Until recently, I have struggled with the idea of love. I failed to believe that love could truly exist
between two humans. To tell another person that I loved them felt like a lie in my heart. Since I did not
believe that I could hold such feelings for another, I would try to avoid saying it because if it was not true
in my heart, then how could I say it without remorse? This doubt of love was formed through my
understanding of God. Now you may wonder, how could God inspire someone to not believe in love, but
I do feel that it honestly makes sense. From here, I’ll split this into why I couldn’t love and how I can now
love.

Why I Couldn’t Love.

     First of all, I feel we need to define what is love. Well if you look it up in a dictionary, you’d most likely
find something like the following:

“love |ləv| noun 1 an intense feeling of deep affection”

Okay, so love is an intense feeling of affection. That doesn’t say much unless we understand what
affection means. Well, this give the dictionary another shot.

“affection |əˈfek sh ən| noun 1 a gentle feeling of fondness or liking”

To feel affection is to feel a fondness of someone or something. Well, what is fondness?

“fond |fänd| adjective [ predic. ] having an affection or liking for”

Now we are back at affection. As we can see, words fail to describe love because it is not a tangible
object or a visual idea. We can’t draw love. We can’t honestly portray love. The closest we get to love is
to evoke similar emotions and thoughts that are connected with our own personal definition of love.
Therefore, when these triggers are set off, we begin to feel the emotions that we tie back to what we
consider to be love. If this is what we call love, then this is an idea that we have personally created, but
this presents a few problems for a believer in a God that loves. 

     Problem 1: If all things are created by God, then love is God’s creation as well. Taking in all other
intangible feelings such as fear, sadness, bliss, and etc., we find that these are all emotions we know
well, and these are not emotions easily mistaken for others. For example, when we are angry with
something, we don’t ever doubt whether or not we are angry about it. This is an emotion/feeling of
which we have a good understanding. Anger is a God-given emotion just as love, but we still fail to truly
grasp whether or not we do love.

      Solution 1: Since we struggle with identifying love, it is obvious that there is a vagueness about it.
This vagueness is due to a lack of understanding of love, but how can we attempt to define such an idea
that we can’t even identify with certainty? Therefore, we need a canon for love. Since we have a God
that loves, it is obvious that we can use His love for us to gain an better understanding, but this seems to
create some controversy.
      The Controversy: Sure, we can use the idea of God’s love to make an attempt to gain a better
understanding of love, but this is to say that we have the capability to grasp such an idea. To say we
understand His love for us is to say that we could do the same because what would keep us from loving
another in the same way He loves if we truly understood it. Think of it this way. If we attended a class on
how to assemble a bicycle, it would seem reasonable to say that we could build the bicycle with little
difficulty after the class. I know that this is a bit of a stretch, but does it not make sense? Most things we
understand, we can at the very least explain the details of the matter. So I challenge you to define love
for yourself. Now, compare your definition of love to God’s love and see if you feel it is adequate.
Honestly, I feel that most of us would find that we fail to reach a satisfactory definition. For example, we
might define God’s love as the following definition:

God’s love is a love that is unconditional, undying, and without limits.

We obviously have placed conditions on love, and to say that humans love differently than God is to say
that there are levels of love. This would ultimately ruin the idea of it. What would be the worth in
another’s love if it were simply based on levels? A change in conditions might easily change how much
one truly cares for another. This then perverts the idea. If God’s love is truly unconditional and undying,
how can we honestly call our feelings for another love when we are so easily persuaded to different
feelings?

How I can now love.

I am honestly unsure how I had carried on with the perception of love I just explained without seeing
the lesson within it. It wasn’t until I had a conversation with my close friend that I realized how lost I had
become in this idea. He had told me a few weeks before that he was having trouble in his relationship
with is girlfriend, and I finally thought to ask him how they were holding up. He essentially told me that
they had decided to work on things, but they wanted to focus more on their relationship with God in
hopes that it might ease some of the problems. 

I’m not sure why, but at this point, it all clicked. For nearly two years, I had basically discounted the
possibility of true love between two people, but I had apparently not even listened to my own words. So
here’s an explanation:

     If it is God’s love that is the only true and pure love, then it would almost seem impossible for us to
attempt to mimic it. To say that we are capable of loving another as God loves would obviously be an
overstatement because we are most definitely conditional beings and therefore, no one person loves
another with complete unconditional love. So do I believe that humans are completely incapable of
love? Well, I’m not quite sure, but I do feel that it is obviously clear that we can not love without an
understanding of God’s love for us. Therefore, I’ll end this drawn out explanation with this theory.

—-The extent to which we can love another is solely based on the extent to which we understand God’s
love for us. The more we explore and develop in our relationship with Him, the more we will experience
His love. As we experience His love, we will gain a greater understanding of love, and we, ourselves, will
be able to bring ourselves to the closest form of love we are capable. Although, this love is fragile, and
as we separate relationships from the principles of God’s love, we invite conditions into our
relationships and friendships that will ultimately separate ourselves from the model of God’s love.

If you were curious, I used the word “love” 63 times, but I’m not willing to go back and replace half of
them with thesaurus approved alternate words.