I have been asked a couple of times this question: “what is your love language?” To be honest, I never knew how to answer them. It wasn’t because I didn’t know what these ‘languages’ were, but because I knew there was something more than what affinity people simply adhered to ‘naturally’. Gary Chapman, known for his best-selling book, The Five Love Languages, proposed a set of 5 love languages (henceforth, 5LL) which are: affirming words, quality time, gift giving, physical affection, and acts of service. Since the release of this best-seller (and the series that followed it), Chapman’s concept of this model has entered much colloquiality.
In a nutshell, the book shows us that we each have one primary love language, and we must become somewhat like a polyglot, speaking many different languages. We are to not only express and communicate which of the 5LL is our primary, but we must also learn to speak the languages of our loved ones.
Nevertheless, Chapman points out why such dysfunctions within relationships exist. We tend to love others by simply loving them the way we would want them to do for us, while still disregarding their interests completely. Thus, our simple attempts to love others still misfire. The 5LL, at its best, addresses this ignorance and clumsiness. Offering couples constructive and pragmatic advice. However, the whole model within its structured form of principles and methods, fails to address why our tank needs incessant filling in the first place. The root of relational problems cannot be treated pragmatically, but it must be dealt with deductively, meaning the root of the problem must precede the result of the problems. We ought to be fixing the why questions, before we fix the how questions.
David Powlison, in his article, “Love Speaks Many Languages Fluently”, summarizes Chapman’s philosophy as such:
I’ll find out where you itch, and I’ll scratch your back, so you feel better. Along the way, I’ll let you know my itches in a non-demanding manner. You’ll feel good about me because your itches are being scratched, so eventually you’ll probably scratch my back, too. [1]
According to Powlison, Chapman’s 5LL model “fails the class ‘Human Nature 101’. [And] Like all secular interpretations of human psychology (even when lightly Christianized),” says Powlison, “it makes some good observations and offers some half-decent advice (of the sort that self-effort can sometimes follow)”[2]. The 5LL doesn’t take in consideration the “perverse unwillingness and inability to love”[3] resulting from the radical falleness of the human heart; it “leaves fundamental self-interest unchallenged, [but] … plays to self-interest”[4].
“Chapman’s model”, says Powlison further on, “is premised on a give-to-get economy”[5]. A gloried form of the “I scratch your back, and you scratch mine” or rather, “I scratch your back (and then it’s likely you’ll scratch mine)”, where the hope of filling someone’s “love tank” is still contingent on yours being filled. It still views the problem through the “lens of ‘my needs’ (even if it reads a book teaching it to call itself a need)”[6]. This is unlike what Jesus instructed, “Expect nothing in return” (Luke 6:35).
Finally, Powlison in his article further dissects each of the 5LL and compares it to the love of Christ. Which being, “the greatest love ever shown [that] does not speak the instinctively self-centered language of the recipients of such love”[7]. Fundamentally, the love of Christ “speaks contrary to your ‘love language’ and ‘felt needs’”[8]. “Life in the kingdom”, says Powlison, “is much more complex than just lining up one abstract model against another abstract model”[9].
- C. Varthoumlien
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[1] (Powlison 6)
[2] Ibid., p. 5.
[3] Ibid.
[4] Ibid.
[5] Ibid.
[6] Ibid., p. 7.
[7] Ibid., p. 9.
[8] Ibid.
[9] Ibid., p. 10.
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