Love Changes Us... But Why?

Here's my theory on why being loved (by people, animals, God, etc) changes us.

Love Changes Us

The more I do this Life thing, the more convinced I become that love truly is the point, the goal, the foundation. It is, to quote Paul, the greatest of all that remains when everything else fades away. And as the greatest—what might we call it… force? energy? … as the greatest Thing in the universe, it makes sense to me that love has incredible power to change us.

Which you may very well agree with. I’m not suggesting I’m saying anything all that profound here. But I do wonder how much thought you’ve given to the following question:

Why does love change us?

Most of us know the experience of being changed by love. How it softens us. How it emboldens us. How it heals us.

But, like… why?

And here’s my thought on that. I think love changes us because we ARE love. Meaning, at our core, our very essence is a unique manifestation of God. And since God is love, might that also mean that we—created in God’s image—are also love?

The You That is You

There is the “seemingly” physical components of what makes you you (and not, say, the person next to you, or the chair underneath you). I say “seemingly physical” because when you zoom in close enough on anything in the universe you discover that everything is energy. It is only at large scale that it takes on the proprieties (perhaps even the illusion) of material and corporeal reality.

So there is the container of you—ie, your body—but that is not you. If we amputated a limb, or shaved all your hair, or even did an organ removal or replacement, you would not cease being you. That you that is You is—in some mysterious way—beyond, or, different from, or, deeper than *this* (waves hands in a circular motion around body).

Different traditions call this by different names. Historically Christianity has called this our Soul. The eternal, unchanging part of us. Yet calling it a “part” of us might be inadvertently misleading. Or at the very least, inadequate.

Our Soul.. or you could also say, our consciousness… seems to me to actually BE us. The fact that we are aware of our own existence, the fact that the light is on for us, the fact that it is like something to be us… all of this indicates a foundational reality of what it means to be alive. This foundational reality both precedes and (I believe) will outlast whatever physical container we currently animate.

You with me so far?

So keep this in mind. The you-that-is-YOU is Soul. Consciousness. Not-your-body but somehow contained within a body.

Back to question: Why does love change us?

Tuned by Love to Love

If I’m correct (or even close enough to correct, which is about as good as I get these days) and we are, at our core and in our essence, love, then maybe love changes us because, well, perhaps a helpful analogy here would be like the tuning an instrument.

If you’ve ever used or seen a tuning fork then you know that these highly specific pieces of metal are created in such a way where when you strike the tines it hums a particular frequency. This frequency maps on to certain notes in the diatonic scale (the basis of Western Music). The most common tuning fork rings at frequency of 440hz, which we refer to as the note of A in Concert Pitch.

The idea is relatively simple: you strike the fork, it plays a perfect A note, and then you adjust your instrument accordingly.

So what if Love, in its purest form, is like the Concert pitch A, ringing perfectly at 440hz?

And then imagine that each of us, at our soul level, are also designed to hum perfectly at 440hz? That’s the plan. That’s the design. That’s the Image in which our Soul is made.

Of course the reality is that we rarely (if ever?) hit this frequency perfectly. I don’t even think you need me to say more on that, right? You get this.

So we’re all out here go about our lives, experiencing all the highs and lows, trials and triumphant, suffering and successes. Sometimes close to that 440hz, but most of the time we operate at various degrees of being out of tune.

Scared. Sad. Alone. Anxious. Angry. Resentful. Envious. Slothful. Arrogant. Selfish. Gluttonous. Cruel.

Out of tune. Out of alignment.

But then there are these moments…

We encounter, or are met by,

something like (or even something very close to) that perfect pitch.

Otherwise known as, Love.

And simply by being near it, or having it impact us, it helps to tune our frequency a bit closer to 440hz.

By the way, this metaphor plays out in real life. Scientists note that we can take pure forms of a gene and place it alongside cells with damaged or distorted genes. Guess what happens? The mere presence of the pure gene helps to repair the damaged ones. Here’s another one: Sourdough bread. If your starter is weak or struggling then you can introduce it to a stronger more healthy starter and, yep, the presence of the good/pure/strong/true agent raises up the quality of the weak starter.

Through introducing the purest form of a given element to a broken or distorted manifestation of that element, rather than something like the Second Law of Thermodynamics kicking in (where you’d expect the lesser form to pull the purer form toward a state of decay),

sometimes it can actually go the other way

So why does Love change us?

Perhaps it’s because at our core,

at the Soul level,

the you-that-is-YOU,

we are Love.

We are designed to operate and exist as Love.

We are made by 440hz for the sake of humming at 440hz.

Therefore, to be loved—whether by another person, or by an animal, or by ourself, or by God—is to be in contact with that which is our pure nature.

And we get tuned accordingly.

How great is that?

Go forth, dear ones. Tune and be tuned.

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New Podcast is Really Cooking!

If you haven’t had a chance to check it out (and, fwiw, I wouldn’t blame you. If you’re like me, you probably already have you regular list of podcasts. Listening to new ones is a risk) then let me invite you once again to listen to, Keep Christ in Christian.

Episode 5 just dropped this week and it’s a doozy! We get in to the ways in which Christianity can function like gatekeepers, deciding who are the REAL and TRUE Christians.

What if keeping Christ in Christian meant that we, you know, expanded (and kept expanding) who all is part of the Family of God?

Listen now on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, and/or Subscribe on Substack!