What is Love?

What is love? This may be one of the most important questions in life. And one of the most incorrectly answered ones.

Perhaps you “fell in love.”

Maybe you “love pizza.”

Or someone told you “I’ll love you forever,” and then later said, “I don’t love you anymore.”

You may have seen “Choose Love” on the back of an NFL helmet or in the end zone at a football game.

So, what kind of love matters the most, since we obviously overuse the word. Why is it that some people do find love for a lifetime, while others find love continually elusive?

Just One Word?

Yes, if we want to know what is love, then we need to admit that our English language is lacking.

We throw the word love around to carelessly. Our media portrays what it calls “love” in some very stupid ways.

Consider the following.

In a typical movie, a very handsome young man and a captivatingly beautiful young woman meet.

Their eyes meet, there is something magical.

Then they find out that they have so much in common.

They “fall” in love. There is romantic music, flowers around, and passionate lovemaking.

Promises of “loving you forever” drip from their lips.

We find ourselves moved internally. There is something about this that we really want.

Except, we need to think long. We need to observe reality and think through this presentation that is supposed to be love.

That Middle-aged Dumpy-looking Couple

Let us pull away from the glamorous couple on the screen and look at that dumpy looking couple across the aisle from you in Walmart.

Understand that just a few years, they looked quite a bit different.

She may have been rated as “hot,” glamorous, and gorgeous. Now, a few years down the road, she’s had a couple of kids, works in a cubicle, and sits on her butt (like most of us) nearly all day.

She has fatigue on her face and some hard-earned wrinkles from the long days of stressful work.

Look at the dude. He has a gut on him, a one-pack ab (maybe two if his belt is tight). His hair has receded and is showing grey. His clothes don’t fit too well, nor would he want them to-he has nothing he really wants to show to the world.

What is Love? Watch This…

As you are watching the “dumpy couple” in their fifteenth year of marriage you see something.

Their eyes meet, and there is a sweet smile.

They walk past the flowers, and he scoops up a small bundle and puts it in the cart.

She protests. “No, don’t do that, I know you love me!”

“I know you know, but you are worth it!”

Think deeply about the contrast between the screen “love” and this dumpy “love.”

Some Wisdom on Love

I’m not knocking the love that media portrays, at least not entirely.

But back to the idea that we need to “think long.”

Thinking long is a pretty good descriptor of becoming wise.

While the attraction based on beauty and raw sexuality is super-exciting and desirable, if you think long, is it really sustainable.

First of all, there is a chemical process that your Creator gifted to you. He put some amazing things like oxytocin, vasopressin, and dopamine in your body (among others) that cause us to have great feelings of attraction and excitement.

Are those feelings love?

According to the media producers, apparently.

But in reality, no. They aren’t bad, but just because you are experiencing them doesn’t mean that you are in love!

These chemicals are pretty basic, and many a happily married person has felt them for other people and not the person they were married to.

Does that mean they are married to the wrong person?

What is Love? It is Not Brain Chemicals…

Understand the feeling of love is not actually something that will last.

Those who study the physiology of this chemical process of attraction actually came up with a name for chemical “whoosh” you get from basic adoration of another: limerence.

Limerance is an answer to what we noted at the beginning of the post; we only have one word for love–and that is unfortunate.

The sometimes indiscriminate chemical response we can have toward another does not last.

It can last anywhere from six-months to two-years. Limerance may come and go during a long-term relationship.

So if we believe that we can fall in love but that feeling that we are told is love will go away after a time–where is the love headed?

How to Understand Limerance

Why did our God create us with this limerence capability? Was he being cruel? Was he leading us into one short-term relationship and painful breakup after another?

No.

But you see, your loving Father (the Creator) intended for you to live and think deeply. In the Bible, there is wisdom literature. He invites us to not just be animals, but to live in the Spirit.

Because you are a spiritual being.

In fact, you are an embodied spiritual being.

The Hebrew term for this is nephesh. This term is best understood as the essence of who you are while on earth.

We are a combination of flesh and spirit. That is not a bad thing, but it requires wisdom to know how to handle those powerful chemical feelings we are told are love.

Wisdom on What is Love?

The Apostle Paul notes the importance of looking past just the flesh and instead thinking toward the spirit nature. He says:

To set the mind on the flesh is death, but to set the mind on the Spirit is life and peace. (Rom. 8:6)

If you have gone through a cycle of false “love” based on feelings and the requisite pain of the ending of that chemical phase (maybe more than once?) then you understand that feeling of death Paul speaks of.

Are you ready for life and peace?

What is the thinking long (wisdom) on what is love?

Your Creator left no doubt as to what love is. He, the Father, sent his Son to live it. Jesus’ good friend John the Apostle put it this way:

By this we know love, that he [Jesus] laid down his life for us. (1 Jn. 3:16)

Yes, Jesus died on the cross. That was laying down his life for us.

But it was (and is) much more than that…

Choosing to Love

This totally applies to any couple who wants love for a lifetime. What Jesus did is something we all can do, every day, and in every way.

Not necessarily the part about giving up your life on a cross.

But laying down your life in love…

This is deep.

Jesus actually has the name Joshua if we were to translate his name accurately into English. That name is a common Hebrew name but very powerful in its meaning, which is salvation.

The only reason I mention Yeshua is that in his society he would have just been an ordinary guy. “…He had no form or majesty that we should look at him, and no beauty that we should desire him…” notes Isaiah the prophet (Is. 53:2).

Yet in spite of all appearance, Jesus (Yeshua) chose to obey the Father and although he was royalty, he came to live in a nowhere town as a nobody.