Love Myths: How then should we love?
January 10th, 2010
Intro:
Let’s begin by working together on some verbal pictures of love. I’m inviting you to describe the image or images that pop into your head that picture what you think of when you hear the word “love” – I’ll get you started with an example or two (the easy, obvious ones…), and then leave the rest (the hard ones…) to you:
• a mother holding her new-born baby
• a couple at the altar exchanging their marriage vows
• …
• …
• …
Overview:
Those descriptions lead us into the topic I want to spend the next 5 weeks or so diving into together, as they lead us towards the season of Lent which this year begins right after Valentines day. That topic is this: how should we love?
Last week I shared two foundational truths that I need reminding of from time to time – that I am loved and that love is powerful. I’ve been reflecting more on this theme of love, and of our confusion as a culture around what love really is, and so since our Lord Jesus summed up all the law and the prophets in terms of love, in that very familiar Scripture, “Teacher, which is the most important commandment in the law of Moses?” 37 Jesus replied, “‘You must love the Lord your God with all your heart, all your soul, and all your mind.’ 38 This is the first and greatest commandment. 39 A second is equally important: ‘Love your neighbor as yourself.’ 40 The entire law and all the demands of the prophets are based on these two commandments.” (Matt 22:36-40); and since our goal as a community is to “love first”, I thought it worth a deeper exploration. How should we love? How do we actually live a love for God and a love for others?
Culture:
We shared some of our pictures about love, I wonder what messages our culture send us about love? It is an important question, because most of us are more immersed in our culture than we realize, and more immersed in our culture than in the culture of the Kingdom of God (and please note, I use that phrase “Kingdom of God” deliberately rather than “church culture”). As Christians today, we need to develop the skill of seeing and reading and understanding our culture, in comparison and contrast to the Kingdom of God, so that we can see the subtle yet powerful ways we have been shaped by the world around us instead of by the Holy Spirit. This is in obedience to Romans 12:2, “Don’t copy the behavior and customs of this world, but let God transform you” (NLT), or as one paraphrase I like puts it, “Don’t let the world around you squeeze you into its own mould, but let God re-make you”.
Now reading our culture’s messages on what love is could easily be a lifetime of full-time study and research, so indulge me in a highly selective exercise. I chose one powerful cultural medium: music. And I did a little digging – listened to some “top ten” songs, watched some videos, went back in history and chose some “famous” songs about love, read through the Grammy Nominee list. I wanted to pull some of those in this morning and do the exercise together, but there simply isn’t time in a sermon to do that kind of examination together, so you’ll have to rely on my summary and then do your own cultural analysis. The biggest message I took from my little exercise was this: “love” is a powerful feeling. That comes through the music, which grabs us emotionally and makes us feel – creates this connection with us, and opens us that emotion part of us so that we accept the message, we are open and so believe the song because of how it makes us feel. That message (love is a powerful feeling) comes through the lyrics also: “'Cause I can feel you breathe/It's washing over me/Suddenly I'm melting into you/There's nothing left to prove/Baby all we need is just to be/Caught up in the touch/The slow and steady rush/Baby, isn't that the way that love's supposed to be”; or “I want to know what love is/I want you to show me/I want to feel what love is/I know you can show me”; or “Your lights are on, but you're not home/Your mind is not your own/Your heart sweats, your body shakes/Another kiss is what it takes/You can't sleep, you can't eat/There's no doubt, you're in deep/Your throat is tight, you can't breathe/Another kiss is all you need… You know you're gonna have to face it, you're addicted to love”; or “Some say love, it is a river/That drowns the tender reed./Some say love, it is a razor/That leaves your soul to bleed./Some say love, it is a hunger,/An endless aching need./I say love, it is a flower,/And you it's only seed.”; or “You make me feel the way a woman/Is supposed to feel/So let me show you, show you/My love's for real/I'll be the rain in your summer/The chill in your fall/I'll be what you want/Anything at all/I've got a love for all seasons/A love for all time/I'll be the fire in your winter/The sun in your spring/I'll do what you want/Give you ev'rything/I've got a love for all seasons/A love for all time”; or “Cause when you're fifteen and somebody tells you they love you you're gonna believe them when you're fifteen and your first kiss makes your head spin 'round but in your life you'll do things greater than dating a boy on the football team...but I didn't know that at fifteen.” I could go on, and there is certainly more than just the one message about love as a powerful feeling, but that is I think the main message.
Is “love” a powerful feeling?
So now we need to take that cultural message and look at it through the lens of Scripture and the culture of the Kingdom of God, so that we can then look at our lives and see where the “world has squeezed us into its mould”. Does the Bible teach that love is a powerful feeling? Once again, let’s create this together – what do you think?
I would argue that this is a dangerous statement because it is partially true. There is certainly an emotional component to love – I doubt any of us would deny that. We read in Scripture of a God who is highly emotional – passionate, intimate, moved, angered, who weeps and shouts – and all of that is rooted in His very being as love itself. Our emotions become one powerful way that we can connect with our God, and if we deny this or subdue this we become hard and cold and a big part of us starts to die.
However, there is a subtlety in the cultural message “love is a powerful feeling” which is a lie, and a dangerous one at that: the lie is that the emotional component IS love. Love often produces an emotion, love is often expressed with emotion, love is very emotion-filled. But that is a result, an outcome, a part – it is not love itself. And I believe that many of us have been “squeezed into this mould” without really noticing it – in that for us to believe that we really are loved by God or others we must feel it, and it has to feel good. Now when I state it that plainly, most of us would disagree – we would say “of course that isn’t true!”; we think of examples or times or situations that provide evidence to the contrary – we might even find new pictures of love like the parent disciplining the child, or the friend saying something hard and unpleasant about how a course of action is wrong, or even the God of the Universe turning His back on His Son on the cross. But it is also true that in times of pain, or of struggle, many Christians are further bothered because they don’t feel (emotionally) the love of God, or they don’t feel the love of others, and this brings a whole host of questions and crisis of faith based on this cultural definition of love as an emotion and not on a Biblical definition.
This has not always been so. Students of Christian history are often inspired by the stories of Christians in the past who have faced extreme hardship, yet welcomed that as another expression of God’s love. Yes, you heard that correctly – they welcomed even the hardship and pain as an expression of God’s love, counting it a joy that they might share in the sufferings of Christ in this earthly life. I can honestly say that in 20 years of ministry in our culture, I haven’t heard much of that perspective. I hear far more of “where is God now? why has He abandoned me? why does a God who supposedly loves me allow me to suffer? if God is loving why do good people suffer? what did I do to God to deserve this?”. This is not at all to diminish our pain, or how real it is, or to invalidate those questions – in fact some of my deepest joys in ministry are in walking through those places and coming to the other side where people then look back with some peace and some resolutions. But as a starting place, that our suffering or negative feeling is somehow indicative of a problem with God or with our relationship with God or an evidence of something we did for which we are now being punished, that is a result of our cultural definition of love as powerful emotion, and an example of how we are shaped by that culture instead of by the Kingdom of God.
So What Then Is Love?
Ok, I recognize that is a little heavy, and involved. So let me lead us out of those complexities and into something simple. As we think of love, trying to figure out what it really is and what is of God and what is of our culture and what that means for how we live, here is where we can make this all really simple: Jesus.
God is love (1 John 4:8). Jesus is God (John 10:30). Therefore, Jesus is love. So we can take any message we receive about what love is from our culture, and ask the simple question: is that Jesus? So with today’s message, that love is a powerful emotion – does that describe Jesus? Jesus had powerful emotions, and Jesus had a powerful emotional effect on people, and people responded to Jesus in powerfully emotional ways, but those were responses, results, evidences, of something different. Something deeper. Something even more powerful. That “something else” is love.
So How Then Should We Love?
I said at the beginning that this sermon series is going to be about how we should love, so let’s turn to that question now. What does this deeper reflection on love and the emotional component of it mean for how you and I should love? I’m going to give you several options, and depending on where you are in life they may be irrelevant or they may be painfully close to the heart. I trust you and God to decide which ones to pay attention to and act on.
First, some of us need to live a love for God that is more emotional. There is some truth in our culture’s message that love is a powerful feeling, that truth being that love produces emotion. Many of us have, for a variety of reasons, stifled that emotional part of us especially in our relationship with God. But when Jesus commands us to “love the Lord your God with all your heart, all your soul, and all your mind”, it is more than just permission to express emotion towards God, it is a command. If there is no emotion in our worship, public and private, then something is wrong with either our relationship with God or with our emotions. My most practical advice for you is to start reading the Psalms – read one each day, read it with your heart and your feelings, allow the Holy Spirit to make some of those ancient words a very real emotional expression of your heart.
Second, on the other side, some of us need to reject the part of that cultural message that says the feelings are love, and begin to recognize the lies that sneak up on us through our emotions and then reject them. So in the times we don’t feel loved by God, we don’t go to the place where we somehow believe that is true and start to question and wonder and reject, and cause a bunch of new problems we have to deal with. In this part of the application of this message, we need to cultivate a New Testament view of suffering, pain, struggle, that sees the greatest love revealed through suffering as that is shared with others. For the first group I recommended the Psalms, for this group I recommend the writings of Paul, who consistently wrote much about suffering including this: “I want to know Christ and experience the mighty power that raised him from the dead. I want to suffer with him, sharing in his death.” (Phil 3:10).
Third, some of us need to live a love that is more emotional with the people around us. We need to weep with those that weep, laugh with those who laugh, especially as the hands and feet of Jesus to those in our culture that don’t really know Jesus in a personal way. Love doesn’t mean waiting for them to walk through the door of a church, love means we go to them like Jesus came to us – accepting, open, real, with actions of love and an openness to the emotions of love. And as we do, we help them to see that real love is not just powerful emotions, but that those are a result of something deeper. Put most simply, we point them to Jesus: when they ask why we are listening, why we care, why we brought a casserole, why we went to the funeral of someone we’d never met but was important to them, why we stepped in at work to help bail them out of a jam, why we were kind at school when others were being cruel, why we sent the note, why we continue to encourage and support a grandchild who is still repeating poor choices, every time, we answer by pointing them to Jesus, and saying very simply: we love because He loved us. Jesus’ command: “Love your neighbor as yourself.”.
Our obedience begins to be the answer to our prayer – “Your Kingdom come, Your will be done.”
