The self-proclaimed “King of Adultery” was dethroned this week after his adultery website, Ashley Madison, was hacked. Private data of more than 30 million users was leaked by a hacker group calling itself “The Impact Team”. Good name.
They’ve had quite an impact. There have been at least 2 suicides by men that used the website and had their names exposed. Many other marriages are now hanging in the balance as wives learn of their husband’s at least exploration of extra-marital affairs.
It’s not a happy state of affairs for a lot of people these days.
My first impression when I heard about this adultery-encouraging website 6 or 7 years ago was: “Now there’s an idea from the pit of hell”.
And, of course, it is. A couple makes a solemn vow rooted in love, a covenant for a lifetime, the most important contract 2 humans can ever make. And a website exists to reel married people into breaking that covenant, to dishonouring that vow. An idea from the pit of hell.
The website, and the company behind it, is facing several class action lawsuits totalling more than 500 million dollars. Whatever profit the owners made will disappear into nothing, as will, sadly, an unknown number of marriages.
It makes you wonder. It makes you think. About the nature of human beings. About what people will do to make money. It might even make you wonder about love. Human love. The nature of it. The quality of it.
Yeah...What is love? Have you ever asked that? Or have you ever had someone say to you that they didn’t know what love is? I’ve seen people really struggle to find out what it means to love.
I’ve seen friendships fail for lack of love. If you think about it, we’ve seen devastation occur for lack of love. The shooting this week on air of a reporter and a cameraman by an angry and disturbed former anchorman. The massacre earlier in the summer in July of 9 people participating in a Bible Study by a racist. Ongoing strife in Palestine and Israel.
ISIS trying to establish a barbaric, medieval religious society or theocracy. That’s just one battle the world faces today.
There are too many places in the world where war rages under the radar of front page news headlines. We don’t hear about most of the wars going on in the world unless those wars directly affect western interests.
And we ask, “Why!?” What in the world has brought about the current state of the world? Most of us are used to just struggling with our own problems, working through our own issues. Our minds occupied with the day-to-day.
And then...BOOM. The huge struggles that the world is facing intrude in on our lives. With a vengeance. It might seem like it’s been a while, and it has been, since 9/11, since the Rwandan Genocide. But wait for it. Sadly, there’s more to come. So many people, it seems, are so angry at others. There’s so much hate in the world.
This is difficult to talk about because for most of us here today, we come to church to learn to live another way, to connect our lives or to renew our connection with the One who is love itself, the One who said, “Greater love has no man than to lay die his life for his friends” and followed it up with action.
The God who by definition is “love”. But if we’re going to understand, truly, the power of love, we need to take a realistic, if brief, look at the problem of hate. There is a power to hate. It is
The Power of Confusion
John says in 1 John 2:11 “Whoever hates his brother is in the darkness and walks around in the darkness; he does not know where he is going, because the darkness has blinded him”.
Hatred distorts reality. It causes people to be so focussed on what they are upset about that they don’t see how it is changing them, how it is affecting them. Those who hate don’t know where they are going, says John.
The power of hate is also the power to divide.
The Power to Divide
Hate involves a deep rejection of another. It is not merely a matter of not having time for another. It involves a wholesale rejection of another person.
Then comes a great divide. Once there was perhaps a walking together, a talking together, a sharing together. Now there are only walls. Barriers.
A new not-knowing another. And then in the absence of communication and relationship, assumptions are made. The worst is thought. The vacuum is filled with suspicions.
People who should be friends, be working together toward a common good are prevented by a huge division between them.
The Power to Kill
This is pretty obvious. We have too many current examples of this. The impact of hate is felt by
anyone who reads the news.
And then of course, hate destroys the hater.
Hate is not to be taken lightly. We almost never talk about this in church, but at times like these, especially when we want to reflect on the polar opposite thing to hate...love...it’s worth it to pause and think about why love is so important. Why self-giving is so important.
It’s important to reflect also because it’s pretty easy, effortless really, to get caught up in hate. Hate can easily find expression in us, if we listen to our emotions more than we do our Saviour.
What does our Saviour say? He says something even more challenging than what we are looking at today in 1 John. Jesus says, “Love your enemies”. We can never forget this.
On February 9, 1960, Adolph Coors III, millionaire head of Coors Company, was kidnapped and held for ransom. Seven months later his body was found on a remote hillside. He had been shot to death. Adolph Coors IV was then fifteen years old. He lost not only his father, but also his best friend.
For years Adolph Coors IV hated Joseph Corbett, the man who was sentenced to life for the slaying of Adolph Coors III.
In 1975, almost 15 years later, Adolph Coors IV became a Christian. Yet, his hatred for Corbett, the murderer of his Dad, still consumed him.
Adolph Coors knew he needed to forgive Corbett as Jesus Christ forgave him. So he visited the maximum-security unit of Colorado’s Canon City penitentiary to talk with Joseph Corbett. Corbett refused to see him.
So Coors left Corbett a Bible with the following inscription: "I’m here to see you today, and I’m sorry that we could not meet.
As a Christian I am summoned by our Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ, to forgive. I do forgive you, and I ask you to forgive me for the hatred I’ve held in my heart for you."
Later Coors confessed, "I have a love for that man that only Jesus Christ could have put in my heart."
Martin Luther King said: “Hate begets hate, violence begets violence, toughness begets a greater toughness. We must meet the forces of hate with the power of love”
We want to consider today God’s call, through the letter of John, to us to love one another. And we want to explore for a bit the way the Jesus equips us to love, enables us to love, transforms our hatred, our bitterness and unforgiveness...into love.
What is love? What is the power of love? What does loving have to offer us that hating will never get us?
The Power of Love is at least two things:
10 Whoever loves his brother lives in the light, and there is nothing in him to make him stumble.
The Power of Love is firstly that it gives light and clarity. When we love, we very often will look at life and at others with more understanding.
That’s because love listens. It doesn’t assume it knows. Hate is closed, mind-made-up, judgement made.
Hate envies. Hate keeps close tabs on the behaviour of others. Hate is self-seeking. Hate is a hair-trigger. Hate loves to see harm come to others.
But Scripture tells us that:
Love is patient, love is kind. It does not envy, it does not boast, it is not proud. It is not rude, it is not self-seeking, it is not easily angered, it keeps no record of wrongs. Love does not delight in evil but rejoices with the truth. It always protects, always trusts, always hopes, always perseveres.
Love never fails. 1 Cor 13:4-8
God is the POWER behind love. That is why love is all these things.
Secondly, The Power of love is its ability to bring healing. Every headline of every newspaper reminds us of how desperately broken our world is. There is so much war and insurrection.
There is so much desperate poverty. There are so many families touched by separation and divorce. Doctors advise us to not watch the news before we go to bed because there is just too much bad news.
Love reaches out to bring healing....
Jesus is the source of love, His Holy Spirit the One who empowers us to love, the Christ is the greatest example of Love, love which flows from the father heart of God.
You and I interact with hundreds of hurting people every week. We are also among the hurting, but I hope we’re discovering that our own healing is actually wrapped up in the healing others receive through us through our care, through our love.
How can God’s love bring healing through you? Does all this talk about love seem pretty lame or pretty distant to you? Do you ever wonder, “If I don’t feel love, how can I act in a loving way?”
Newspaper columnist and minister George Crane tells of a wife who came into his office full of hatred toward her husband. “I do not only want to get rid of him; I want to get even. Before I divorce him, I want to hurt him as much as he has me.”
Dr. Crane suggested an ingenious plan. “Go home and act as if you really loved your husband. Tell him how much he means to you. Praise him for every decent trait. Go out of your way to be as kind, considerate, and generous as possible. Spare no efforts to please him, to enjoy him.
“Make him believe you love him. After you’ve convinced him of your undying love and that you
cannot live without him, then drop the bomb. Tell him that you’’re getting a divorce. That will really hurt him.”
With revenge in her eyes, she smiled and exclaimed, “Beautiful, beautiful. Will he ever be
surprised!”” And she did it with enthusiasm. Acting “as if.” For two months she showed love,
kindness, listening, giving, reinforcing, sharing.
“When she didn’t return, Crane called. “Are you ready now to go through with the divorce?” “Divorce?!?” she exclaimed. “Never! I discovered I really do love him.”
Her actions had changed her feelings. Motion resulted in emotion. The ability to love is established not so much by fervent promise as often-repeated deeds.
Love heals divisions. Love asks for forgiveness. Love gives forgiveness. Love reaches out, touches the lives of others and is itself nourished as it reaches out.
And it is the love of God that is the true love that stands as the eternal standard and definition of what love is and means. God...is...LOVE. And, as the scripture says, we love because He first loved us!
And because God loves us, it is possible that you and I live or lives in the light of…not hatred and bitterness, and the resulting misery and confusion, but in the light of the good news, the gospel of Jesus Christ. That is God's highest expression of love to you and to me.
I close with a quote about the gospel from an important follower of Christ a few centuries back:
Without the gospel everything is useless and vain;
without the gospel we are not Christians;
without the gospel all riches is poverty,
all wisdom folly before God;
strength is weakness, and all the justice of man is under the condemnation of God.
But by the knowledge of the gospel we are made children of God, brothers of Jesus Christ,
fellow townsmen with the saints, citizens of the Kingdom of Heaven,
heirs of God with Jesus Christ,
by whom the poor are made rich,
the weak strong, the fools wise, the sinner justified,
the desolate comforted, the doubting sure,
and slaves free.
It is the power of God for the salvation of all those who believe.
This is what we should in short seek in the whole of Scripture: truly to know Jesus Christ, and the infinite riches that are comprised in him and are offered to us by him from God the Father.
Let’s pray.
God, thank you for Your love. It is bigger than every struggle we face. It is more healing than the best medicine. Your love is greater than death, than shame, than sorrow. Teach us to love, O God. Teach us to love one another through actions and not only words. Teach us to love our enemies, help us to rise to that challenge. And may Your love be seen in our lives daily. We ask this in Jesus’ name. Amen.
