What is Love?

What is love?

Is it that sickly sweet, sappy behavior found in young couples? Is it what makes a gentle kiss from husband to wife on their 50th anniversary so touching? Is it something else entirely?

“I love you.”

What does that even mean? Who says that with full knowledge and understanding of what they’re actually saying? What man knows what it means to love a woman? What woman knows what it means to love a man? How can one accomplish such while still putting God first?

To me, it seems impossible. The fact that there are people who don’t believe in love is no longer a shocking idea to me; in fact, I’m rather inclined to their point of view, not because I don’t want to believe in love, but because the ability to recognize what real love is has become increasingly more difficult to learn over the years. The older I get, the closer I get to what America has deemed the “marrying age,” the less I seem to understand about love. If it weren’t for all those years watching what my parents struggled through together, if it weren’t for all those heartbreaking times when I watched the face of the spouse when their husband or wife passed away, if it weren’t for the way I witnessed my grandfather kiss my grandmother so sweetly last summer and had that in mind as I had to watch him cope with her death…I would never believe in love. Basically, if I hadn’t witnessed it, I wouldn’t believe it.

If I asked the question, what is love, to most of my friends, the spiritual ones would refer me to I Corinthians 13, the love chapter. Love is patient, love is kind, et cetera. I understand that, but these are listing the qualities love includes. When one loves, they are patient, kind, et cetera. How does one come to love, though? How do you know when you love someone? It’s easy when it’s someone like a friend, a best friend, family. You have the warm feeling of affection, the rush of joy upon seeing their face. You’re comfortable around them; it doesn’t bother you when they invade your personal space. You learn to read them, you learn to understand them just as they learn to do the same of you. And somewhere in the middle of it all, love happens. It’s easy when it’s friends and family. What happens then, when you “fall in love”?

Where is that distinction in the Bible, friends? What tells you you’re “in love”? What about all those other stupid things that get in the way, like hormones, that thing called infatuation, desire, lust? How do you build a relationship with someone without those? Without them, it’s hardly a romantic relationship. With them, it’s hard to tell the difference between sexual desire and love, especially when you don't have a clue what love is. So what the heck are we supposed to do? People have all kinds of stupid ideas about this, ranging from abstinence and celibacy to cohabitation and sex outside of marriage.

There are other stories in the Bible, stories about God’s plans that genuinely make me wonder. What if Leah had dreams? Maybe Leah grew up wanting a tall man to come to her father’s tent and fall madly in love with her, who was willing to work for years for her hand in marriage, a man of God, a man who loved God and her. Instead, she gets to watch her dreams pass on to her younger sister. As if that’s not bad enough, after she watches Jacob work seven long years for Rachel’s hand, her father throws her in a tent with him, calling it a marriage. What? Screwed over from day one of marriage. Where’s the justice in that, God? So He blessed her with many sons. “Surely my husband will love me now,” Leah tells herself. I can imagine her grasping to that small hope. “Surely,” she says. “Surely, my husband will love me now.” Can you imagine her, rocking herself to sleep, wiping away the tears because she was given to a man who was in love with her sister? Did he ever love her? No. He always put Rachel above her. Crummy man. Cruel father. Inexplicable God.

God is love. That’s the other thing they want to tell me. Yes, but no one seems to be able to clearly explain God and sex except Paul, who says very vaguely, “Get married if you want to have sex, but I personally don’t understand why you’d want to.” Great. We’re being led by a guy who doesn’t believe in marriage. The idea that God is enough makes sense, but the idea that he gave us a sex drive and wants us to ignore it doesn’t. Evidently, I wasn’t made to endure celibacy.

So what is love? People say all kinds of things that can either be profound or cheesy or silly or smart, but in the end everyone seems to have their own answer. Is love like a quest, where you search for it all your life? Some die trying, some die without trying, some stumble upon it unexpectedly, some cultivate it…but what in the world IS love? How do you attain such an inexplicable thing? How do you define something with so many facets, so many different uses and functions?

It’s something that you just can’t mess up on. As a Christian, you’re expected to know the difference, because you’re expected to marry the right person, expected not to divorce, expected to live in a cute little cottage serving God and raising your three kids in the LORD…it’s all some sort of stupid vision they put in front of you and say “achieve this, or you’re not really a Christian, and you’re not really in touch with God.” It’s like the most horribly put together test in the history of time. You don’t really get to retake this one if you fail, kiddo. You’re marked for life. So what now? Do I just wait for God to throw some boy at me and say “He’s the one”? If I do wait, will He do that? Will it be that obvious? Or will it take a lot of work to realize it?

Does anyone have an answer?

They say God does…
But is He going to share it?

So...what is love?

[Written December 2009]