Love is a Behavior

You shall love the LORD your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your might. Deuteronomy 6:5

In 25 years of marriage, my understanding of love has radically changed. When we first dated, I was infatuated with my wife. I had an intense emotional attachment – a passionate feeling – that I knew would never fade. I couldn’t imagine ever having conflict and I certainly couldn’t believe that I’d one day betray her love by choosing drugs over her. Yet, I eventually did just that. In my addiction and subsequent recovery, I learned that love isn’t simply an emotion. This emotion of love did my wife little good when I sacrificed her for my drugs. I may have still felt that I loved her, but she certainly didn’t feel that way. In recovery, my wife needed to perceive love through my behavior. My love had to move beyond emotion to become an action. This meant that, if my love was real, my behavior had to be governed by it. I had to learn how she received love, and I had to act in such a way that my behavior communicated that love to her. She can’t feel my emotions, and words – I love you – are empty, if my behavior doesn’t reflect love.

This has helped me understand today’s passage. In it, Moses delivered the greatest commandment – That God’s people were to love him with all their heart, soul, and might. I grew up knowing this commandment, but just like with my love for my wife, my concept of love for God was lacking. Understanding love to simply be an emotion, I tried to make myself feel something, but I love God just didn’t mean much to me as I thought love was only an intense emotion.

In my addiction and subsequent recovery, I didn’t worry so much about the intense emotion. If you love me, you will keep my commandments (John 14:15). I began to work on simply making my behavior look as if I loved God. I recognized that in my addiction, I loved myself above all, and my behavior followed, leading me to calamity. In recovery, I recognized my need to behave in an opposite manner, even if I didn’t feel like it. I had to act as though I loved God – following his will above my own. In doing so, he transformed my life, saving me from myself.

I’m not saying love doesn’t involve emotion. I now have an intense feeling of love for both my wife and God. Authentic love though, isn’t only emotion. It’s also a behavior. In both marriage and faith, I don’t always feel like doing the things that communicate love. That is when I must choose love, purposefully doing the loving thing. Doing only what I feel like doing is simply love for myself.