2/25/2004 09:50:00 PM|||Andrew|||What is love? American society seems to have put the concept of romantic love on a pedestal, idolized this idea so much that it is probably one of the few "virtues" left that anyone will take pride in. Moulin Rouge, one of the best movies of late, illustrates this idea succinctly in the repeated catch phrase: "The greatest thing you'll ever learn is just to love and be loved in return." Now, I'm not trying to knock the movie, but it seems to me that this is emblematic of the world we live in. In song, in film, in books, romantic love is everywhere idolized. Why? I think that one answer is that love has become scarce.

Earlier generations gloried in their newfound sexual freedom, not because they were in love, but because it was gratifying to their bodies. Despite slogans such as "Make Love, not War!" I think that the hippie movement was much more about being free to act in whatever way was pleasing to them than about romantic love. True love, grounded in a lifelong marriage, was precisely what they were rebelling against. But it strikes me that what they scorned, our generation has worshipped. The legacy of sexual freedom has left the secular world hopelessly lost, because sex outside of the marriage covenant has lost the power that God created it to have, and I think that American culture is coming to grips with this fact. "If it feels good, do it," may have satisfied bodies, but it can never satisfy the soul.

So now we come to the present, where casual sex is so pervasive that even our leaders are engaged in it, and are not universally condemned. But it has lost its novelty, and it's lack of power has been exposed. What people want today is love. If the message of the sixties was "if it feels good, do it," then the message of today is "do it with someone you love." Everywhere in movies, on TV, in books, the message is preached that sex is something reserved for love. In a reaction against the realization that sex by itself has no power, society has become obsessed with love.

So what is love? In a growing relationship between two people, is there some specific time before which there is no love, and after which there is? Film would like to have us believe that there are those special moments when everything becomes clear, when you just Know that you love the person you're with, but I think this is merely the sorry attempts of an industry trying to give hope to a love-obsessed society.

So what Is love? The best answer is found in God's word.

1 Corinthians 13:4 Love is patient, love is kind, it is not envious. Love does not brag, it is not puffed up. 13:5 It is not rude, it is not self-serving, it is not easily angered or resentful. 13:6 It is not glad about injustice, but rejoices in the truth. 13:7 It bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things. 13:8 Love never ends.

What a different view of things! If we were truly a society obsessed with This love...but I digress. That this answer is not satisfactory, that it is a description, not of romantic love, but of godly love, of agape to use the Greek term, betrays a mistake in priorities. The Bible is not interested nearly as much with romantic love as it with God's love for the Church and the Church's love for each other. If the Christian would worry about living up to God's love, I can't imagine that romantic love will be any problem.

So what is love? A Christian view of romantic love should probably start with the book Song of Songs, in which we find some of the most passionate poetry ever written, doubtlessly. But listen to this refraid, repeated several times in the book:

Song of Songs 2:7 I adjure you, O maidens of Jerusalem,
by the gazelles and by the young does of the open fields:
Do not awaken or arouse love until it pleases!

Love is not, as the secular world would have it, quick and easy. It does not happen in some magical moment. Biblical romantic love comes of its own force, it grows, it lives, it stays. I would argue that a properly Biblical romantic love will in fact reflect the love of God described in 1 Corinthians 13.

In summation, the Church needs to stand aside from the secular obsession with love, and search out the truth of God's commands as in these passages to formulate a Biblical perspective, first on God's love, then on loving one another as a Church, and lastly on romantic love. Rather than the idol that society has made of romantic love, the Christian should understand it as a great gift from God to us, something he will gladly bless us with if only we await his timing.|||107777464884739002|||