you necessarily love someone, or some thing, if you are glad that he, she, or it exists. But I also think that you cannot love a person or thing without being glad that he, she, or it, exists. And so the idea can become one test to the legitimacy of love.
So, ask yourself this about that co-worker who gets on your nerves, or that estranged family member, or that unborn child (the context in which Meilaender uses the quote): Are you glad that they exist? If you are, then it may not mean that you love them. But if you’re not, then you certainly don’t.
