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On September 3, 2013 By In Culture

Can Love Be Defined?

Following a debate between Pastor Douglas Wilson and Andrew Sullivan on “gay marriage”, Peter Leithart noted that advocates of gay marriage have all the right words on their side: love, happiness, equality, etc. If two people really love each other, why should we oppose them getting married? Why should it bother us if they are happy together?

This got me thinking about what love is. We promiscuously throw around the word “love” as if it is self-evident to all. Is love the equivalent of saying the sky is blue or Alabama is the best college football team in the country? Is it really that obvious?  We talk about love in TV shows, talk radio, literature, music, film, and social media. Yet what is it exactly and how can do we know what it is? Is love a feeling that compels me to pursue a deeper knowledge of someone else? Is love the same feeling that compels one to seek out pornography?  Is love the pursuit of making peace with all my enemies no matter the cost? Does love compel me to destroy all my enemies no matter the cost? Does love involve a commitment and if so what kind? Do I love my girlfriend in the same way I love the Pittsburgh Steelers? Is love all about my satisfaction or is it about my serving others?  Can real love fade? Is love something that happens to me or something I do? Is love a biochemical reaction in my body conditioned by years of evolution so that I can ensure my seed will carry on?  Surely love can’t be all of these things at once?

Can a word this ubiquitous also be this amorphous? Apparently so. While love is rich and multifaceted, it is not undefinable.  Below are some foundation stones necessary to begin building a definition of love.

Love is not self-evident in a fallen world. Love must be defined and explained. As Christians we should not let ourselves, the World, or other Christians get away with using a word they refuse to define.  That does not mean someone can only love if they know the definition of love. But it does mean that in debate and discussion the word needs to be fenced in.

We cannot accurately define and explain love without the Triune God (Father, Son, and Holy Spirit) because God is love.  To speak of love without speaking of God is like a blind man talking about the glories of a Rembrandt painting.

Trinity 1

Who God is also not self-evident. There are some remnants of God’s image in each man, woman, and in societies as a whole, but these remnants are twisted. Therefore we cannot come to a solid definition of God or love by looking into ourselves or at human relationships, though we may gather some remnants. To know what love is, we must know who God is. And to know who God is we must know the Bible. The Bible defines what it means to love God and love our neighbor. Without the whole Bible, love is an empty jar filled to be filled by our own human ideas.

The love of God is clearest in the sacrifice of the Son on the cross for the sins of His enemies. Any definition of love, which excludes this, is inadequate though it may contain some truth. The supreme act of love is then fleshed out by the types and shadows of the Old Testament and the fulfillment in the New  Testament.

Every Christian believes they are acting out of love for God and neighbor.  The Christian who refuses to call homosexuality a sin believes he is acting out of love. The Christian who tells every woman they meet to wear skirts to their ankles also believes he is acting out of love. The fire breathing legalist and the lesbian minister and everyone in between believes they are acting out of love. The point is, no Christian believes they are acting out of hate. And the same can be said of most non-Christians as well, though there are some exceptions. Therefore when we encourage people to love one another and love God that love must be defined. There must be a common standard.

People will not always feel loved, even when we show them love.   Sometimes people will walk around saying how loving we are. Other times they will call us hate mongers or bigots or traitors.  Sometimes our neighbors will say we love them when we are just sleeping with them. Sometimes they will think we hate them even when we are acting in love toward them. The Bible must be the standard that sets our criteria for love, not our communities or our critics.  This does not mean we ignore our critics. Critics often have good points. But those critics must be judged by Scripture, not Scripture by the critics.

Just because we can quote a Bible verse, which justifies our position, does not mean we are actually loving God or our neighbor.  The motivation, the intentions behind our actions are as vital as the actions themselves. Love is a biblical act linked with a biblical motivation for that act.   This does not mean we avoid loving acts until our motivation is right. It just means that both the “what” and the “why” must be considered when pursuing love.

Missions 1

To love God and our neighbor means we must hate evil. We must speak with clarity and boldness against sin and unrighteousness. To refuse to hate evil is to refuse to love God and our neighbor. If we love God then we are bound to rebuke men, women, and institutions who love sin. We can’t love God or our neighbor if we don’t hate sin and evil. Biblical hatred is a prerequisite for Christian witness and mission. Love the sinner, hate the sin. And in doing so, imitate our Father who loves us.

(For a great exploration of the different types of love from a Christian perspective read C.S. Lewis’ The Four Loves.) 

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On July 26, 2013 By In Theology

Are You Planning on Delighting in Your Children Today?

Yesterday, I posted “Are You Planning on Yelling at Your Children Today?” and a whole bunch of people read it. I am thinking that the overwhelming majority of you are struggling with the same sour-puss attitudes in your home that my wife and I have been for many years. Not our children’s attitudes. Ours. They are picking those attitudes up from us and honing them into weapons of mass destruction.

If you read and shared the article yesterday because the Lord used me as “Nathan” in your life and you played the role of “the man,” then I would like to ask, “What are you going to do about it?” What does repentance look like? An ex-drunkard can stay away from bars, and an ex-porn participator can stay away from the pictures, but if we’re stuck with our kids, and we most gloriously are, then what are we to do? And as whiskey and nudity are not the problems in those aforementioned cases, the wicked heart of the sinner is the problem, so also it is in the case of your fits of anger with your kids. You need to be changed in order to affect any change in your routine at home, i.e. if you’ve been yelling at you kids every day for years, don’t expect one internet article to “make all the difference in the world.”

As sinners, we have a wrong view of God, a wrong view of ourselves, a wrong view of our neighbor, and a wrong view of the world around us. As Christians, it doesn’t have to stay this way; we don’t have to be the way we were, because Jesus came to shine light into darkness. He has been doing this since He originally said, “Let there be light,” (Gen 1:3); afterward He was conceived by the Holy Spirit (Mt. 1:18), born of the Virgin Mary to be that light of the world (John 8:12); one day there will be no need of a sun when the world is put to rights, because His presence, His kingdom, will have come in its fullness (Rev 21:23). If we are serious about changing the way we are behaving around our children while we are trying to get them to behave, we need His Word to be a lamp unto our feet and a light unto our path.” (Ps 119:105)

As a remedy to your enraged berating of your children, you need to hear the Word of God. You are dark on the inside and need light shined in that darkness.  As I said yesterday, the Lord has been using Pastor Douglas Wilson, as he preaches the Word of God, as a “Nathan” in my life for years. I referenced his sermon series, Loving Little Ones. Here’s a great quote from the first sermon:

Parents should always desire to be like God in their relationship to their children. But when we think this, we gravitate to what we think or assume God is like instead of gravitating to what God reveals Himself to be like. Here is the fundamental attitude. “The LORD thy God in the midst of thee is mighty; he will save, he will rejoice over thee with joy; he will rest in his love, he will joy over thee with singing” (Zep. 3:17). “If ye then, being evil, know how to give good gifts unto your children: how much more shall your heavenly Father give the Holy Spirit to them that ask him?” (Luke 11:13). Parents who are “evil” frequently are better to their kids than parents who think they are being good by imitating a Cosmic Slavedriver. Delight in your children. Be crazy about them. Don’t hold back. They are cuter than everybody else’s.

In order to stop yelling and start delighting, you don’t need another internet article, per se. You need to dig in to the Word of God and be cut deeply by the working of the Holy Spirit. I highly recommend ordering the sermon series, Loving Little Ones, actively listening to them with your spouse, and then start inviting other families in your church and community over to your house to listen with you. It’s not a formula or a method. It’s four hours of principles to help you restructure the way you think about childrearing.  If you don’t restructure the current model, don’t expect any sort of change. However, if you humble yourself before the Lord, He will lift you up. He will forgive you your trespasses and give you a soft heart in place of the stony one you currently have toward your kids. Then you can stop yelling and start delighting for today. For tomorrow. For ever.

Here’s the link to the sermon series.  It’ll be the best spent $8 that you’ve forked over in a long time.

Loving Little Oneshttp://www.canonpress.org/store/pc/viewPrd.asp?idproduct=473&idcategory=158

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On July 25, 2013 By In Culture

Are You Planning on Yelling at Your Children Today?

Brothers, if anyone is caught in any transgression, you who are spiritual should restore him in a spirit of gentleness. Keep watch on yourself, lest you too be tempted.  Galatians 6:1

In his sermon series entitled, Loving Little Ones, Douglas Wilson makes application of this passage from the larger church body to the specific microcosm of the Christian home. In our homes we have leaders and followers, teachers and learners, older, wiser ones and younger, foolish ones; everyone in both categories being brothers and sisters in Christ. Pastor Wilson pointed out that in our homes we tend to leave the “ye who are spiritual” part out of the verse. We assume that folks “at church” need to remember this verse whenever they may be admonishing, exhorting, rebuking, or correcting us, but when we get home, this verse does not apply when we are correcting our children. In the church, folks need to remember the “spirit of gentleness” part; especially when they are correcting us.  If they don’t, we get to turn things back around, make an accusation at them, and then completely ignore whatever they were trying to say to us. At home, we pretend like we are the “ye who are spiritual” ones by default, therefore “spiritualness” gets defined by however we are doing things at the moment.

Brothers, these things ought not be so. If we are at home and an offense is committed by one of our wee ones, and then we fly off the handle, then at that moment, there are zero spiritual people in that room. There is no one in that room fit to restore anyone that has been caught in a transgression, because both people in that room are in the middle of a transgression. We need to be restored before we are biblically fit to do any restoring.

In Toby Sumpter’s ruminations about the Newtown shootings last year, he made a point that I won’t soon forget. He said,

We snapped at (our children) in anger, in frustration. They were whining in the backseat of the car, they were embarrassing us in front of our friends. And so we pulled a 9mm semi-automatic and shot them with words and looks and our tone of voice.

Our unbridled wrath is the same as murder. It kills our neighbor, and it does not restore our children. It does not “teach them a lesson” in the way that we may be hoping. It teaches them lies about God. We call Him “father,” and rightly so, but when was the last time He snapped at you?  When was the last time He got that serious look on his face, wagged His finger, and scolded you until you learned your lesson? He is long-suffering toward usward, not willing that any should perish, but all should come to repentance. (2 Peter 3:9)

The God of heaven and earth is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness and self-control. Do we get to set that list aside until we’ve raised our children? If we do then we’ll be raising them into the same moral relativism that we ourselves are practicing. Not to mention that we’ll look just as stupid as the parent in Wal-Mart, leaning down into the face of their child, chewing them out publicly, because they won’t biblically discipline them privately. We don’t get a pass on looking stupid just because we’re Christians.

In Galatians 5, the chapter preceding Galatians 6 if you haven’t been counting, Paul gives us some very practical lists,

Now the works of the flesh are evident: sexual immorality, impurity, sensuality, idolatry, sorcery, enmity, strife, jealousy, fits of anger, rivalries, dissensions, divisions, envy, drunkenness, orgies, and things like these. I warn you, as I warned you before, that those who do such things will not inherit the kingdom of God. But the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, self-control; against such things there is no law. And those who belong to Christ Jesus have crucified the flesh with its passions and desires.

We have probably abstained from orgies and sorcery our entire lives, and drunkenness for most of our lives, but what about fits of anger? When the lamp gets knocked off the table and shatters, or the rebellious little pill says, “no”, or the teenager asks, “why” again today, we must remember that parents who habitually practice “fits of anger” will not inherit the Kingdom of God. And remember, on the contrary, that “those who belong to Christ have crucified the flesh with its passions and desires.”

Christ not only says, “Mine,” over every square inch of creation geographically. He also says, “Mine,” over every word that we speak to our children today and over every disciplinary action that must take place. So, unless the house is on fire, don’t yell at your children today. Or tomorrow. Or ever.

Brothers, if anyone is caught in any transgression, you who are spiritual should restore him in a spirit of gentleness. Keep watch on yourself, lest you too be tempted.  Galatians 6:1<>game_free play java game free анализ а проверка тиц

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