While being in Greece, our team has talked a lot about love languages, which are the specific ways in which individuals give and receive love. For example, I receive the love language of quality time. I love being with the people I care about to talk about life together. I feel loved when people spend time with me to get to know me. If you are unfamiliar with this idea of love languages, I encourage you to research Gary Chapman's book,
The Five Love Languages, because it is a great way to learn to love people better.
The reason our team has been focusing on these is because we want everyone to feel loved. We want to be a family united in our desire to love Jesus and encourage each other. As I dwell and ponder which love languages I need most and which love languages my teammates need from me, I suddenly realized that to be more like Jesus, maybe we should learn all the love languages.
I definitely agree with all the research done by Chapman and really respect all the positive effects of his book, but the way we peg people as certain languages can be limiting. Instead of identifying with just one or two of the ways to both love and be loved and then stopping there, we should take it a step further by learning the languages of love we are bad at.
I truly believe that Jesus encompassed all the ways to love others. I don't think He would have refused to learn a love language which doesn't come naturally to Him because He loves perfectly. Part of loving perfectly is loving people exactly the way they feel most loved. It limits the people who you can love and the people who can love you if you refuse to give and receive all the languages of love. As children of God, we want to reflect Christ and love people well by using each of the love languages for every person.
