The language of love

Not so much anymore but several years ago the hot new relationships book was The Five Love Languages (FLL) by Gary Chapman. Though my knowledge of the book is limited to the reviews I heard from friends, some critical but mostly positive, I have been thinking about the broader topic within which the book fits and since this is my blog, here are the thoughts.

Relationship communication is frustrating, intimidating, prone to manipulation and misunderstanding, and clouded by emotion. FLL offers categories for understanding how people in relationships remind one another of their regard. It is an attempt to systematize how our friends and loved ones say “I love you” and must be applauded, because the potency of those words must not be underestimated. It is a brave book. I hope to read it someday J

Physical touch. Quality time. Words of affirmation. Gifts. Acts of Service. These are the five avenues Chapman believes everyone uses to communicate their love with another. Everyone through experience has learned comfortable channels to do an uncomfortable thing: telling each other how we feel. The author suggests that two people in a relationship understanding each other’s preferred means will lead to better communication and more enjoyment of each other as effective communication inevitably draws them closer together.

Now if we only could think rationally about something so saddled with baggage. Most of us spend inordinate amounts of time thinking about our relationships. In our obsessing, our emotional pathways do not become clearer, but, in fact, grow more obfuscated. Our over-analysis causes us to throw up our hands frustrated, because we don’t fall in only one of the categories. In fact, if given the time to recall, are we not confident we could see ways in which we communicate through two or three or all of the above avenues? So how does a man who likes physical touch and giving gifts and relate to a woman who whoe doesn’t understand why people have to be so “touchy-feely” and pines away for the days when her husband would take out the trash without being asked or serve her breakfast in bed? Is it just a case of the line from the Gershwin movie Shall We Dace?:

You like to-MAY-to, I like to-MAH-to
You like po-TAY-to, I like po-TAH-to
Let’s call the whole thing off.

Is it a wonder they made it this far?

Throughout Jesus’ ministry he continually opens up the hearts of those around him by communicating appropriately and compassionately. Just off the top of my head, I can think of multiple times where Jesus uses each of the categories mentioned to get his point across to the emotionally and spiritually stunted sheep who followed him around.

He touched people all the time and intentionally in order to draw them to himself. The bleeding and unclean woman is a good example. He makes time for those in his inner circle even though it would be easier to not avoid the crowds and pander to their adoration. He commends those who respond in faith. An example being his words to Peter after the Rock had professed his Messiahship. It would be to this same Peter that Jesus would give the money for the temple tax in a fish’s mouth and the washing of his disciples’ feet means he was not adverse to acts of service as well. Oh, and I seem to remember a story revolving around a small group of loaves and two fish that worked out pretty well for the invited guests.

My point, I think, is not just to say, “be more like Jesus. Love like he did.” Knowing ourselves and the tendencies of our loved ones is useful. I am sure Jesus leaned toward one or another of those categories, though someone smarter than I will have to write a dissertation on that. Because Jesus is the ideal and if we claim to be His follower, we must gradually but decidedly mirror his example. Now, there is the slightly complicating fact that he lived a perfectly sinless life. Yeah, insignificant, right? This means he is simultaneously the best and worst example. This complication does not affect my point which is that Jesus did not pass final judgment on people based on categories or labels. Instead, he recognized how his message matched their personality, thus not limiting himself to only those he would relate to easily.

A book like FLL is a great resource for doing some probing into our own psyches and diagnosing the reasons for some of our relational difficulties, but may it not be a tool for our selfishness or an excuse for us not engaging deeply with people who we don’t understand or know how to love. In fact, may it cause us not to acquire more friends to whom love may be easily communicated, but rather to overcome our personality so that our spheres of influence may include those whom are not exactly like us.

The gospel: down and dirty

Within Christianity, there exists a stigma that believers have it all together. Like a responsive reading, the stock answer from the lips of churchgoers when asked, “How are you doing?” is ‘good,’ ‘well’ (the snobbish grammarian’s answer) or some variation thereof. Showing up in our button down’s and slacks, dresses and high heels, we show up for worship on Sunday sitting among a score of the like-minded “fine”, “blessed,” and “great.”

Now don’t read me saying that dressing up for church is wrong or being pleasant and friendly to those with whom you worship is not a good thing. Being hospitable is very much at the heart of Christianity But it is to misunderstand gathering as a people and uniting heart and voice in worship if all we know about the people to our right and left is that they are fundamentally “good.” Indeed, it is to misunderstand more than that, even the nature of humanity itself.

However, as fake as we might feel giving highlights of our week to an interested friend it doesn’t compare to the fear of having our deepest sins revealed to those around us. We don’t mention the fear gripping us since our husband lost his job three months previous. We don’t let on that our children are infuriating us. No matter the guilt we experience from acting like a hypocrite, the look on our friends’ face when we open up about how lonely we feel because our boyfriend/girlfriend broke up with us and we are developing a dangerous addiction is far worse.

As big a barrier as this antiseptic version of Christianity is to community among believers, the greater issue is that it has colored the way we view Jesus himself. Could you imagine the man in these pictures in over-100 degree heat and no showers?



In the mind’s eye of too many Christians, our savior looks like a composed, unaffected Harlequin novel character. Indeed, greatest among Jesus’ miracles must have been that in the midst of dusty roads and pressing crowds, walking miles daily with indoor plumbing about a millennium and a half years from being invented that not a hair of his head ever appears out of place. Seriously, he is a walking Pantene Pro-V commercial. Attended by bright faced children and innocent white lambs, this is a nice Jesus, a fine Jesus, a great Jesus.

When did the doctrine of Jesus’ impeccability mutate into this caricature only worthy of posing for Polo? I don’t know, but it could not be further from the biblical picture. Jesus is not a keep your distance kind of guy. He is not a check my hair kind of guy. He’s not a shower in the morning and evening kind of guy. Jesus does not remain impervious to spiritual ugliness by keeping it at arm’s length. His message and the express intent of his incarnation is to confront sin. Confront sin in the leaders of the day. Expose sin in his own disciples. Embrace the sinners around him in very uncomfortable ways.

In Luke 9 when a sick woman is healed by touching Jesus’ garment, our Master’s response shows his complete disregard for the fact that if he deals with messy people, he is going to get a little messy himself. The poor woman suffers from a discharge of blood that in addition to being terribly embarrassing trapped her in a perpetual state of uncleanliness. According to Jewish law, a woman suffering from this was forced to stay outside the camp until the discharge ceased. Under no circumstances could she associate with people because by merely touching them she transferred her filthiness to them. A detail of the story is that she had spent her entire fortune on doctors who could not heal her and after years of isolation from community and her faith she was left impoverished and hopeless.

The reason for her secrecy is clear then. If she was jostling around in a big crowd and was ceremonially unclean she risked making some of her neighbors pretty peeved. So covertly, silently, clandestinely she merely touches the hem of the savior’s garment, and is HEALED! But unlike how she came, she will not leave under the cover of the jostling crowd. Jesus stops and turns and confronts her. Not for her messiness, or her deceit, but instead to affirm that she as a sick, broken, lonely person and was exactly right in coming and putting her faith in him.

The gospel is not get cleaned up and then if your shoes and belt match and you have just enough make up on (not too much now), you can enter God’s community. For the Righteous one, cleanliness is not next to godliness. In the messy exchange of the cross, Jesus proclaims that if you come as you are, your curse, your mess, your death will be his and his love and righteousness will be yours. Only by being exposed for who you are and relying on Christ to meet every one of your needs can you be freed from the tendency to hide. The one in whom there was no sin was banished outside the camp like a leper and crucified as a blasphemer so that we could stand before the throne of God, eat at His table, and enjoy true fellowship with Him and with each other. Only by our faith through His grace when our friend asks “how are you?” will the answer ever honestly be, “I am well.”