1 John 4:7–8 — “Beloved, let us love one another, because love is from God; everyone who loves is born of God and knows God. Whoever does not love does not know God, for God is love.”
Love is not innate. It is learned in the knowing of God. To know God, then, is to enter the lifelong school of love—a process Scripture calls sanctification.
But our knowledge of love is often distorted by the ways we’ve been loved — or unloved — by others, especially by our early caregivers. In this session, we turn to the roots of our understanding of love, how abusive childhood shapes us and our faulty understanding of love. Then we will try to come to a definition of love and present six elements of mature love.
bell hooks:
Often, children want to remain with parental caregivers who have hurt them because of their cathected feelings for those adults. They cling to the misguided assumption that their parents love them even in the face of remembered abuse, usually by denying the abuse and focusing on random acts of care. Among grown-ups who were wounded in childhood, the desire to be loved by uncaring parents persists, even when there is a clear acceptance of the reality that this love will never be forthcoming.
In the prologue to Creating Love, John Bradshaw calls this confusion about love “mystification.” He shares:
“I was brought up to believe that love is rooted in blood relationships. You naturally loved anyone in your family. Love was not a choice. The love I learned about was bound by duty and obligation. . . . My family taught me our culture’s rules and beliefs about love . . . even with the best intentions our parents often confused love with what we would now call abuse.”
To demystify the meaning of love, the art and practice of loving, we need to use sound definitions of love when talking with children, and we also need to ensure that loving action is never tainted with abuse.
The Apostle Paul and bell hooks, though separated by two millennia and radically different contexts, share a similar conviction: love is not a feeling to be consumed by but a moral practice to be cultivated. Paul wrote to communities learning how to live out Christ’s love in hostile, hierarchical societies. bell hooks writes to individuals and communities shaped by patriarchy, consumerism, and racism. Both diagnose a world where ‘love’ is confused with power, possession, or sentimentality — and both call us back to love as discipline and transformation.”
Paul emphasizes the role of knowledge in love in Philippians 1:9–10 — “This is my prayer: that your love may abound more and more in knowledge and depth of insight.”
Paul defines love through verbs, not feelings — serving, honoring, persevering.
His letters are full of imperatives because love, for him, is a discipline of the will shaped by the Spirit.
Romans 12:9–10 — “Let love be genuine; hate what is evil, hold fast to what is good; love one another with mutual affection; outdo one another in showing honor.”
Galatians 5:13–14 — “Through love serve one another. For the whole law is fulfilled in one word: ‘You shall love your neighbor as yourself.’”
Switch to bell hooks:
Imagine how much easier it would be for us to learn how to love if we began with a shared definition. The word “love” is most often used as a noun, yet all the more astute theorists of love acknowledge that we would all love better if we used it as a verb. I spent years searching for a meaningful definition of the word “love”, and was deeply relieved when I found one in psychiatrist Scott Peck’s classic self-help book the road less traveled. Peck defines love as “the will to extend one’s self for the purpose of nurturing one’s own or another’s spiritual growth.” Explaining further, he continues: “love is as love does. Love is an act of will-namely, both an intention and an action. Will also implies choice. We do not have to love. We choose to love.” Since the choice must be made to nurture growth, this definition counters the more widely accepted assumption that we love instinctually.
To begin by always thinking of love as an action rather than a feeling is one way in which anyone using the word in this manner automatically assumes accountability and responsibility. We are often taught that we have no control over our feelings. Yet most of us accept that we choose our actions, that intention and will inform what we do. We also accept that our actions have consequences. To think of actions shaping feelings is one way we rid ourselves of conventionally accepted assumptions such as that parents love their children, or that one simply “falls” in love without exercising will or choice, that there are such things as crimes of passion, i.e., he killed her because he loved her so much. If we were constantly remembering that love is as love does, we would not use the word in a manner that devalues and degrades its meaning. When we are loving we openly and honestly express care, affection, responsibility, respect, commitment, and trust.
The Six Elements of Love
Care
Love always implies concern for the life and growth of what we love. It cannot exist without attention to the well-being of another. Just as a mother’s love for her child would ring false if she failed to feed or comfort it, so all love must take concrete form in acts of care. To say we love without demonstrating care is meaningless. Love begins where we take responsibility for nurturing life—whether in a person, a community, or even an idea. Where there is no concern for growth, there is no love.
Responsibility
Care naturally gives rise to responsibility. In its truest sense, responsibility is not duty imposed from outside but a voluntary response to another’s needs. To be responsible is to be able and willing to respond. The one who loves feels answerable for the life of another person—not as a burden but as a shared concern. This kind of responsibility deepens love; it transforms empathy into action. To love is to respond when the other suffers, to take their need as one’s own.
Respect
Responsibility can easily become control unless it is balanced by respect. Respect means seeing the other as they are—acknowledging their individuality and autonomy. It implies the absence of exploitation or manipulation. If I love someone, I want them to grow and unfold in their own way, not according to my design. Respect requires inner strength: the ability to stand alone without needing to dominate or be dominated. Only those who are inwardly free can allow another person to be free.
Knowledge
To respect someone, we must know them. Care and responsibility would be blind if they were not guided by understanding. Knowledge in love is not abstract or detached—it is intimate and intuitive. It seeks to see the other in their reality, to perceive the fears or needs beneath their surface behavior. We cannot love what we do not truly see. Love’s knowledge is born of attention; it looks beyond appearance to essence.
Commitment
Love matures only through constancy. Commitment gives love its endurance through time. It is the decision to remain engaged even when emotion fades or when love no longer feels effortless. Commitment transforms love from a passing experience into a stable bond. It does not mean clinging or possession, but a sustained devotion to the growth of the relationship. Without commitment, love lacks reliability and depth.
Trust
Is the confidence that one’s vulnerability will not be betrayed. Trust allows openness; it makes the giving of oneself possible. It is the quiet foundation that permits care, responsibility, respect, knowledge, and commitment to flourish. Without trust, love becomes anxious and defensive, turning toward control or withdrawal. To love is to risk, and trust is the ground on which that risk stands.
Paul’s theology of koinonia (fellowship) rests on these same six dynamics — care (gentleness), responsibility (bearing), respect (humility), knowledge (discernment), commitment (unity), and trust (peace).
So hooks’s six elements are almost a modern paraphrase of Paul’s community ethics.
Paul: Romans 15:1–2 — “We who are strong ought to bear with the failings of the weak and not to please ourselves. Each of us should please our neighbors for their good, to build them up.”
Ephesians 4:2–3 — “Be completely humble and gentle; be patient, bearing with one another in love. Make every effort to keep the unity of the Spirit through the bond of peace.”
If God is love (1 John 4:8), then every act that nurtures life, honors freedom, seeks knowledge, keeps faith, and dares to trust participates in God’s own being. To ‘learn love’ is to enter sanctification — the slow transformation of human will into divine likeness. That is the work of discipleship.
If God is love, then do we learn about love by knowing God? Or do we learn about God by learning about love? Which of these is more feasible to us humans? How have your early experiences of being loved — or not being loved — shaped how you now give or receive love? Paul prays that love would “abound more and more in knowledge and depth of insight.” Why do you think love needs knowledge? What kind of knowledge is he talking about — intellectual, moral, relational? What do you think of Scott Peck definition of love: the will to nurture spiritual growth in me and others?
David: I want to make clear that what I’m about to say is my own view. It doesn’t necessarily apply to others whose life experiences are very different. Michael asked how our own experience reflects the philosophy he just discussed. To me, the statement that love is not innate or instinctual is simply not true. To me personally, love has nothing to do with a connection to any scriptural God, but everything to do with an inner God—what Christians call the Holy Spirit.
Love isn’t socialism. Socialism may be an intellectually driven reflection of love, but real love can’t be deconstructed into components like respect, commitment, or trust. Those are reflections of love, not its essence. Movements such as socialism can help to spread love, but that spread is a thin dilution of true love—the innate, inner love that comes from the Holy Spirit. That love is whole. It doesn’t require props.
C-J: I think it’s twofold. There’s a spiritual element, but truthfully, I think it’s also brain chemistry. When an animal nurtures its young, it’s for the survival of its offspring and the species. Higher-order species may take a longer view, but the instinct remains. For example, the cat I adopted stopped nursing her kittens once they were old enough to go out on their own—no lasting bond beyond her initial responsibility.
People who have experienced trauma often have a short circuit in that oxytocin-based interpretation of their environment. They become self-protective. You can teach someone the behaviors of care and nurture, but for those who have internalized betrayal, that spiritual experience requires an override.
For me, that override came through the church. Without it, I wouldn’t be who I am today. Trauma changes how we interpret our surroundings and what we need to survive. When you nurture someone, you put yourself at risk. Sacrifice—like you described earlier—is an actual requirement. “I will sacrifice my life so that you might survive.” We see it in war and in dysfunctional families; it may come out sideways, but that’s the intent.
Donald: When he began his remarks, Michael talked about the relationship between God and love, and the puzzle that some very loving people don’t include God as part of their experience. That might align with David’s thinking.
I also wonder where care ends and love begins—or where love ends and care begins. I’ve been caring for my brother for twenty months. He can’t care for or even reason for himself. Do I care about him, or do I love him? I love him, no question. But I also have another brother who doesn’t reach out—does that mean he doesn’t love him? I don’t know. I think we need to see care and love as points along a continuum.
C-J: Three children raised in the same household, with the same expectations and boundaries, can interpret those differently based on their personalities and sense of being valued. That’s why we call each an individual.
We might say someone is independent, selfish, generous, or considerate of others. All three grew up in similar circumstances, yet their responses differ. To divide people neatly into categories—responsible or irresponsible, loving or unloving—is unjust.
Am I responsible for someone I can’t “fix”? Or just for providing reasonable support? There’s a vast difference between a reasonable and a radical expectation, and that difference defines what love looks like in practice.
For someone who’s been deeply hurt, simply being able to love at all is great. For someone raised in love, loving greatly may seem normal. Without a relationship with the divine—our role model who sets the bar—we can wander without moral direction. The Bible gives examples of endurance and faith through hardship: Daniel in the lions’ den, Moses leading a stubborn people through the wilderness.
Love requires sacrifice, whether you’re “in the right lane” or “the left lane.” Some people can’t sacrifice because they see it as loss; others see sacrifice as worthwhile for the greater good.
Don: I wonder to what extent love has a cultural element. Where you were born, how you were raised, your religion, and your socialization—all shape your view of love. And maybe love has a hierarchical aspect too: we love some people more than others. Is love binary, or is it graduated? I’ve never really thought much about that.
Sharon: Love is an extremely complex phenomenon. I wondered if there’s a recipe for it—perhaps in 1 Corinthians 13. Only God is love, and God is dynamic and immeasurable. Personality plays a huge part, but we’re only whole in love when we’re bound in community.
For me, the secret is community. Some of us connect more easily with certain people, and in community, if I drop the ball, someone else in the family of God can pick it up. Each of us experiences love uniquely—through personality, history, and context.
There must be both a giver and a receiver of love, and even perfect giving doesn’t guarantee perfect reception. Experiencing that bond is deeply spiritual and subjective.
Michael: In culture we hear one kind of “love,” and in church another. The definitions seem very different. In everyday conversation, “love” usually means romantic feeling. In church, it’s something else entirely. So which do we go by? Do we switch depending on context? Which is truer?
Carolyn: I spoke last week about something that still challenges me: “Love God with all your heart” and “love your neighbor as yourself.” That last part—loving yourself—still troubles me. My motives are questioned there.
Michael haas given us much to think about—commitment, care, responsibility—but when does commitment become enabling? When does love cross into enabling? Those gray areas are what trouble me most.
Donald: In an hour I’ll be in church, and before the service begins there will be a series of announcements about all the outreach projects the church is undertaking. Should I just dismiss them and say, “Those aren’t my priorities,” or am I failing in my duty to others? My plate already feels full, but there’s always the sense that I could do more. At what point do you say, “This is what I can manage right now”? There’s a limit. There has to be a match between who I am and what I choose to engage with.
David: Carolyn’s question about “Love your neighbor” made me think of Jesus’ response when someone asked, “Who is my neighbor?” He broadened the meaning through parables—essentially saying that anyone and everyone is your neighbor. But I wonder if there’s an element of proximity. We tend to love most these who are “nearest and dearest” to us. We love God—who is closest because the Holy Spirit is within us. We love our spouse, our child, our family, and our friends more than we love a distant stranger.
Our tax money may help a person with cancer whom we’ll never meet, and in that sense we use taxes to spread our love to our distant neighbor. But that love feels weaker, more diluted. The love within us is powerful at its source, yet seems to fade rapidly with increasing distance. It’s as though love radiates like the heat of a fire on a cold night—hot when you stand right next to it, but rapidly cooling as you move away from it.
C-J: What Donald said about knowing your limits and priorities is so important. If we keep stretching ourselves too thin, we become resentful and ineffective. When we overextend, we run out of what we need for our own well-being.
Enabling is subtle—it creeps in when we braid our personal lives together with our service. And when others praise us for it, we’re motivated to keep doing more because we want to be liked and seen as servants. But if we don’t care for ourselves, we lose effectiveness.
It’s healthy to say, “I respect your goals and what you ask of me, but here’s what I can give right now.” Sometimes our tithe or our time simply has to reflect our real capacity. There’s nothing wrong with setting boundaries—that’s part of staying healthy.
Carolyn: Loving yourself is very important, and I think that connects with what Donald was saying. Our love can become so entangled with our desire to give that we forget our limits. I appreciate how Sharon said she prays daily for direction, and I do the same. Sometimes I have to remind myself of that old saying, “God helps those who help themselves.” I know it’s not scripture, but Ben Franklin’s dictum helps me remember that even Jesus rested and moved on when people weren’t ready to receive him.
Don: The idea of grace, of course, is that God helps those who can’t help themselves.
But about love—I wonder, how do we fall in love? It sounds as if it’s not something we actively do but something we fall into. Is the love of God—or our love for one another—something we fall into or something we enter deliberately?
Donald: That connects with David’s point about proximity. We moved from our old neighborhood, where we cared deeply for our neighbors, to a new one. Now our love and care have new objects. Proximity matters.
The idea of concentric circles—rings of love that ripple outward—makes sense to me. Love of God within, then love of family, then love of others. But what about cousins and friends scattered far away? Do we love them less? Does distance change the relationship? Does proximity shape how our love is expressed?
Carolyn: Proximity has changed in my lifetime because of technology. We can show love through a phone call or a text message. It’s not the same as being hands-on, but it still matters. Maybe it’s a shortcut, but it’s the way we connect now. I do miss the personal touch, though. I still pray every day, as Sharon said.
C-J: Life is a journey, and we keep brushing up against new people because God uses us as ambassadors. Our time and place in history shape how that looks. As a teacher, I had students I just connected with—they inspired me and helped me grow. Others completely drained me. Yet in those relationships, I was learning something different.
Sometimes I’d say, “I choose to be present for this person, even though I don’t like them or understand them, because God has put them in my path.” That’s the divine at work. When I feel that resistance, I ask, “What is God doing in me? What does He want me to show in this relationship?”
Like when Jesus chose to keep walking through Samaria—sometimes people aren’t ready to receive. We may resist technology, or change, or certain people, yet God keeps stretching us through these experiences. They reflect back to us where we need to grow.
It’s okay to pause, to say, “I’m exhausted, I need to recover,” or to ask, “How can I do this better?” There’s nothing wrong with being authentic or asking big questions. That’s how we grow.
Reinhard: Michael spoke earlier about the origin of love. I’d like to quote from 1 John 4:7–9: “Dear friends, let us love one another, for love comes from God. Everyone who loves has been born of God and knows God. Whoever does not love does not know God, because God is love.”
This is how God showed His love among us: He sent His one and only Son into the world that we might live through Him. To me, that defines the agape love we’re talking about.
There are many kinds of love, of course—emotional, cultural, familial—but the Holy Spirit helps us express divine love more fully as we grow. Jesus told His disciples to “love one another,” knowing our weaknesses. Their interactions show us how hard it is to live up to that command.
Naturally, we love our families more easily than our enemies. But God teaches us to express love through both prayer and action. We can love by helping others directly or by praying for them. If God is the source and author of love, then our task is to learn and express it more deeply throughout life.
We must not only talk about love but live it—through emotion, behavior, and spiritual practice. That’s what God wants from us.
David: When Jesus was asked “Who is my neighbor?” He responded with the parable of the Good Samaritan, a reviled foreigner who loved a Jewish man who had been mugged and left on the road. That’s what Jesus meant by “neighbor.” If He had meant “everybody,” He could have said “Love everybody.” But He said “Love thy neighbor.” To me, that has to be significant—Jesus is saying “Love anyone who is near to you, even if you have just met them.
If someone crosses your path and is in need, love them, regardless of who they are. That’s agape love—different from the kind of generalized, societal love or caring that seeks to help humanity at large. I’m all for social compassion, but that’s not what Jesus was talking about, it seems to me. Maybe in this class, we should study love in categories—agape one week, another kind the next—so we can understand them more clearly.
Michael: I’ve been trying not to separate love into types like agape, eros, or philia, because those divisions can make understanding harder. But maybe breaking it down would help us to see more clearly.
I wonder, though, do we need all six elements that bell hooks describes—care, responsibility, respect, knowledge, commitment, and trust—to call something love? If a form of love, like social or civic love, doesn’t include all six, is it still love? I’ve avoided fragmenting the concept, but I’m open to other views if there’s a better way to think about it.
Donald: I think your point connects well with the idea of concentric circles of love. If we imagine rings—an inner ring for God, then family, then neighbors, and then “everybody”—the outermost ring is vast. Maybe “neighbor” really does suggest proximity.
We can’t love everyone in the same way, but we can love those near us most fully. That doesn’t mean we ignore the rest, but it does imply focus—love radiates outward from where we stand.
Don: Yes, proximity matters. We can’t control what’s far away, but we’re responsible for what’s right before us. Each of us, as we’ve said in earlier classes, has a certain toolbox—our resources, abilities, and capacities. Not everyone’s toolbox contains the same tools.
Sometimes we need emotional tools we don’t yet have, or financial ones we can’t supply. We’re responsible for using the tools we do have in each moment. Those tools also change over time.
When Jesus defined “neighbor,” as David reminded us, He implied that love begins with those brought into our path. We’re not responsible for every person in the world, or even every person in our neighborhood. But when someone crosses our path and we have the tools to help, we are responsible in that moment to give what we can.
Donald: Exactly. And if I decide to work on something far away while ignoring the needs right next to me, what does that say? I might be choosing an outward project to avoid inward work. The toolbox metaphor is helpful. Not everyone’s tools are the same, and that’s okay.
Carolyn: I like that metaphor too. But what about when we have the tools and don’t use them? Doesn’t that create an inner conflict? The Holy Spirit nudges us, but if we ignore it, we start to feel uneasy with ourselves.
Sometimes we think we don’t have enough to give, but maybe we’re just reluctant to use what we have. It reminds me of the parables—like the widow with the oil. We all have our quirks and excuses, but the toolbox image makes me ask, “Am I using what God gave me?”
Don: The danger of not using our tools is as real as thinking we have all the tools when we don’t. The key is to stay open to the Holy Spirit’s guidance. We can’t help everyone all the time, but we can help those placed in our path.
On the road from Jerusalem to Jericho—the road in the Good Samaritan story—life brings people who need us. If we have the right tools at that moment, we use them. If not, we give what we can and trust God with the rest. Expecting ourselves to fix every problem for every person is unrealistic and even prideful.
Donald: I don’t want to take the metaphor too far, but the tools I had at eighteen and the tools I have now are very different. If I tried to use the old ones, I wouldn’t get much done.
Think about the difference between a hand screwdriver and a power screwdriver—it’s the same task, but different efficiency. Some people have bigger or fancier tools, and we might envy them. But sometimes what’s needed isn’t a power tool—it’s simply power, presence, and willingness.
These days, it’s easy to send a three-minute text or call and feel like we’ve done our part. It used to mean writing a letter or having a long conversation. The convenience is nice, but love takes more than convenience—it takes intention.
Don: Or maybe we can just let artificial intelligence say it for us.
Donald: Right—and we’ve been outsourcing that kind of thing for years to Hallmark. Buy a card, sign your name, and let the printed message do the talking. There’s nothing wrong with that, but it can become a substitute for personal care.
My point is, don’t judge others too quickly by how they express love. Some show it differently, and that’s okay. What matters is the authenticity behind it.
Reinhard: We’ve been talking about our tools and resources—how we use them to love others. I’d like to add something: forgiveness. I think forgiveness is an essential part of love.
Jesus taught us to pray, “Forgive our debtors,” and that’s not a small thing. Forgiveness is one of the greatest expressions of love we can show. Without it, love doesn’t reach its fullness. It’s a vital act in our relationship with others.
Michael: We’ve covered a lot of ground. Next week, I’d like to start shifting toward self-love. We often confuse it with selfishness, and that confusion makes us less loving toward others. If we don’t love ourselves first, we can’t fully love others. Let’s see where that idea takes us next time.
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