Is Love a Feeling or A Decision?
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Dear Brides:
I’ve been talking to a couple concerning their upcoming wedding in July and asked them a question. “Is love a feeling or a decision?”
How would you answer this question?
It was June 1967—still early in the so-called “summer of love” when the Beatles unveiled their new song “All You Need Is Love” to the audience of four hundred million people in twenty-five countries as part of the world’s first live global television event.
The Beatles wanted to do more than sing a pretty song. They wanted to make a statement and possibly change the world. But as Christian rocker Larry Norman would later observe: “The Beatles said, ‘all you need is love’, and then they broke up.”
What is love?
Your answer depends on where you look. When you answer the question with pop songs and love poetry, feelings and chemistry reign supreme.
Others insist love is more of a decision than chemistry. Erich Fromm promoted the idea in his 1956 book, The Art of Loving.*
“Love is a decision, it is a judgment, it is a promise. If love were only a feeling, there would be no basis for the promise to love each other forever. A feeling comes and it may go. How can I judge that it will stay forever, when my act does not involve judgment and decision?”
My answer: love is a decision you make and continue to make to create an experience described as love. Love is something you feel and something you do as a decision.
Yes, love is a feeling, perhaps one of the most powerful and enjoyable feelings we can experience. Love is such a powerful feeling, it impacts all the other feelings we have. When you feel loved, your whole world looks better.
Feelings are essential to love, but feelings alone aren’t strong enough to sustain a healthy and stable marriage through the many challenges of life.
Many people think love is something that happens between two people, but that’s only part of the story. Love is a much bigger story. It’s an older story too. In fact, love existed before people did, before God created the world.
Christians have a unique opportunity to experience love because they are connected to the primary source. God is the creator of love and God is love.
John was the disciple of love. He wrote frequently about the subject and was described as, the disciple Jesus loved in John 13:23. In his first epistle, John explains that love is the foundation of our relationship with God.
“Beloved, let us love one another, for love is from God, and whoever loves has been born of God and knows God”
1 John 4:7 ESV.
According to the Bible, love is more than a feeling or a decision. It’s a free-flowing gift you can only receive and give.
It starts when you open your heart to God and accept his love. It continues when you open your heart to the people around you and let that divine love flow through you to them.
Thus, when you really love someone, it’s not your love you feel and share, but it’s God’s love.
Fifty years ago, my wife and I opened our hearts to God and received his unconditional love. When we did that, even though we didn’t realize it at the time, we could “really” start loving each other and the people around us. Marriages based on this foundation can grow and flourish, because this is how God designed it to work.
The bottom line is: when we open our hearts to God, we open our hearts to real love. This is my hope for each of you as you grow in his love.
Until next time,
Farmer D
* Erich Fromm. The Art of Loving (Harper & Brothers, 1956).
Featured Image by Roberto Nickson