There is an epic scene in The Princess Bride (isn’t
every scene in that movie epic?) where Inigo and Fezzik take Westley to Miracle
Max so that he can be revived, stop Prince Humperdink’s marriage to Buttercup
and most importantly, help Inigo avenge his father’s murder at the hands of the
six-fingered man. Max, not particularly interested in the venture, attempts to
send them away. But really, who can resist Fezzik? He’s a soft but deadly teddy
bear. Max lets them in and fills a bellows with air and pumps it into Westley’s
lungs. Before he forces the exhale by pressing on Westley chest he asks him
what it is that is so important? What does he have worth living for? Westley
softly gasps, “True love….”
“Ah ha! Did you hear that? He distinctly said ‘To blave,’”
Max quickly says. “And as we all know, ‘to blave’ means ‘to bluff’, heh? So you
were probably playing cards, and he cheated-”
At that moment a haggardly woman appears and screams,
“Liar! Liar! Lia----r! True Love, he said "True Love", Max.”
True love. #Lovewins. As long as we love each other.
This all seems to be the focal point of life. The zenith of our existence, the
pinnacle of relationships, the highest of emotions appears to be love.
Unfortunately, we often interpret true love as ‘to blave’ and vice a versa. As
with so many things, society has really lost touch with what love really means.
Parents who “love” their children try to be their friends, indulge them and
refuse to enforce any kind of discipline. Is this love? Whether married or not,
people will flirt with, sleep with and whatever else with whoever they want to,
in the name of love. Is this love? When disagreement with a particular
lifestyle is considered hate speech one must ask, is condoning everything that
everybody does love?
So what does love mean? And where do we get our
definitions of love from.
I would say that most folks probably get
their notions about love from the media and Hollywood. Entertainment has become
the model after which much of society replicates its life. At its most basic
level, the media teaches us two things about love:
-
Love is meant to fulfill us and make us
happy.
-
Love and sex are synonymous, and the
more uncontrollable desire and passion is, the stronger and purer the love.
Fewer people might get their definition
from a dictionary. There we might find it defined as such:
-
Intense feelings of deep affection
-
Deep romantic and sexual attachment
These descriptions are rather similar in that they
both are about the lover and the satisfaction of their desires.
But as followers of Christ, we need to get our
understanding of love from the Bible. Scripture says that God’s very essence is
love and that no one and nothing is equal to Him and His demonstration of it. There
are so many Scriptures dealing with love and so many pieces have been written
by those wiser and more spiritual than myself. For the sake of simplicity, let’s
sum it up like this:
-
Romans 5:8 “But God demonstrates His own
love toward us, in that while we were still sinners, Christ died for us.”
-
1 John 4:10 “In this is love, not that
we loved God, but that He loved us and sent His Son to be the propitiation for
our sins.”
-
1 John 3:16 “By this we know love,
because He laid down His life for us.”
A little bit of a difference between this definition
and the others, no? According to Scripture love isn’t so much about the lover
but about the beloved. Love gives of itself, dies to itself, lays itself down
for the sake of the one he loves. The object of real biblical love is not really
deserving of it, but rather it is the love that makes them so. C.S. Lewis, in
his book, The Four Loves, (worth the read) says,
“For the Church has no beauty but what the
Bridegroom gives her; he does not find her, but makes her, lovely.”
Love finds us stubborn, unfaithful, depraved,
ungrateful, dirty and undeserving. But it is love that breaks down our pride,
crushes the power of sin that holds us in bondage, cleanses us and makes us
faithful, thankful and deserving. We are unworthy yet receive the most. Christ
is all worthy and receives the least. And it’s important to remember this
because we are the object of that Love. God demonstrates His own love towards me in that while I was still a sinner, Christ died for me.” There is nothing quite
like love of God, is there? It touched the untouchable, healed the impossible,
comforted the mourners, and preached the good news, never giving a thought to
personal space or privacy. It was lied about, mocked, denied, betrayed and
beaten. Finally, as Love hung naked on an executioner’s cross, mingled with
blood and tears, struggling for breath, it uttered two unthinkable words:
Forgive them. And if Christ so loved me isn’t it only right that I love other
people the same way?
Aha, and so now we get down to it. It is all about
our response to the world we live in. Let’s
face
it, this world is a weird place. Our government is corrupt. The loud mouths
have an agenda that is both anti-God and anti-America. Schools invite Planned
Parenthood to speak to children about an ideology that justifies promiscuity
and the murder of innocent children. Nobody knows what bathroom to use. There
is a push to disarm the populace thus emboldening our enemies. The economy is
on the brink of collapse and there is no national pride. The two extremes that
I have observed in much of Western Christianity seems to be that either we will
tolerate everything and confront nothing or else we confront everything and
tolerate nothing. One results in a gross misconstruing of the gospel and the
other results in a gross misconstruing of the gospel.
When the Bible says that love covers a multitude of
sins, it does not mean that love tolerates and accepts a multitude of sins. Jesus
never excused people’s sins. He was not afraid to call it what it was. Yet it
is the love and the kindness of Jesus that leads us to repentance. Jesus did
not accept the sin of the woman caught in adultery but neither did He condemn
her. He told her to go and sin no more. He did not leave the man possessed with
a legion of demons to remain among the tombs. Even the Pharisees, who Jesus was
constantly confronting about their pseudo religiosity and unbelief, brought Him
to weeping for the hardness of their hearts. Sin is sin and hypocrisy is
hypocrisy and Jesus died for sinners and hypocrites. What drew me to Jesus was
not that He was OK with my sin, but rather that He was willing to get into the
mud and muck that I had made my home in and pull me out of it!
Real love, true love has the power to change things.
It is not an emotion. It is not a hype. It is not a whim. It is a Spirit-led
reaction that only comes to those who are led by God. Love says “no” when it
has to. Love does not let people walk off a cliff because they might not want
to hear the truth that there is a cliff. Love doesn’t shy away from
confrontation because it’s unpopular. But love knows when to confront and how.
Abby Johnson was the director of a Planned
Parenthood clinic for 8 years. She honestly thought that she was helping women.
But after participating in an ultrasound guided abortion she left the industry,
resulting in a lawsuit by her former employer which consequentially put her at
the forefront of the pro-life/pro-abortion debate. But behind the scenes, there
had been a group of people who would stand outside of her clinic. I know what images
this conjures in our minds. Angry white men yelling, name calling and holding
signs of aborted babies. But these people didn’t do that. Oh, they didn’t hide
their stance on abortion. But they showed the love of Christ. They prayed. They
prayed that God would bring light and life into the lives of both the patients
and the staff. “They were friendly and showed genuine interest in me,” she told
me. “They built a relationship, they wanted to know my name and things about my
life, not to publish it publicly or make threats but because they really just
cared about me and wanted to know who they were praying for and what my deepest
needs were. They were confidential as well and never sent out ugly postcards
with my name, face or address on them. I think those things made a huge
difference in building my trust and giving me the courage to quit.” Since then
Abby has been a major voice in the fight for life. She also founded an
organization called And Then There Were None, which reaches out to abortion
clinic workers, helping them leave the abortion industry and find healing and forgiveness.
And Then There Were None has helped 240 clinic workers leave the industry,
including 7 doctors! God spoke to her through the love of those faithful people
outside the that fence.
Love is a name that means something. And love can do
amazing things when God’s people live it in the world around them. “When there
is much pain to be borne, a little courage helps more than much knowledge, a
little human sympathy more than much courage, and the least tincture of the
love of God more than all.” (C.S. Lewis, The Problem of Pain)
“For the love of Christ compels us, because we judge
thus: that if One died for all, then all died; and He died for all, that those
who live should live no longer for themselves, but for Him who died for them
and rose again. Therefore, from now on, we regard no one according to the
flesh. Even though we have known Christ according to the flesh, yet now we know
Him thus no longer. Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation;
old things have passed away; behold, all things have become new.” 2 Corinthians 5:14-17
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