What is Love?

A few weeks ago many of us celebrated love. I would like to take the time to reflect on what love is with you. Love is more then just between a Husband & Wife or any couple. There are so many ways to love, and you can love people other than just your spouse or lover. You can love your children, Family & pets. There are ways to love your neighbor, friends and even strangers.

 We tend to have this very limited idea of what “love” is. These ideas are engrained into us from whatever culture and society we are primarily exposed to in our lives. If you think about it nothing says “I love you” like having to have the pressure of a date on the calendar. When a “holiday” convinces you to show “love” for the people in your life by putting the expectations of getting them a gift just because of the day it is. This is not “love”, but culturally it is what has become known as love. This “day” has become the expectation and part of what our culture sets as the “standard” for love. Just as there is this expectation of what a lot of people expect in a engagement ring, proposal or wedding. If these materialistic expectations aren’t met, then culturally we have been trained to typically reject the emotions of affection being shown as “true love”. This “love “holiday and other holidays in addition to cultural expectations affect so many people, couples and loved ones around the globe every year. Those who can’t afford gifts for their loved ones, with the non-receivers feeling disappointment. Those who don’t have any loved one to get them a gift end up feeling sad and left out. Those receivers who get a gift but it’s not the “right gift”. Those who know that they are only getting a gift because it’s “that day”, knowing the gift is not actually from the heart. There are endless reasons ,that this holiday has both positive and negative effects on people and businesses worldwide. Yet every year most of us fall for this holiday trap in addition to the other cultural traps and expectations of what love it. I think it’s very important to break down what love really is and pull up the roots to examine it. We can’t love if we ourselves don’t truly know what love is, and this is just a start to helping with that.

        When we read the definition of love it is quite simple saying something along the lines of; a feeling of attachment, commitment, strong affection of pleasure in someone or something. This is such a Vague and simple definition. This doesn’t show the true depth of love. It explains why we get so confused and misled to believe what love is. I would like to dive deeper into the true meaning of love with you from both a realistic lifestyle standpoint and from a biblical perspective.  Even if you are not a believer in Christ, I truly hope you stick with me to read my thoughts and explore your own heart for what your beliefs are.

If we take love in general and break it down into a more descriptive and specific definition, we will find that there are many other things that play a part in what true love is, no matter who or what you love. True love is without a doubt unconditional. Do we truly understand what unconditional means? Unconditional= NOT conditional. Conditional is something that means that there are “conditions” or requirement(s) that must be fulfilled or met. This roughly means there’s this sort of contract or list and if all the boxes aren’t checked off then you must not love me. True love is not this, true love is not conditional. Yet somehow we fall for the cultural trap that if someone loves you or you love someone you need to get them a valentine’s gift. Then if someone doesn’t get you a gift you go to assume they don’t love you. This is not unconditional love. Expecting a certain size or type of engagement ring for you to be willing to say “yes” to that suitor is not unconditional love. Only being willing to get married if you can have the “perfect” wedding of your dream, this is NOT unconditional love. Only loving someone if they love your back, is not unconditional. The things previously listed are conditional love meaning you’re only willing to love if you get something back. This is not how we really want to experience love as this facade. This does not mean you should not put thought and effort into gifts for those you love or planning a special wedding or engagement. It just means that is shouldn’t be what is expected for something to be considered love. That love shouldn’t be bought it should be grown.  Statistically those who spend more money on weddings are more likely to get divorced than those who spend less money on weddings. This statistic alone shows that “love” is not a dollar amount, the right gift, the “perfect” wedding or engagement ring. Love is an unconditional devotion and commitment to someone. Which leads us to explore what devotion and commitment are.

Devotion is a commitment or loyalty to someone or something. You can consider yourself to be devoted to your church, work, family and more. When we get married, we make a commitment to stay married, forever. Essentially that is what the purpose of a wedding is. To symbolize & promise your eternal commitment, love and devotion to each other. A wedding would not be the same if the vows were “I will love you until I get tired, bored or frustrated with you, and then I want a divorce”.  That would not be the same. We see divorce rates are at a high. That statistic shows how as a culture and a community, we seem to have lost the concept of what true love really is and what the commitment of marriage truly means.

  Take the time to watch most romance movies and you will get an idea of what the standard culture expectation is for relationships at this time. They seem to have a similar story line where a girl is dating or engaged to a guy and he’s just not “treating her right” then “Mr. right” happens to come along right before the wedding or engagement and swoops her off her feet. They fall madly in love and the new couple gets engaged or married right before the end of the movie where it cuts off and leaves the rest of the story untold. The rest of the story likely being just a start to a new romance movie where the even newer “Mr. Right” comes in and seeps her off her feet from this old “Mr. right” not being so right anymore. This pattern is not just in movies, we are seeing it play out in real life. This pattern is causing both men and women to lose sight of the hope and meaning that a real marriage gives us. When we watch these stories unfold, missing the best part. The best part is the untold story…this is where you get to see true love play out. This is what we truly long for. Like when you see that older couple in their 80s or more still madly in love holding hands on a morning walk together and you sigh and go “that’s what I want”, “how can I have that?”. We don’t get that if we give up before we even get there. It takes hard work, a commitment to our vows, to each other and the willingness to stick it out through the hard parts. The willingness to learn and grow from our experience both good and bad as a couple. Only then can we get to the other side together, still together and even more in love.

So many of us seem to cut out just shortly after the honeymoon phase in our relationship(s) before we even have gotten to the best part. It seems statistically as years go by the divorce rates go up and there are less of these “experienced” couples that have been married for years to give advice and direction to these younger couples that have been together much less time. This does not aid in stopping this cycle of divorce that our world seems to be heading down more and more. Does this really hold true to the promise of commitment that we make in our vows? Do we even fully understand what an unconditional commitment to someone even is? NOT conditional means that even when he leaves his dirty laundry on the ground, you’re not going to love him any less. NOT conditional means that even when your child doesn’t do something up to your expectations or they make a “big” mistake you still love them. There are relationships where a spouse has had an affair, and the couple gets through it and their relationship turns out to be even better. Those couples used the mistakes made to learn lessons, they admit their faults, take responsibility, and hold boundaries allowing them to move forward towards a better life together. It seems like people have gotten not holding boundaries and unconditional love confused. Which allowed the cycle of abuse to hurt so many relationships. In turn this damaged our world’s trust in relationships and has resulted in fear of how people handle issues in their marriages. You can still hold boundaries and love unconditionally. God has boundaries that he holds with us. Yet he still loves us unconditionally. Unconditional just means that Your love is not dependent on their love back to you or how or what someone does. This doesn’t mean that you love someone and let them hurt you and walk all over you. God loves us even when we sin…no matter how big or “bad” the sin is. In fact, the bible even sates that ALL SIN IS CREATED EQUAL. Did you read that right ALL SIN IS CREATED EQUAL. Which means that everyone of us is considered equal in Gods eyes! From the murdered to the straight A perfectionist student. Not one of us is without sin. We all are full of sin and even though some of us have sinned less than others, God loves us all. Even though God loves us unconditionally he still allows us to have consequences for our sins. We can love and still protect ourselves. Love is a emotion, commitment ,devotion and it is unconditional. Love does not mean we are allowing ourselves to be hurt, abused or treated in any way the bible would not support. God is all about love and if you question if something it love refer back to it for guidance. If we love unconditionally, it would be to love in a selfless way. For someone else to love us they must also love in a selfless way, which protects you from confusing abuse as love and allows you to hold boundaries to protect yourselves. Love each other as you would want to be loved.

If we go through the bible Corinthians 13 stands out to me. Here is a list of things that are a requirement for something to be considered love. Patience & Kindness are listed here. Just as God is patient with us, he expects us to be patient with each other.  We all have our own journeys and are all growing and learning every day. It takes a lifetime to become the people God wants us to be. Just as we need to learn to give ourselves grace as we learn and grow to become better people, as God does. We need to give those that we love the same grace while they learn and grow. We must balance this again with boundaries. Kindness is another thing we struggle with as a entire human race. Bullying is common in both childhood and adulthood. There are constant judgments against each other and each other’s circumstances. Even the rich judge the poor and the poor judge the rich. We look at each other from the outside and pick each other apart. Yet we don’t really know each other’s hearts and true selves the way God does. When someone points out your mistakes are you not so quick to defend your actions? Those who judge you do not know your heart and reasonings. You do not know there’s either. Be kind, do not be so quick to judge. Be patient with people. Be kind to others you don’t know and those you think you are. If we can learn to be kind to others we can learn to love even those who are strangers.

How do I love a stranger? This might be what you’re wondering right now. It’s not as complicated as you might think. When you see someone, you have an opportunity to judge the situation you’re exposed to, or you have a chance to embrace and accept that you don’t know enough to judge them. No matter how well you think you know someone you never fully will.  So, although we are human and as we discuss we are never without sin. We can admit it’s almost impossible to not judge , even if so subconsciously. We still have the power to train our brains in how we respond to our subconscious judgments. The choice is up to us how we handle things from there. When we see a stranger acting unusual or in a way we might judge them we can choose to let our judgments stop us from loving them or we can choose to show acts of love. There are many ways to do this. The homeless people you see on your morning walk, you can choose to stick your nose up at them or ignore them. Or you can choose to reach out to them with kindness and great them just like you would any other person you pass by. Jesus didn’t just hang out with only those who thought themselves to be “perfect”. Jesus spent time with sinners, prostitutes, tax collectors. Again you can hold boundaries and protect yourself but you can still show love even to strangers. Showing the person crying in public affection instead of judgment this is love. When the person ahead of you is paying out the checkout and card gets declined you can choose to show frustration and get annoyed because its “taking so long” or you can offer to pay their bill if you feel it on your heart to do so or simply give them the privacy they deserves to deal with a difficult situation. You can choose to judge them for there financial situation or you can choose to show them grace and understanding that you don’t know there situation. If you see someone with a broken down can in the parking lot you can choose to ignore it because your time is valuable and get on with your day.  You could also make the choice to  stop and offer help. How you choose to live your life everyday from the little things to the biggest things all have a opportunity to reflect love. This world is so full of hate and hurt wouldn’t it be great if we all took as many little opportunities to add even just a little more love back into it. This is what Jesus would want us to do. Everything he did was done in love. He would want us to understand what true love is and be willing to do the same things.

There is so much more depth we could cover about what true love really is. I am going to leave it with you from here. I hope that I have brought some new perspectives to you today and that I have opened your heart to new ideas. I pray that you search your own heart for what you believe. That you choose how to move forward with your life and each day in love. I pray that you choose to allow love to shine from you in many ways and that you allow yourself to both fully accept and fully express true love. Know that you are loved by God and so many others. Let your love be shared with the world.  

Blessings,

Acacia McLean

February 28th, 2024