Tags
duty, faith, grace, insanitybytes22, love, obligation, opinion, relationship
The question, “isn’t duty and obligation the same thing as love?” has come up 3 times now in different places. It’s caught me by surprise which is unusual, so I thought we better chase that rabbit down the hole.
First of all, I don’t want to beat up on “duty and obligation,” old-fashioned notions like honor and responsibility. We have a real deficit of those things in the modern world,and I do believe they are a component of love, a part of the story.
Also, many men tend to perceive love as a verb, and so “duty and obligation” they may understand, it has some action to it. An ethereal kind of thing like “love,” not so much. If it’s somehow related to feelings, back away even more slowly…..
However, they are not the same thing at all. Duty and obligation may get you through those bumps in the road, those hard times when love is just not nearby, when you are doing responsible things seeking the favor of God, rather than your own feelings or someone else’s joy. That’s an awesome thing, that’s a great stop-gap, but that’s not really “love.”
Duty and obligation speaks to work, responsibility, reputation even, social status, one’s own feelings of virtue and self-worth. It may be sacrificial, but it is not emotionally sacrificial. It is far more about presenting yourself as worthy and responsible.
What makes love different? I’m not entirely sure, but I know it requires an emotional investment and can tailor itself to the individual needs of the people you are serving. Consider a mother caring for kids out of nothing more than a sense of obligation and duty, day after day. Those kids won’t feel loved, desired, wanted. They’ll probably start to feel like a burden and grow to resent her.
Or perhaps a husband with a wife who goes through the motions, but feels nothing for him, disinterested, disconnected, cold. Her performance may be flawless, but her heart is not there. Love costs us something.
I’m going to go out on a limb here and suggest that this perception of love as simply interchangeable with “obligation and duty,” is not biblical, either.
God did NOT say, out of a sense of obligation and duty to the world, I gave my only begotten Son. He said, For God so LOVED the world. Jesus does NOT say, the greatest commandment is that you fulfill your duty and obligation to your neighbor as yourself.
Even more important, we have the Lord’s unmerited favor. We did not earn it, it is not a debt that was owed to us. If “love” where interchangeable with “duty and obligation,” than Jesus was obliged to go to the cross for us, not in selfless sacrifice, but out of duty which sounds much more like He owed us a debt rather than the other way around.
Kind of interesting, what sparked all three of these discussions was obedience, our alleged duty and moral obligation to obey. Interesting, because I have never thought of it that way at all. In the context of faith, apart from Him, I have no “moral” on which to base the obligation. In the context of marriage, all in good humor here, but my alleged “duty and moral obligation” as motivation would last all of three minutes.
It just doesn’t work for me at all. Grace is what drew me to the Lord, amazing grace, and grace is what enables me to love Him. Love is what compels my surrender. Rewards and punishments, duty and obligation, are not even in the picture, as in they imply some kind of force or manipulation or obligation.
So if I were to love God out of a sense of duty and obligation, I think that would be most impolite. He wants our whole heart, not us just going through the motions out of a sense of duty. The Lord loves a cheerful giver, right? Love requires us to give something of ourselves cheerfully, perhaps all of ourselves, and therefore can not be satisfied or substituted with something like duty and obligation.
atimetoshare.me said:
Lovely!
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insanitybytes22 said:
Thanks. 🙂
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Ken said:
Deep sister.
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John Branyan said:
We can’t control how we feel about someone. There are days (years?) when the emotional aspect of love virtually disappears. Nothing keeping love alive on those days except duty and obligation. Love is a decision. That is why God can command it. Emotion is not a decision.
Jesus explained that love is obedience. When we love God, we obey him. Whether it feels good or not.
I suspect that it was duty that kept Jesus on the cross. At the same time, the cross was the perfect demonstration of love.
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insanitybytes22 said:
Interesting! I have long argued that emotion really IS a decision. That we truly can control how we feel about people,at least with some Divine assistance. Thoughts lead to feelings which form our emotions. We control the horizontal and the vertical of our thoughts. That is one reason why we are taught to, “..Cast down imaginations, and every high thing that exalteth itself against the knowledge of God, and bringing into captivity every thought to the obedience of Christ..”
It is not enough to resist our feelings and to refuse to act on them,we must train our feelings to be more aligned with God’s will,so the condition of our heart begins to match our behavior. For example,it’s a good thing that we resist the urge to fling all the bad people off our planet, but holding onto the emotion,feeling,desire,will make us just as sick as if we had actually acted on it.
Although it’s quite a valid point that obedience must sometimes come from a sense of duty or obligation,which is why I mentioned it as a stop-gap. Even with kids however, the goal is to make them actually LOVE what is good,rather than to do good out of a sense of obligation or fear of punishment.
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John Branyan said:
“It is not enough to resist our feelings and to refuse to act on them,we must train our feelings to be more aligned with God’s will…”
I agree. It is our duty and obligation to train our feelings toward love. 🙂
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seekingdivineperspective said:
Interesting phrase .. Some might say that we can’t train our feelings. We can’t CONTROL them – not every moment. But we can focus on what is true, noble, just, pure, lovely, admirable, excellent, and praiseworthy. (Philippians 4:8) And if we habitually pray those things, especially out loud, we hear ourselves saying them, and the positive feelings often follow – not always, but much more often.
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madoridesigns said:
Can you “make” someone love something? Don’t those two concepts clash? If I love you, I can’t force you to do something. Well, I can, but that’s not coming from love. That’s coming from dominating my will on yours.
I probably shouldn’t be arguing with you guys, but I am so curious about this concept of duty versus love and hearing your perspective and engaging in a dialectical argument about them sure helps me understand how people think differently than I do. I spent years trying to follow the “rules” of the Bible, which is what some of your arguments sound like. Ultimately, for me, the only way I’ve found peace is through surrendering to love.
I am curious about this topic but it’s greatly impacted my upbringing. I never felt “loved” although I had a roof over my head, clothes and food. I felt included, but not listened to. I’ve become addicted to things in an effort to chase the love that I thought others had but I didn’t. I am coming out of it through meditation and contemplation.
Blessings,
Laura
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Citizen Tom said:
Not certain IB changed your mind, but consider the question IB asked.
We love someone because we find something in them to love. Duty and obligation comes from within our self. Duty and obligation is driven by pride and honor.
How did Jesus tell us we would know we love Him?
As you suggest in your last comment, love does involve an act of will. This is the investment we make when we love. With the aid of divine assistance we can love (agape love) God or another person, but we have to want to do so. Once we do that — once we love God or another human being — we can find the strength to want to obey God, resist the devil, and resist sin. When we can perform our duties and obligations joyfully, then we will know we have love. When we have such love for God or another human being, our heart is full, and there is no room for sin.
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John Branyan said:
I don’t disagree with you or IB.
The current culture sees love as completely separate from duty. Love is what we “fall into” whether we want to or not. On the other hand, we break families into fragments because we lose that loving feeling. (Hat tip to the Righteous Brothers)
The command to love our enemies is not contingent on feeling joyful. Perhaps joy will result from obedience (I believe that’s likely to be the case) but the obligation to obey exists despite our feelings.
We need to be careful we don’t reduce love to mere emotion. As both of you have said, it’s more than that.
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madoridesigns said:
I disagree that love is a decision. The word “decide” has the root “cide” as in pesticide, homocide, genocide and suicide. It means “to cut” or “to kill.” If I decide I will love this person always, then I cut off all other options and the possibility that I may fall out of love or that this relationship wasn’t meant for a lifetime. The way I prefer to look at it is that love is a series of choices. As I develop a friendship, I have the feeling (emotion) of love and then I take actions based on love. If I don’t take actions out of love, the experience of love between myself and this other person fades. Or it may still be there in a form of a longing, but without taking any action it either creates some sort of insanity or the love fades. I may still love this person in my heart, but I haven’t been actively nurturing this love. Or I may have a strong desire to get to know someone better because there’s something that I’m attracted to about them, but if I don’t act on it, it can make me feel crazy! (I think that’s a place where courage is needed to take a risk and find out what the attraction is about!) There are other people who I don’t know as well, but maybe are a neighbor. I take actions out of love and they either reciprocate or they don’t. The more we both reciprocate, the more the love between us grows. I’ve learned that another person may be in my life for a moment, for a day, for a week, for a year or even for a lifetime. I don’t know that. Only God knows how long that person is meant to be in my life. I don’t decide to love someone forever. I choose to love them moment by moment.
If I’ve made a decision to love someone but do not nurture it, that could be Hell. If we aren’t both making efforts to nurture our feelings for each other and all we have is duty and obligation, that would engender resentment. I don’t want someone doing something for me out of duty. It becomes manipulative. Verse 1, 1 Corinthians 13: “Though I speak with the tongues of men and of angels, but have not love I am only a resounding gong or clanging symbol.” In this passage, I would equate the “resounding gong or clanging symbol” to be just noise, posturing, words not connected to any feelings or anything deeper inside of me.
My father gives me money out of duty and obligation. I feel manipulated. He calls money, love. I feel confused. I don’t feel understood by him. I feel he’s giving it to me because it makes him feel good regardless of its impact on me. He isn’t open to hearing its impact on me. Maybe I haven’t tried hard enough, but I just don’t sense he can hear my feelings about it. He acts baffled if I question it. My mother does other things for me out of duty that feel manipulative. To me, I’d rather have him listen to me and understand me (out of love) than give me money (out of duty.) If he isn’t feeling love for me and he thinks, I should give my daughter this money out of duty, I’d rather he call me and say, I’d like to give you this money. How do you feel about it? To me, that’s love. The reason there is no feeling of love when he gives me money is that he isn’t acting out of love.
I do think I understand the part you say about love being out of obedience. I see it as turning my will over to God. If I am self-willed, I run amok. And I have run amok. The funny thing is that for me I have learned to trust and have faith in God (in increments and not perfectly) which has come easier than saying I love God.
I doubt duty kept Jesus on the cross. If I were to sacrifice out of duty, I would have so much resentment! I suspect Jesus was on the cross out of surrender through love. I would imagine if I were him, my will and desire would be to stay alive in anyway possible. And yet, he loved and trusted his Father in Heaven and surrendered his Will to that of God and knew that the pain he endured was his sacrifice for a greater good which was God’s Will. I don’t experience there being much open-heartedness in actions coming from duty.
I googled this topic because I’ve noticed the weird things my family does and I just can’t understand where they are coming from. They do things at me, to me and about me without inquiring what I want. To me, that’s acting out of duty and not love. The more I explore this, the more I really don’t see any point or benefit in acting out of duty. It all leads to resentment and bitterness.
Oh, and on the topic of “training your feelings,” have you had success with that? My understanding and experience from years of therapy, 12-step recovery work and spiritual practice is that my feelings are for me, that they tell me something and that they are more real than my thoughts. My thoughts come and go and try to hook me and reel me in. My feelings are telling me something that’s real. If I acted out of integrity, I feel guilty. If I hurt someone, I feel sad or afraid. If I do something nice for myself, I feel happy and even joyful! I am not sure what you mean by training your feelings. I can learn to not give every single feeling too much weight. For example, if someone cuts me off in traffic and I feel mad, that may be just an old emotional habit and if I learn to be present in the moment, I can let go of the anger. Maybe that’s what you mean by “training your feelings.” I certainly need to do that at many moments in my life, but it’s risky if I ignore feelings that are telling me something deeper. For example, if someone treats me poorly over and over and I disregard the anger, this can lead to more rage, even rage at myself. So, can you relate to what I am saying? Can you put “training your feelings” in the context of what I am saying? I have to admit, I have spent years working on my understanding of feelings and how to not be overpowered and manipulated by them, so I may have a different way of looking at this. Also, I was raised Christian and was a Christian for at least 30 years and attended and lead my share of Bible studies.
Blessings,
Laura
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Marshall at Sharing God's Story (https://SharingGodsStory.net) said:
My kind of thinking and post!
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Debbie L said:
Amen! Great post….
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Jack Curtis said:
Likkely, folks will continue to conflate the two; we usually seem to have as many Calvinists as those singing and dancing in the aisles, right? I like your distinction: We owe obligations, pay debts but joyfully, freely give where we love, Inarguable. But then damn biology asks why we loveand one versus another… a question which I’m not sure I can or really wish to answer. Cowardice, no doubt!
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authorstephanieparkermckean said:
Amen. Exactly.
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Jack Curtis said:
Exactly so! Duty/obligation are a debt owed; love is a gift …
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