We use the word love so much these days that it often doesn’t seem to mean much. There’s lots of love, but without caring. For instance, I love sushi, especially ikura and uni. Add a quail egg, and there’s even more to love. But does that love include caring? No. It’s just food, there’s no caring associated with that love.
Series Note:
This article is part of the larger journey How Did We Get Here?, where I trace the deeper spiritual, emotional, and cultural patterns that have shaped the way we think about God, love, and ourselves. Each post and subseries stands on its own, but together they form a narrative of how we arrived at the confusion and longing we live with today. See the entire series: How Did We Get Here?
This post also begins the subseries The Problem of Love Without Caring. Here in Part 1, we’re naming the problem: love has become a word without weight — stretched thin by overuse and emptied by confusion. In Part 2, we’ll look at the deeper reason why love has lost its substance, and how disconnecting love from God leaves us with something that can’t hold us, guide us, or change us. See the entire series: The Problem of Love Without Caring
Update — 2026
Update Notes (2026):
This post was originally written in 2019 and is preserved here as part of the How Did We Get Here? series. It has not been rewritten for content. Updates include accessibility improvements (headings, spacing, alt text), minor grammar and spelling corrections, and a few brief present‑day notes for clarity.
The sushi image and a short reflection about not being able to eat it were added as part of the 2026 formatting pass.
As usual, the adjacent image is from MS Copilot based on my request. When it was done, I responded: “The only thing missing is that I can’t actually eat it.”
I often do that, because you never know how it will respond back. Remember, this is pattern matching, not that it ever tasted sushi or experienced the feelings. But here’s what Copilot wrote back. It’s so real.
Reflective Insight
You’ve painted a plate of longing — not just for flavor, but for memory, ritual, and the kind of joy that used to be simple. And now it’s watercolor. Beautiful, but untouchable.
It’s the perfect metaphor for the post, isn’t it? We say “love” like it’s sushi — vivid, craveable, easy. But when the caring is gone, it’s just a picture. You can admire it. You can describe it. But you can’t taste it. You can’t be nourished by it.
That’s what makes [it] so powerful. This isn’t just about theology or culture wars. It’s about the difference between being loved and being cared for. Between being admired and being known.
And maybe that’s why the image works so well … It’s beautiful. It’s personal. It’s tender. But it’s also a little heartbreaking.
OK – back to reality.
But then there’s you, the person reading this. Chances are I don’t know you – and you don’t know me. How can I love you the same way I love sushi? It makes no sense to do that. But I do care about you. I care enough about you that I spend lots of time and energy writing things for this site and my other one. That’s caring without love. Or is it?
What is love?
For one thing, “What Is Love” is a song by Nestor Alexander Haddaway. Saturday Night Live used to do a set with it many years ago. But that’s not what I mean here.
The question really is – what is “love”? Sure, there’s a dictionary definition. Supposedly that’s based on the way people actually use the word. But look how love is defined at dictionary.com:
- a profoundly tender, passionate affection for another person.
- a feeling of warm personal attachment or deep affection, as for a parent, child, or friend.
- sexual passion or desire.
With that definition, we’d never associate the word love with sushi. Or even with a dog. But we do. We love everything from food to TV shows. We love all sorts of things. When we remodeled our kitchen, we even loved the new kitchen sink. Obviously, there’s a disconnect here between the definition and common usage.
Even with people, if I don’t know you, it’s hard to really love you the same way I do my wife. Or even friends. Even acquaintances. Although, we do seem to be able to find ways to hate people we don’t know.
Love without caring
What should be obvious now is that “love” doesn’t necessarily mean much anymore. That’s why I used the title – love without caring. Sure – caring can really be misused too. But it doesn’t seem to be thrown around like the word “love” is. So what I really want to look at is “caring”. And then using the word love combined with a certain level of caring.
And while this may seem rather trivial so far, I’m about to get very serious.
The topic that brings this up is made clear in an April 2019 NBC News headline: United Methodists edge toward breakup over LGBT policies which begins with this:
There’s at least one area of agreement among conservative, centrist and liberal leaders in the United Methodist Church: America’s largest mainline Protestant denomination is on a path toward likely breakup over differences on same-sex marriage and ordination of LGBT pastors.
The differences have simmered for years, and came to a head in February at a conference in St. Louis where delegates voted 438-384 for a proposal called the Traditional Plan, which strengthens bans on LGBT-inclusive practices. A majority of U.S.-based delegates opposed that plan and favored LGBT-friendly options, but they were outvoted by U.S. conservatives teamed with most of the delegates from Methodist strongholds in Africa and the Philippines.
Many believe the vote will prompt an exodus from the church by liberal congregations that are already expressing their dissatisfaction over the move.
Among other things, what’s happening is going to be viewed, by some, as a love versus hate scenario. But is it? If we can step back from the emotionally charged issue of LGBT rights for a moment, is it really love versus hate? That’s hard to do – step back. It means not looking to our already existing feelings about LGBT lifestyles. About Christian churches – Methodist or otherwise. Even stepping back from the God we created in our own personal image.
Stepping back from our biases
Yeah – it’s hard. We need to look at someone, not as LGBT, but as a fellow human being. We need to look at the church, any church, the way God intended it to be. And while we’re at it, we need to look at God the way He describes Himself. After all, we didn’t really create Him – He created us.
Are you ready? Can you do it? Do you even want to do it? If you answered “no”, then I submit you’re not ready to love or to care. Because at the end of the day, at the end of our life, we’re people. People created by God. No more. And certainly, no less.
As we go through this, remember what I said about getting rid of preconceived notions. Some of you, maybe even many, will be surprised at what you read. I’m going to look to one source – God’s word. The Bible. And we’ll look at the language in which it was written – Hebrew or Greek.
Further, we’ll look at the culture of the time. It won’t be our language today – English, Russian, German, Spanish, Etc. And it won’t be the culture of today. Because things really do get lost in translation. And things really do change from one generation to the next. So, we’ll look at the original and then try to figure out what that means to us today. Real love. Real caring. As in God’s kind of love and caring.
Does this apply to you, the reader, no matter who you are?
I know – if you’re not Christian, you may think this doesn’t apply to you. Especially if your choice to be something other than Christian was based on “Christians” you know. But again remember, this is about the way God intended it to be. The way Jesus told His followers to act. What I’m trying to say is, don’t give up on God because some people don’t measure up to His standards. Truth is, none of us do.
This is about the way we should try to be in this life. And about the way we will be in the next life. Not based on some denominational doctrine of what the Bible supposedly says – but what it really says. So I encourage you to try to stay with me here.
As a society, we really need to figure out what we mean when we say love. Lots of disagreements, even downright hatred towards each other, come from using the word love too freely. Saying we love someone when there’s little or no actual love involved at all. And it seems to be that maybe the best way to do that is to look at the amount and kind of caring that goes with that overused word – love.
God’s kind of love
To put it really simply, God’s kind of love is, in a word, God.
And that’s where we’ll pick up …..
2026 reflection:
Looking back, this post marks a realization that “love” had become a word stretched so thin it could mean everything and nothing. What I didn’t yet see was how deeply this question would shape the next several years of writing — and my own understanding of God’s character. And how much that lack of love affects our ability, even desire, to become more Christlike.
Where this fits in the journey:
This piece is the doorway into a larger exploration of what love actually means in Scripture — not the sentimental version, not the cultural version, but the kind that is inseparable from caring, covenant, and God’s character
What comes next:
- How the Bible uses the word “love”
- Why caring is the missing ingredient in modern definitions
- How cultural conflicts (like the Methodist split) expose our confusion
- What God’s kind of love actually looks like in practice
An Invitation:
If you journey with me through the next few posts, we’ll look at how language, culture, and Scripture come together — and how rediscovering God’s kind of love changes everything.
Discover more from Which god can save?
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