I have periodically given authority figures in my life reason to say, “Ben, do your duty.” We’ve all heard similar exhortations before. I certainly heard it more as a young man than I hear it now, thankfully, but I heard it enough that it became something like a mantra of nobility. Subtly and over a lengthy period of time, I imagined life as a series of duties to be accomplished well or poorly, as if doing one’s duty was the aim in life. In so doing, I made a serious mistake and bumbled into one of my biggest life misconceptions.

God did not give us a life full of duties to perform, but a life full of loves to choose.

The point of this post is not to discuss which loves we should choose. That’s a different topic for a different day. The point of this post is to help us prioritize love over duty. If we focus on our duties, we aim short and we will most certainly fall short of joy as a result. I think it’s one of the easiest errors in life to make because our loves are so shallow. We so often require something besides love to compel us to do what’s right.

As C.S. Lewis once said, “A perfect man would never act from a sense of duty; he’d always want the right thing more than the wrong one. Duty is only a substitute for love (of God and of other people) like a crutch which is a substitute for a leg. Most of us need the crutch at times; but of course it is idiotic to use the crutch when our own legs (our own loves, tastes, habits etc.) can do the journey on their own.”

How many of us have become so sustained by duty that we have forgotten how to aim higher?

How many of us have forgotten to strengthen our loves, tastes, and habits? The only way to develop Christian loves is by practicing those loves?

Maybe we recognize that our loves are emaciated and require a crutch, like duty, to keep us moving. Maybe we’d like to gain the strength to throw off the crutch, but just aren’t sure how. Well here is my list, and certainly not an exhaustive one, to help strengthen my loves. Maybe we could do this together.

• Pray for more love: James tells us that if we lack wisdom, then we should ask for it and God is faithful to give: “If any of you lacks wisdom, let him ask God, who gives generously to all without reproach, and it will be given him. But let him ask in faith, with no doubting, for the one who doubts is like a wave of the sea that is driven and tossed by the wind” (James 1:5-6). How much more so with love? If you don’t love what you should love, then ask for more love and then be patient. Love, especially lasting love, is rarely born overnight.

• Be intentionally thankful: seems obvious, but unless we’re consciously finding things to be thankful for and expressing that thanks, then we’ll soon stop being thankful. We will always slip to the lowest common denominator, namely ungratefulness, unless we’re intentional.

• Hunt duty down: look for two areas in your life where duty has substituted love. Got them? Now look at those areas from God’s perspective. Why does he have you there? Is it possible that what you have grown to tolerate is actually something he loves? I don’t think we can love as deeply or as much as God does, but I think we can certainly ask for more and try more.

If we practice these things intentionally, then we will find, given time, that we don’t need a crutch anymore; in fact, we’ll probably realize we haven’t been using a crutch for awhile now.