Love is a Need, not an Emotion

In reading David Brook's book The Social Animal I was surprised by the research he assessed on the emotions involved in being in love. It turns out that love is not an emotion at all, and that when in love, many areas of our brain are activated and heightened. A scan of a persons brain who is experiencing the mystery of love looks surprisingly like a scan of a persons brain who is experiencing a cocaine rush. Love is a desire that takes over our lives, the Neuroscientist Jack Panksepp argues.

For me, the thrill of being in love is a rather confusing and painful pleasure. While I want to be around my beloved all the time, I also want my independence, I want to be free of my need for the very muse that is creating the need I want to be free from. I've noticed that while in love, the desires are all insatiable. If Paige and I are apart, we want to talk on the phone. But the phone is not enough. When we switch to face time we feel better connected but this is not enough, either. And so you'd think this would all be solved by being together, but being together is not enough, we have to kiss, we are tempted with more than kissing, we have to be touching while watching television or taking a walk. It's all very ridiculous. I spent years as an independent man and now I'm addicted to a yell0w-headed girl. If I weren't actually experiencing it and enjoying it so much, I'd diagnose our dynamic as a disease.

All that to say, God calls himself Love. And it makes me wonder if God needs. It sounds wrong to say it, as though need is a symptom of incompleteness, but is it? Does God need us? We know he wants us, but does he need us? He needs the other members of the Trinity and is not Himself without them, and if He invented love as a metaphor to help us understand himself, then we have to grapple with the idea love is in fact a great need, and perhaps grapple with the greater question of whether or not God needs us.

The need that we call love is not a perfect metaphor for God. It's a drawing of a tree to describe a tree. That said, though, I think God more than likes us, I think he created us in such a way that he needed us to fulfill him, and I refuse to see this as weakness. Interdependence is strength, as is the insatiable desire to connect, to listen, to exchange and even to touch. There is a growing part of me that believes when we get to heaven, we will be reunited with the one we need, and the one who needs us in return. And this will be by design.

Thoughts?

Love is a Need, not an Emotion is a post from: Donald Miller's Blog