All my life I’ve been taught that love is an action. It’s what happens, what we do. Great, fantastic – I get all that. As the D. C. Talk song says, love is a verb.
But that’s horribly wrong. Or at least horribly incomplete.
Love is a verb? I don’t think so. A fourth grader could tell you that the word “love” in that sentence is the noun, not the verb.
But what do I really mean by “noun”?
Remember Schoolhouse Rock? “A noun is a Person, Place, or Thing!” Remember that song? That’s what I mean by noun. And that’s what I mean by “love.”
Love is a noun because…
- It’s a person: God. God is love [period].
- It’s a place. You can step into it. You can run out of it. You can romance someone else into it with you. You can stay protected in it. You can guard it against attack. And most of all, you know when you’re there.
- It’s a thing. Love is as real as any thing you’ve ever experienced in your life. Verbs (actions), though real, don’t feel as real as nouns (things). You can’t touch, taste, hear, or see actions. You only see the effects of actions. You see the effects of love too, but love has a presence of its own that goes beyond what anyone adds to it. Love is tangible.
Love is the actor, not the action – the mover, not the movement. Love is the noun.
[Note: For more on this, read my followup post, Love is NOT an action.]
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