”Love is the triumph of imagination over intelligence” – H. L. Mencken
 
    “Love is, above all else, the gift of oneself.” – Jean Anouilh
 
    “To love is to receive a glimpse of heaven.” – Karen Sunde
 
    “Love is a snowmobile racing across the tundra and then suddenly it flips over, pinning you underneath. At night, the ice weasels come.” – Matt Groening (creator of The Simpsons and Futurama.)
 
    “I believe love is primarily a choice and only sometimes a feeling. If you want to feel love, choose to love and be patient.” – Real Live Preacher blog (December 16, 2002, reallivepreacher.com)
 
    “Love all, trust a few. Do wrong to none.” – William Shakespeare [1]
 
 

Obviously, as evidenced by the slew of quotations above, there are many different viewpoints on what exactly love is. In my personal opinion I think each idea holds some valid truth — albeit somewhat convoluted or hidden at times. Some hold a cynical view of love (see the Matt Groening quote), yet others hold a blissful view of it (see the Karen Sunde quote), and I am sure that each had their reasons for saying or writing what they did on the subject. This is all beside the point, however. The motive for such quotes is not what I intend to explore, but rather the subject of their pontification. I want to look at what exactly is love.
 
According to the American Heritage dictionary, love is defined as the following:
 
  

  Love, (n.); A deep, tender, ineffable feeling of affection and solicitude toward a person, such as that arising from kinship, recognition of attractive qualities, or a sense of underlying oneness. [2]

 
 From the vantage point of an English professor, this is a good definition for the word “love”. However, I believe the editors of the dictionary have missed the true heart of love. John 15:13 says:
 

    Greater love hath no man than this, that a man lay down his life for his friends. [3]
 

 
From this we see our definitions are at odds with one another, each offering a seemingly valid point of view — but which is the correct one? Can love be just a feeling of kinship or brotherhood, or is it something deeper, something that would drive a man to die — giving up the most precious thing a man can possess, his life — for someone else? How many people do you know would die for a feeling or affection? Could it be that love is not merely a feeling, but an action — a choice — as well? The answer is a resounding “yes”. Love cannot merely be a feeling and still be the cause for all of the successful marriages and whole families. Feelings are transient. Emotion is fleeting. Like plastic, when a relationship built upon nothing but emotion and feeling is put through the fire of adversity, it melts away leaving the empty core of a foundation that never really was. This is the cause of so many families falling apart, marriages failing, and moral shortcomings in the world. Our culture and our media is so fundamentally grounded on the idea that love is a feeling and it is eating away at the core of what family and marriage should be based upon: choices. It’s the Brad Pitts and the Britney Spears and the Alec Baldwin’s and the Madonna’s of the world that promote and pervade their doctrine of “love is a feeling” not by what they say but how they do.
 
Lets talk about Britney for a minute. William Penn once wrote the words, “Never marry but for love; but see that thou lovest what is lovely. [4]” I think we can all honestly say that Britney Spears’ first marriage — which lasted a whopping 55 hours [5] — was not founded on love. Call me judgmental or insensitive, but the facts speak for themselves. Love would never marry and then annul the marriage a little over two days later because, and I quote, she [Ms. Spears]:
 

    …lacked understanding of her actions to the extent that she was incapable of agreeing to marriage because before entering into the marriage the Plaintiff and Defendant did not know each others’ likes and dislikes, each others’ desires to have or not have children, and each other’s desires as to State of residency. [6]
 

How can we call this love? I think the better question is how is any of this anything but insanity? Take a moment to imagine what kind of message this has sent to the public. Could it possibly be something along the lines of, “its alright to start and end relationships based on how you’re feeling at the time”? Oh, God, I hope not — but my hopes on this issue are most likely unfulfilled. This is not love. This is how we show our children what is right and wrong: by letting them look at the idols of today and by letting our children emulate those role models. Regardless if these very public figures want to be or like being role models, they are heroes to the youth of today. The example they set, either intentionally or unintentionally, is followed by teens and children all around the world. But that is not to place all of the blame on them. We as peers and parents have failed them as well. We have been silent on what is right and wrong, what is love and not.
 
So let us show them love.
 
Love is patient. Love is kind. Love is unselfish. Love does not keep track of wrongs. Love is forgiving. Love is good. Love is faithful. Love is appropriate. Love is peaceful. Love is self-controlling. Love is discipline. Love is pain when pain is necessary. Love is kindness. Love is giving. Love is charity.
 
The previous statements are paraphrased or adapted from various places in throughout the Bible, including 1 Corinthians 13 and the fruits of the spirit. All of them are connected in a way. If you look closely, you can find it. Each statement has an implied choice associated with it. Patience is a choice, the choice to wait. Kindness is a choice, the choice to care. Unselfishness is a choice, the choice to put others first. Can you see the pattern developing? Love is not the result of an uncontrollable emotion; or rather, infatuation. Love is a conscious, deliberate attempt to invest in a person: to intentionally impact their life with goodness, mercy, kindness and charity.
 
So how does this translate into “romantic” love? Very simply, actually. “Romantic” love is simply regular phileo (or brotherly) love in combination with the emotion and an intellectual and spiritual bond between the two people. I know, I know; it sounds cold and scientific, but in reality it is a full, fulfilling, overarching and ethereal love. Emotion without connection and action is empty. Such also is connection without action and emotion and vice-versa. When we connect with a person on a intellectual level (or, “like” in the language of today’s youth), we want to show them we “like” them and are interested in getting to know them better (develop the spiritual bond). We do things to show them we care — buy flowers, stay up all night studying with them for their big exam the next day, go out for coffee, write cutesy little notes with dumb poems in them, or whatever it is people do these days. Some of these actions are just nice, like buying flowers and writing little notes, and tend to make people happy. But it is the self-sacrifice of staying up all night studying, or encouraging them when they seem down, or forgive and forget when they offend, and even draw boundaries when necessary. It is these actions that say “I love you” the loudest, much louder than any words could ever be spoken. What you will find is out of this self-sacrifice and elevation of someone else over yourself is the emotion starts to make a re-entry into your life. You find you don’t want to live without the other person, that you want to spend every day of your life with them, and everything else the emotion, the feeling, tells you. But this is different. This is no longer emotion gone wild but rather it is emotion under control. It is emotion with a brain.
 
The heart of real, true love can be summed up in the lines of two songs:
 
“Love is a verb.” – “Luv Is A Verb”, Free At Last, dc Talk; 1992
 
“I would give much more than I would ever ask for.” – “The Hamburg Song”, Under The Iron Sea, Keane; 2006
 
 
 
 
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[1] – All quotations courtesy of QuotationsPage.com; 2008
[2] – The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition; Copyright © 2006 by Houghton Mifflin Company.
[3] – John 15:13, King James Version; 1611
[4] – Courtesy of QuotationsPage.com; 2008
[5] – Associated Press, “Judge Dissolves Britney’s ‘Joke’ Wedding”; Jan 6, 2004 (http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/3869708/)
[6] – The Smoking Gun, “Las Vegas Judge Grants Spears’ Annulment Request”; Jan 5, 2004 (http://www.thesmokinggun.com/archive/britneyannul1.html)