Where Does Our Ability To Love Come From?

 

Perhaps a silly and too basic a question, but I wonder if you have thought about the question:  "Where does our  ability to love come from?" We are not just born with the ability to love (which by the way is built into us from infancy & nurtured by our parents), but we also need to love others. Love is one of the most crucial aspects of being human, but where did it come from? Who or where did we inherit it from? What is the source?

 

 

In the 1947 song "Nature Boy", songwriter Eden Abhez posits,

"The greatest thing you'll ever learn is just to love and be loved in return"

[source: Sing365]

 

 

Four years earlier, the psychologist Abraham Maslow published his book, "A Theory of Human Motivation" which included his famous hierarchy of needs. In the middle of this hierarchy, above physical needs like safety but below esoteric needs like self-esteem, lies our need for love and belonging - the need to love and be loved in return.

While Abhez and Maslow may have disagreed exactly on how important love is to the human experience, both knew that love is one of the most crucial aspects of being human. The Bible of course is absolutely clear about the source of love. The Bible clearly declares that  God is love, and because we are created in His image,  we have some of His characteristics.  To have a God who IS love  is such an encouragement to me!!  There are three descriptions of love in the Bible:

 

Philia: family loyalty

Eros: physical intimate love

Agape: sacrificial, life transforming, Christ-like love

 

All these are gifts from God but it is the third Agape love that is different from other types of love. Jesus loved us to the point that He went through a horrific death to secure Life for us. That is concrete proof that God is love. This is the love we have experienced ourselves and which we would love to share with you so that you too might experience, and come to know the depth and height of Yaheweh God's great love.

 

Crooner Nat King Cole  (left) sang Eden Abhez's "Nature Boy", which probably lead to countless couples falling into the romantic love the song describes as so important. (AP Images)