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  • Love

    Love

    Let’s talk about love…

    Our culture’s view on love

    I wonder what comes to your mind when you think of love? I know what comes to my mind: a song I heard on 94.7 the other day. Yes, sometimes I listen to Joburg’s number one hit station. And the hit at that time was “If it ain’t love, then why does it feel so good” by Jason Derulo. The rest of the lyrics are borderline ungodly so I’m not even going to discuss what he was on about. If it feels good according to Derulo it has to be love. Or how about this quote I saw on a poster? “Love is missing someone whenever you’re apart, but somehow feeling warm inside, because you’re close in heart.” We all tend to have all sorts of emotional, warm, fuzzy feeling associations when it comes to love.

    Is love that feeling you get when a flood of uncontrollable tears rushes down your face as you exchange your vows on your wedding day? Or is it being overwhelmed by the joy of holding your firstborn for the first time in your arms; accompanied by another episode of uncontrollable tears of Joy? I’ve never experienced this, it happened to a friend of mine . Is that what love is?

    It is what we see in “Rom coms”. It’s our music. It’s deeply entrenched in our hearts. I love this person. Things just feel right when I’m with them.

    Our view of love leaves us wanting

    Here’s the thing that we all know: this sort of thinking is not only deceptive and fleeting, it doesn’t help us when crunch time comes. Think about it. What happens when you look at your spouse with this thought, “I know I said ‘till death do us part’ but right now I feel like arranging the death part? What happens when your lovely bundle of joy can’t stop crying and you haven’t slept for days? Those feelings seem to become distant memories.

    We therefore need to rethink our understanding of love. And we need to do so by looking at God’s perspective on the cross. So what does the Bible have to say about the emotion of love? Does it shed any light on the topic of love? And what are the practical things that can help us with this emotion?

    The biblical view of love

    Now this is going to revolutionise your thinking. It revolutionised my thinking last year. Love is not an emotion. I’m pretty sure that’s not news to you. You’ve heard it before. But do we understand it? Because when the bible speaks about the best way someone has displayed love, it shifts our attention to a man on a cross. And the bible claims that we can’t truly love others, or even understand love if we don’t understand that cross.

    When God calls husbands to love their wives, he points them to the cross (Ephesians 5:25). That is clearly despite their feelings. When was the last time you felt like dying for someone? Look at how he encourages believers to love one another:

    7 Beloved, let us love one another, for love is from God, and whoever loves has been born of God and knows God. 8 Anyone who does not love does not know God, because God is love. 9 In this the love of God was made manifest among us, that God sent his only Son into the world, so that we might live through him. 10 In this is love, not that we have loved God but that he loved us and sent his Son to be the propitiation (sacrifice that paid) for our sins. 11 Beloved, if God so loved us, we also ought to love one another (1 John 4: 7-11)

    True love is derived from ultimate love. And the ultimate way in which someone has loved was the cross. God moving towards underserving people and dying for them. It was selfless. It was for the benefit of others. It wasn’t about how we made him feel, in fact it was contrary. We were unlovable. And if we don’t understand ultimate love, we will remain trapped in what our culture tells us.

    Practical things to help us.

    So, I think we need to come to our senses. We need to look at that selfless man on the cross. And having seen the beauty of what he has done for selfish people like ourselves; we need to push against our culture’s selfish view of love. To look away from ourselves and to look to Christ. If I see the beauty of the cross I will not want to ‘seek my own way’. That is as practical as it gets. It has to begin with how much I grasp the message of the cross.

    When I understand it, I will not ask what would Jesus do, but I will ask: what has Jesus done? And how does He call me to live and behave differently? So let’s do a little test to put some meat on it.

    Let’s insert ‘I am’ in that Corinthians scripture where it says ‘love is’…

    I am patient and kind; I do not envy or boast; I am not arrogant or rude. I do not insist on my own way; I am not irritable or resentful; I do not rejoice at wrongdoing, but rejoice with the truth. (1 Corinthians 13: 4-6)

    How are you doing in that? In what places are you struggling? I think if I were to be honest. I fail this test. And the only way for me to do all of these is to look at the one who has done it all. He is the one I ask for strength.

    Think of the times when you are tempted to seek your own way. Whether it’s being impatient with a family member, struggling to love your spouse, wanting to come back from work and zone out, or not desiring to engage in conversation with your child. At that moment ask yourself this question: how can I be loving at this very time?

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  • Men are Trash. #…?

    Men are Trash. #…?

    Sometimes it’s better to say nothing. This may well be one of those times. Men in this country have been doing unspeakable things to women. And not just in the last news cycle – for decades. Our women have been carrying this country on their backs and all they have been getting in return is abuse and oppression of the most heinous and degrading kind. They have had enough. And they don’t need another man to tell them it is so, or what’s what. So that is not what this is. This I address to the men. A Christian man speaking to his brothers, quietly, with his head held low. I invite any woman to listen in if she so choses. And I welcome her opinion as one of those we have disregarded for too long, to our shame and ignorance. But I fully respect and understand if she wants no part of it.

    #Men are trash.

    No excuse, no justification, no counter-arguments. And this is not a new idea. The bible has been saying this very thing for thousands of years, and in more than 140 characters. In our “enlightenment” we have lost the concept of sin, and with it any hope of self-understanding. We’ve lost any grasp of the basic human condition, and so all our social problems reduce to “us vs them”. How sad that we are turning to twitter to remind us who we really are.

    #Does God know?

    God knows men are trash. It matters to him. It grieves our Father to see his daughters mistreated in any way. It makes him very, very angry. And that anger he pours out on men, by executing their leader in the most shameful way imaginable: crucifixion. Men get what they deserve at the cross. It’s true that both men and women were complicit in the human rejection of God. But the final responsibility lies with men. And so…

    #The man.

    I think part of the reason our women are so rightly outraged is this: it’s not just that things shouldn’t be as they are, but also the profound sense that things weren’t always as they are. God made humanity in the dual image of male and female and we were very good, together. There was harmony in the relationship. There was a very brief time in human history when men didn’t abuse physical advantage to dominate and coerce and compensate for our shame and impotence. We’ve lost all that. We abdicated responsibility. We’ve been doing it ever sense. BUT JESUS. He exercised infinite power in humble service. He took full responsibility. He took it all the way to the cross. He treated women with nothing but the deepest love and care. He rescued manhood from the trash-heap. He has shown us what it is, and what it’s for.

    #…?

    What next? What are we going to do about it? Our women are angry. They are right to be angry. We need to let them be angry. We have broken their trust in so many ways. We need to win it back. It’s going to be a long road. We take the first step by acknowledging our guilt. And then we take the lead, not in bullying, coercion or domination, but in humble service of our sisters, in the hope of reconciliation. And when we fail, as we will, we need to turn to Jesus for the grace and strength to be men, and carry on. Jesus Christ has rescued manhood from the trash-heap. We cannot continue to live as if he hasn’t.
    By Roydon Frost, with gracious, loving input from Leah Maseko and Blaque Nubon.

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