“If you love me, you will keep my commandments.” John 14:15
Political discourse is full of the word love but love would appear to be defined as mere emotion. In the worst of it, we can see it’s only a sexual manifestation of some sort. This produces a philosophical vacuum, however. If love is an ardent emotion, an abiding passion, then what exactly is it and how can it be a political guide for us? I will repeat the question. What is love if not an attribute of God that has its source and meaning only in Him? If love is not from God, then what is it, how can we know it, and how is it an actionable ethical standard?
You see, much to the chagrin of sinners, we don’t get to define the facts of reality. The world is what God says it is. Love comes with responsibility since its source is outside of us – God. And since God is holy and righteous, we must love in holiness and righteousness. In other words, we must love according to God’s standards as learned in Scripture or else we invent our own ever-changing dictates. In a manner of speaking, this is exactly what sin is – the exchanging of the truth about God for the lie of human autonomy. But we know that no person is truly autonomous – that is, metaphysically free. We have a political freedom – which is a derivative freedom given by God. Metaphysical freedom is ultimate freedom but since every person is born and then later dies, we know unequivocally that none of us are absolute. This simple fact, so obvious that we despise thinking about it, proves that any exercise in establishing man-made moral rules is a sham. For an ethical standard to be real at all it must be transcendent (over all people) and immutable. For temporal beings to be discussing moral truth without reference to God is a categorical fallacy – it’s like asking what yellow smells like. It’s supremely absurd and yet we do it everyday.
Because of this faulty definition, man continues to interpret love in both highly antinomian yet totalitarian ways. It’s common for an individual to proclaim that he/she is loving and loves all in a love that’s open to all love and this love rejects labels because it’s…well, love. But we note that this is generally the love that’s the love of sexuality and sexual licentiousness. And this so-called love, this dissipation, demands that others approve of their love too, which is odd because the definition rests upon a foundation of ethical anarchy (antinomianism). But woe to you who withholds your sanction from this love because you are now branded as a hater and a hater is unloving because they reject your definition of love, which is the supreme act of hate. A hater is, then, a person who disagrees with an arbitrary definition. We remind the reader that the modern atheist, awash in sexual profligacy and abandonment, tries to cover the chill of their lack of biblical ethics with the warm blanket of love. It’s all love, they say. This definition rests upon the premise that all is okay as long as you like it and no one can judge another. That’s love.
But to criticize this definition of love, which has no grounding in logic whatsoever, is to, as we’ve said, be branded a hater. The hater is the person who has another standard of love that disagrees with the former’s definition. The trouble is that if the premise is that love is a personal decision alone, how can that right not be extended as well to those who reject it? By definition, a lover of this sort – anarchy as love – must applaud those who contend against that definition. To do otherwise is in contradiction to the premise of “all” is love. The moment the self-professed lover says, “no, not that” under any pretense whatsoever, he has sawed off the limb he’s sitting on, so to speak. He’s saying, in reality, that there’s no universal moral standard and yet there is one. This is the great con used by those who reject Biblical sexual ethics.
To that end we see again how man’s wisdom, devoid of God, runs him into yet another dead-end. This is no cul-de-sac, be sure; it’s a road that terminates at the bitter wall of God’s reality. The answer is to turn back or else be dashed to pieces against it. God has written His law on every human’s heart and we should all rise up and rejoice in that fact. We speak of love, experience it in our hearts, and understand it inchoately because God is our creator, not because we are intrinsically loving. But this whole enterprise of using love in our own way is certainly not an innocuous thing and we see the ravages, the inferno of anarchy burning through our homes and land. There is no love without righteousness. There can’t be – even for the atheist, which is why he’s so insistent upon his definition of it. But, as we’ve said, his definition, which he intends to impose upon one and all with quite a religious fervor suffers a great contradiction at the heart of it. You must agree with it, he says! You see, if you don’t support what the Bible calls sin but the atheist calls love, then you’re guilty of the moral crime of intolerance. In this way, please note, that there is no tolerance for dissent in the humanistic ethic. As always, because it’s sin, all secular humanistic philosophies are born in anarchy and end at that wall of tyranny. They may paint that wall with many flowers or scenes of sunsets on the beach but it’s still the same thing: repent or else.
This is what the world now calls love. It’s also why the personal choice of sexuality has become a political issue. Since this is God’s world, it’s His moral law that controls it. To play at this game of autonomy, man must work to overthrow God’s law and the surest way, he thinks, to do this is to legislate his own. This is precisely why politics has taken on a messianic nature in America. In all, it’s not about love but about power and authority. If it was about love, then they’d leave their neighbor alone. They can’t. They know God’s righteous decree since it’s written on their hearts, so they press on to silence dissent. Mankind will tolerate all sorts of crazed actions and ethics; he will dream up a thousand insane plans. What he won’t tolerate is the truth that he’s a sinner and needs a Savior. This is the task he’s always busy with and why, cutting himself off from the true love that’s in Christ alone, he embraces the false messiahs like fame, wealth, sex, or anything else.
In all, what the world calls love is a pact with the devil. It’s a poison mixed into a fine meal. And it’s the ultimate insanity because it convinces us that God’s standard will lead to misery rather than beauty and peace and salvation.
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