This article describes one of many techniques developed by Adventures in Spiritual Living to encourage and support personal spiritual experience. It can be used by individuals or enjoyed as a group activity and sharing.
Description
Love is the most powerful force in the entire universe. It transforms both the lover and the one who is loved. And it draws the one who loves closer to his or her inner spirit. The type of love I am talking about is the desire to do good to others. It is most like the love very good parents have for their children. It is warm, nurturing, constant, reliable, and given even when not earned and undeserved. So that is the starting place – our loving attitude toward others.
Distinguishing Levels of Love
Just for the sake of contrast, let’s look briefly at a lack of love. A lack of love might take the form of a desire to do harm to others. That would seem to be the most extreme unloving attitude. Then there is the desire to use others for our own benefit, selfishness. Another unloving attitude is indifference toward others, self-centeredness.
Crossing over into the realm of love. We are moving closer to real love when we have a desire for good things to happen to others… if it doesn’t interfere with our self-interests. Even closer we find the desire to do good to others…if it doesn’t cost us too much in time, effort, etc. Of course, we might achieve love in particular defined areas. For example, the desire to do good to our own family. And finally, we arrive at real love: the desire to do good to others, unqualified by self-protective phrases or boundaries.
The object of studying love languages is to learn how to express love to others so that the message is understood.
Recognizing Self-centeredness
Let’s create an imaginary spiritual love meter. Imagine a horizontal line. On the left are the words ”Love as Jesus Loved.” On the right are the words “Self-Centered”. This line can be used to represent in a very general way where someone is at any one moment in relation to the goal of loving without conditions. We can look at an everyday, ordinary example of self-centeredness.
Let’s imagine that one day I start out with lots to do and too little time to do it. I go to order a box of business cards at a print shop. The clerk is meticulously recording someone else’s order. I get anxious. If she doesn’t get through with them soon, I will be late for my appointment.
At last, she comes my way. She greets me courteously. I ignore her greeting and rush to tell her what I want. She has to show me every design in the book. I explain through gritted teeth that I just want the basic card. She carefully looks up the production schedule so she can tell me when the cards will be in. I’m making short, tense replies, hoping she will work faster. Finally, she finishes and I bolt for the door, leaving her, “Have a nice day” hanging in the empty air.
I have spent the entire time without a single thought about wanting to do good to that salesclerk. I am not on the love end of the spectrum — which is where I sincerely want to be. I am not thinking of her as a person at all, but as a means to my end. I want her to be useful to me and to do it on my timetable.
Seeing What Might Have Been
You may have noticed that the clerk was courteous, careful, accurate, and responsible. I didn’t consider for a moment that her motive was to give me excellent service. If I had looked for her motive, I might have developed tolerance for her slowness. Before I left, we might have enjoyed a few moments of friendship. I might even have felt love for her and given her a warm “thank you” for her service.
“Loving humanity” has to happen when we are living our rushed, daily lives. It cannot be reserved for when we have plenty of time. Loving humankind cannot depend on how we are feeling at the time and it is not limited to our friends and family.
Hopefully this example makes a bit more concrete the idea of “loving people” and sincerely desiring to serve their needs such as courtesy, respect, self-worth, kindness, consideration, empathy, and more. My behavior was even worse because these gifts of love would cost me so little. When you can be friendly for free, it is shameful not to do it.
Loving Leads to Serving
We are asked to love human beings and to serve them. Let’s move from the loving part to the serving part. Serving others is love in action when it is done from the sincere concern for the other’s needs. Service is an action expression of love.
When you express your ideas aloud, you use a spoken language. When you express your desire to do good to others by acting, you use a “love language.” I’m going to focus on five different love languages, but there are many others. These five are very basic love languages. Many people learn to use them as children, so you may be familiar with these five love languages: Quality Time, Affectionate Touch, Affirming Words, Acts of Kindness, and Gifts. I’ll give you a brief example of each language.
Acts of Kindness
Let’s start with an easy one. It’s fairly transparent to see that when an adult child takes his aging parent to run an errand, it is an act of service. We call this love language “acts of kindness.” When a wife prepares the family a warm meal, that is also an act of kindness. When members of our church serve dinner at the night shelter, it is an act of kindness.
Let me stop here and make one qualification: These acts I have just mentioned of taking an aging parent to run an errand or cooking a family meal, only qualify as an act of love if they are motivated by love, not obligation. Sometimes we do things because they are expected of us, but in reality, we may resent those expectations and the obligation. That results in the same act –cooking dinner–but it is not an act of love.
Quality Time
Let’s look at another love language. People enjoy having the full attention of someone who cares about them. When a parent spends time playing a game or taking a hike with his child, we call that the love language of quality time. When two friends have lunch and visit about their lives, that’s quality time. And when someone on a plane listens to the struggles of the stranger in the next seat, that too is quality time. Quality time involves sincere relationship, caring, respect, and paying attention.
Affectionate Touch
People need to be touched with kindness and affection. Hugs between friends are an example of affectionate touch. A father patting his child’ shoulder is expressing love through affectionate touch. When a wife runs her hand over her husband’s back it is casually acknowledging that she cares about him. Celebratory gestures like a “high five” convey connection and appreciation. Even a sincere handshake can be considered a sign of respect and acknowledgment.
Affirming Words
When one child shouts encouragement to another, the child is using the love language of affirming words. Appreciating and encouraging another person strengthens self-confidence and makes a person feel loved. When one friend writes another to say, “You always seem to know just when I need you,” that too is affirming words. Of course, if I had noticed and thanked the print shop clerk for her excellent service, that would have been affirming words. Texts, emojis, and quick notes are also good examples.
Gifts
Gifts, both large and small, indicate in a concrete way that the one who gives cares for the one who receives the gift. When a mother cuts interesting little articles out of the paper for her adult child, that is a gift of love. When parents on a business trip take time to get little mementos for their children, that is a gift of love. When someone donates to a disaster relief fund for earthquake victims, that is a gift of love as well.
Communicating Successfully
You will want to pay attention to whether or not you are communicating successfully when you use a love language. After all, the purpose of a language is to communicate. When you speak, you want people to understand what you are saying. And you want people to whom you express your love to feel loved. That’s important.
Favorite Love Languages
One of the things you need to know about love languages is that you may use all five (and others I have not talked about) to express your love to a person, but that person will not receive them all with equal enthusiasm. Each person has his or her individual preferences. Marge, one of your co-workers, may not feel much need to be affirmed verbally, but another co-worker, George, really beams if you compliment him. Alice may love to be touched and to have her husband Sam listen carefully, but Sam feels well-loved primarily because Alice is so generous and cheerful about cooking and keeping the house in order. It’s not that Sam doesn’t appreciate being touched and having his wife’s attention. But the reality is that her acts of kindness are more effective at making him feel loved.
Test Yourself
Let’s try a few descriptions and see if you can tell which love language each of these persons prefers.
- Jean comments about her husband, “He’s always doing something. I want him to sit on the couch with me and give me some time, look at me, talk to me about us, about our lives.” What is Jean’s favorite love language?
- Eleven year-old Mark was asked how he knows that his parents love him. He said, “Well, for one thing because they tell me, but even more from the way they treat me. Dad is always bumping me when he walks by, and we wrestle on the floor. He’s a lot of fun. And Mom’s always hugging and kissing me – although not in front of my friends.” What is Mark’s favorite love language?
- Lisa, age 12, broke her arm this year. “I know that my parents love me because while I was having such a hard time keeping up with my schoolwork, they encouraged me. They said how proud they were that I was trying so hard and that they knew I would be able to keep up.”
- Contrast Krystal, age seven. She has had numerous health problems during the past three years. This is what she noticed about her parents’ expressions of love, “I know Mommy loves me ’cause when I need help with my homework, she helps me. When I have to go to the doctor, she gets off from work and takes me. When I am really sick, she fixes my favorite soup.”
- Janice described her husband’s radical change of behavior. “Monday afternoon, he came home from work and gave me a rose, saying ‘I thought you deserved a rose.’ I started crying. ‘Oh, Jim, that is so sweet of you.’ On Tuesday he brought pizza home for dinner. On Wednesday, he brought the kids Cracker Jacks and a small potted plant for me. I had no idea what had come over Jim, but I was enjoying every minute of it.” Which love language does she seem to value most?
Expand Your Love Languages
With close friends and family members, you will want to recognize the love languages of each one and be sure to use their favorites frequently. However, with the world at large, you may need to recognize which love language you tend to use the most and then stretch into using all of them — as well as many more. You will discover how to do that on your own as you become aware of your expressions of love. And if you are successful at using love languages, the people around you are going to feel loved.
The Results of Feeling Loved are Powerful
Feeling loved increases self-esteem. It restores self-respect (Jesus worked diligently to restore self-respect to those who desired to regain it.)
Feeling loved enables the recipient of your love to express his or her own love to others. What a service it is to enable someone to express their love!
Expressing Our Love Leads to Love
It is interesting to realize that one way by which you learn how to love more is to express the love you have, to serve others. The Urantia Book puts it this way, “The more fully we bestow ourselves upon our fellows, the more we come to love them.” God always seems to set things up that way — so you benefit when you do things with love. And look at how God multiplies love: not only does your expression of love cause you to love more, it also enables the one you love to express his or her love and it even engenders benefits in those who observe the love flowing between others.
Love Is Only Love When It Flows
Love is a fascinating, dynamic force, similar in a way to electricity. Electricity functions only if it is flowing. Love is only doing its work if it is being expressed from one person to another. There is no more essential aspect of God than this dynamic, flowing force — love. Truly, when you are loving and serving, you are in harmony with the spirit of God within you.
Expressing your love through the powerful love languages of Affectionate Touch, Acts of Kindness, Gifts, Quality Time, and Affirming Words opens the floodgates of your love and lets it pour through.
