A Review of Love as a Way of Life

I’m not sure that there is a greater marketing gimmick in the world than romantic love. Music, films, books, paintings, all depict love in various forms and glorify, if not deify, the concept of romantic love. As a consequence of this ongoing glorification, I’ve tended to view books on love with a certain amount of suspicion. And so it was when I was contacted to put together a blog review on Gary Chapman’s newest book, Love as a Way of Life: Seven Keys to Transforming Every Aspect of your Life (Waterbrook Press, 2008). I'm also notoriously skeptical of subtitles like this one.

I knew of Chapman’s The Five Love Languages, and he has written his first study of love since that famous work. Love as a Way of Life is his attempt to reframe the reader’s view of love from romantic concepts to realistic ones. He breaks down the concept of love into seven constituent parts, and provides a definition of each one.

Kindness: The joy of meeting someone else’s needs before your own simply for the sake of the relationship

Patience: Allowing someone to be imperfect

Forgiveness: Using honesty, compassion, and self awareness to reconcile with someone who hurt you

Courtesy: The act of treating everyone as a personal friend

Humility: a peacefulness of heart that allows you to stand aside in order to affirm the value of someone else

Generosity: giving your attention, time, abilities, money, and compassion freely to others

Honesty: a loving consistency in speech thought and action

In each chapter he defines that aspect of love. He usually relates a narrative from his counseling experience that illustrates how the individual was either practicing or not practicing that particular trait.

Take his definition of courtesy. It eschews the common concept of the word (saying Thank you and Yes Ma'am) and provides it with a much greater depth. It only takes a minute to see how our lives might be transformed by characteristic of love. How might your day be changed if you treated everyone you encountered as a personal friend? Would it affect the way you interact with the cashier at Wal-Mart? Would it affect the hostile student complaining about a grade? How would it affect the long-suffering secretary in the doctor’s office who is trying to work your sick child into an unscheduled appointment? Would it affect your response to your wife at the end of a busy week when you are both exhausted and the kids are fighting?

Chapman defines the terms and then offers practical suggestions for implementing them. He includes the competitor of each of these characteristics of love (e.g. busyness is the competitor of courtesy) and offers specific suggestions for cultivating these selfless acts.

Chapman rejects the common view that one falls into and out of love as though it were a disease alternately caught and overcome. He argues that anyone who claims to love must translate those words into concrete actions. As he writes, “Love is an attitude that leads to a change in behavior.” Specifically, love bears scant resemblance to popular conditions of romantic love that fades over time in the face of the demands of work, kids, relatives, and even due to high school reunions.

For Chapman, authentic love is not an ethereal feeling, but a concrete series of specific tasks and this book is about equipping the reader for these tasks.

As a joke, sometimes I steal the line from As Good as it Gets and say to Kadie (with appropriate Nicholson inflection) “You make me wanna be a better man!”

Chapman reminds me that wanting to do something is not the same thing as equipping me to do so. This work equips the reader for a life-transforming task. It is probably the best book on personal development I’ve read in the 20 years since I read since Scott Peck’s A Road Less Travelled.

In closing, I told Kadie about the book and she had noticed me trying to work on some of the traits he discusses. Stealing one of Chapman's questions from his section on marriage, I asked her “Kadie, how can I be a better husband to you?” Without missing a beat she replied “Keep reading books like that one.”

High praise indeed!

Now for a little contest. I also received two extra copies of this book! The first two readers to email me the languages of love (all five) from Capman's previous book will get a free copy of Love as a Way of Life.