While picking up random books and magazines and observing the great secular humanatarian efforts, I became increasingly startled at our culture’s cheapening definition of love.
A book I found in my sister’s room contains an introduction which writes, “There is no true religion, … there is no one right way to heaven,…there is just love.” and the pages ensued, “we need to be kinder to one another.” Reading further, it even quotes, from the Song of Solomon, a passage about love.
A friend recently posted a link on facebook which linked to a Newsweek article (I hate Newsweek) which tries to justify homosexual marriage by quoting verses from the Bible, claming that love is the reason why Christians should accept it.
These along many other examples in our culture all lend a certain way, a certain dogma, a campaign slogan that if you cannot hear it, I’ll sum it up for you right here: We’re lowering the bar for love!
In my heart, something twists inside me when I see these things. To see the Bible’s most treasured teaching to be thrown down and sold at bargain prices. One of my favorite verses is even Jesus saying in John 13, “A new commandment I give you: Love one another. By this, all men will know that you are my disciples, if you love one another.” And out of this charge from the scriptures, came forth so many of history’s greatest social revolutions- antislavery movement, anti-apartheid movement, anti-racism movement, all pioneered by God-fearing Christian men such has Wilburforce and Martin Luther King Jr, to name a few.
But in the same name, yet not in the same spirit, our culture is crying for a lowering standard in its definition of love. In the name of love, it wants us to accept all things, condone all things, legalize all things, and be quiet about many things.
And the difference between this new love that’s rising and pure genuine Christian love is that the Bible does not separate truth from the equation. Real love is love in truth. Secularists want to get Jesus, a man who taught love, on their side to justify the immoralities we’re seeing. But the reality is that from Jesus, scipture writes, comes “grace and truth” (John 1). Even the passage quoted at mostly all weddings about love writes, “Love does not delight in evil, but it rejoices with the truth” (1 Corinthians 13).
But why so bothered Phil? Why so disturbed? Why must Christians always put God into anything non-God-believing people want to do out of pure intentions?
The truth is, it is because God gets robbed out of his great attribute, which is love. 1 John writes, “God is love.” But people make the mistake of believing that love is God, and that is not the case. God is love. God invented love, it was His idea, it was his good pleasure that people should love one another, and it was his definition that love would come at a great cost- the blood of his Son Jesus Christ. And to take that, to make it something less, and to trump the “love” card, is not just offensive to me, it is flat out wrong.
So here I am, sounding the trumpet-
True love is loved in truth, and yes, it is birth from God Almighty.
