Something is either a choice or it isn’t. There is no such thing as choice being a “small player”; that makes no sense. There is no such thing as “slightly choosing.” If alternatives exist, then one chooses; if not, then one does not choose. Factors such as access to information, emotional states, social pressures, neurological conditions, and coercion may affect the quality and moral nature of a choice, but the act remains a choice.
When you choose to love someone, you engage in a deliberate act that reflects your values. If the feeling of love were imposed or manipulated, it would lack the self-directed quality that grounds moral responsibility. In other words, love that is not chosen, if such a thing exists at all, can hardly be said to be authentically yours, and thus it doesn’t carry the same moral weight - if any.
Love is a response to values. It is with a person’s sense of life that one falls in love—with that essential sum, that fundamental stand or way of facing existence, which is the essence of a personality. One falls in love with the embodiment of the values that formed a person’s character, which are reflected in his widest goals or smallest gestures, which create the style of his soul—the individual style of a unique, unrepeatable, irreplaceable consciousness. It is one’s own sense of life that acts as the selector, and responds to what it recognizes as one’s own basic values in the person of another. It is not a matter of professed convictions (though these are not irrelevant); it is a matter of much more profound, conscious and subconscious harmony.
Many errors and tragic disillusionments can occur in this process of emotional recognition, since a sense of life by itself is not a reliable cognitive guide. And if there are degrees of evil, one of the most devastating consequences of mysticism—in terms of human suffering—is the belief that love is solely a matter of “the heart,” not the mind; that love is an emotion independent of reason; that love is blind and impervious to the power of philosophy. In contrast, love is the expression of philosophy, a subconscious philosophical sum, and perhaps no other aspect of human existence so desperately requires the conscious power of philosophy. When that power is called upon to verify and support an emotional appraisal, when love becomes a conscious integration of reason and emotion, of mind and values, then, and only then, is it the greatest reward of human life" - Ian Rand
Yes, Rand was an atheist and got many things wrong, but she sure as hell got that much right!
Adding a decidedly Christian spin to another point Rand made: God is a living, rational being who stands as the standard of righteousness. That which affirms, supports, or enhances the life of a rational being is good; that which negates, opposes, or destroys it is evil. Love, friendship, respect, and admiration are the emotional responses of one person to the virtues of another; they are the voluntary and volitional spiritual payment exchanged for the personal, “selfish” pleasure derived from those virtues. Only a brute or an altruist would claim that the appreciation of another person’s virtues is an act of selflessness, that as far as one’s own selfish interest and pleasure are concerned, it makes no difference whether one deals with a genius or a fool, whether one meets a hero or a thug, whether one marries an ideal woman or a slut.
Do you see the point? Love isn’t merely an intellectual act; it is a response of your whole being. If you love God, it is because you recognize in God virtues that you value, virtues that are either reflected in your own character or that you aspire to cultivate. These virtues do not come involuntarily; they must be chosen, cultivated, practiced, and nurtured. Only the person who genuinely loves God can possess the fullest, most profound self-esteem, because you cannot love that which is contrary to your own life. You cannot love someone else if you hate yourself; and if you are evil, then even your affection becomes a form of self-hatred and hatred toward the object of your affection. In all cases—right and wrong, good and evil, love and hatred.
Of course, this discussion must lead inexorably to the issue of what Paul referred to as "the flesh". I won't go into that here for the sake of brevity except to say that love, friendship, respect, and admiration are choices that we make and the degree to which we act contrary to these choices it is not we who do it....
Romans 7:15 For what I am doing, I do not understand. For what I will to do, that I do not practice; but what I hate, that I do. 16 If, then, I do what I will not to do, I agree with the law that it is good. 17 But now, it is no longer I who do it, but sin that dwells in me. 18 For I know that in me (that is, in my flesh) nothing good dwells; for to will is present with me, but how to perform what is good I do not find. 19 For the good that I will to do, I do not do; but the evil I will not to do, that I practice. 20 Now if I do what I will not to do, it is no longer I who do it, but sin that dwells in me.
21 I find then a law, that evil is present with me, the one who wills to do good. 22 For I delight in the law of God according to the inward man. 23 But I see another law in my members, warring against the law of my mind, and bringing me into captivity to the law of sin which is in my members. 24 O wretched man that I am! Who will deliver me from this body of death? 25 I thank God—through Jesus Christ our Lord!
So then, with the mind I myself serve the law of God, but with the flesh the law of sin.
