Spread The Love

Lately in the news there have been stories of an Angel in Rowlette TX. Several times over the last few weeks, a mystery guest has left $2000 tips for servers in restaurants. It’s been 3 times in the last 3 weeks.

When the pandemic first started, restaurants were ordered to be closed to dining. The wait staff had little to no income. With only carry out, there were a number of angels leaving large tips to the remaining staff that was scraping by.

Everyone called it “spreading the love.” It was trying to take care of our fellow man. I know the stories made a lot of news but isn’t that the kind of thing we are suppose to do? If we see someone in need we have to ability to do something about it aren’t we suppose to help?

1 Corinthians 16:14 says: Let all that you do be done in love.

We are commanded to love one another. But don’t we need to understand what love is? That question has been around for eons. It’s even immortalized in the songs of the 70’s by the likes of the band Foreigner and others. What is it. Is it only a stronger version of “like”? Is a physical or psychological need? Are there different kinds of love?

The first source I turned to was of course the dictionary. It says Love was the “an intense feeling of deep affection. It also means a warm attachment, enthusiasm, or devotion. Love can also mean a stronger version of like.

Well, the dictionary answer two of my questions. Love can be a stronger version of like and it’s also hinted that there are many kinds of love,

Next, I researched psychology. If found there are criteria for the love between people. It said love was comprised of taking responsibility for one another it involved tenderness, self-disclosure, and opening.

The national library of medicine says:

"Love is deeply biological. It pervades every aspect of our lives and has inspired countless works of art. Love also has a profound effect on our mental and physical state. A ‘broken heart’ or a failed relationship can have disastrous effects; bereavement disrupts human physiology and might even precipitate death. Without loving relationships, humans fail to flourish, even if all their other basic needs are met.

As such, love is clearly not ‘just’ an emotion; it is a biological process that is both dynamic and bidirectional in several dimensions. … Similarly, the maintenance of loving relationships requires constant feedback through sensory and cognitive systems; the body seeks love and responds constantly to interaction with loved ones or to the absence of such interaction.1

That’s quite the article."

If you love someone, you want to spend time with them and you want to do things for one another. But love needs to be a two-way street. Anything else isn’t real love. Think back to when you were young. Ever had the person in high school you had the unreciprocated crush on? Pining never made you feel any better. Sometimes we have family members we chase for years seeking approval that never comes. When love is one sided, it leave us with feelings of emptiness, anxiety, and despair.

God tells us that he wants us to have loving two-way relationships.

In Proverbs 13:12 is says:

In Hope deferred makes the heart sick, but a longing fulfilled is a tree of life.

This human need to love and feel loved has been recognized in psychology. Dr. Maslow is often quoted we never reach full potential unless we have feelings of belonging.

We are hard wired for love. One psychologist, backing up what Dr. Maslow stated, said that love is not an emotion but a drive. A drive is different because a drive is something built into us. A drive is a need, where as an emotion is a desire. Emotions may accompany drives, but the drive is the fundamental part of us. It’s primal, like instincts built into animals. It’s what we must do.

To prove that love was a need, Psychologist Harry Harlow did his famous experiment in the 60s where he raised monkeys in what is now considered a rather cruel experiment.

Many of the existing theories of love up until Dr Harlow’s experiment centered on the idea that the earliest attachment between a mother and child was merely a means for the child to obtain food, relieve thirst, and avoid pain. Harlow, however, believed that this behavioral view of mother-child attachments was inadequate.

If you don’t remember the experiment, He made one “mother” just wires but it also gave nourishment, the other “mother” was soft but was not built with any feeding mechanism. The monkeys only went to the hard mother to feed and returned to snuggle with the soft terrycloth surrogate.2