This article was in the Wretched Radio Newsletter. What a great commentary on the modern definition of “love”, which resembles biblical love so slightly, they can hardly be called the same thing.
Sentimental Love is Making Us Sick Sentimental love flows from the polluted well of postmodernism. Sentimental love is the offspring of moral relativism, which denies absolute truth. Sentimental love is not based on fact or truth, but on emotions. What does sentimental love look like?– You can’t make a woman keep a baby if she doesn’t want it.
– You can’t deny two men the joy of marriage if it makes them happy.
– You can believe whatever you want to as long as you believe it is true.
– Women should have equal rights, therefore, they should be allowed to go into military combat.
– If pot makes people happy, then we should legalize it.
While the world continues to define love predominantly as “sentimentality,” Christians are commanded to show agape love to both Christian and heathen alike. What is agape love? It is one of the four types of love described in the Bible.
1. Eros love: sensual, romantic love.
2. Philial love: brotherly love.
3. Storge love: familial love.
4. Agape love: self-sacrificing love.
Here is the rub; sentimental love is purely emotional, while agape love is based on what is true, right and good. In the world’s mind, sentimental love always trumps agape love. That is why your love for the world is so often received as hatred.
– Tell a woman that abortion is murder and you are waging war against her.
– Tell two men that gay sex is bad for them and you are intolerant.
– Tell women that combat is a man’s job and you are labeled a Neanderthal.
As the world continues to grow increasingly sentimental, we must continue to genuinely love them by telling them the truth. Even if they hate us for it.
This is very good. We often fail to see what God wants for our life. We just assume He wants us to do everything that makes us feel good and happy. Life is not about us, it’s about Him and often times this means showing the agape love you wrote about.
Yes! You hit the nail on the head. It’s about Him and glorifying Him and NOT about us. Also, there is this thought out there that “God wants me to be happy” but we think we can define what will make us happy. But, God wants to make us more like Jesus and sometimes this hurts. And while, yes, we experience peace and deep, abiding joy as believers, we are not always “happy”, according to our finite definition. Thanks, Kathleen!
Amen to that! The world’s thought is “If I don’t like it, it needs to be changed to make me happy!” Everyone, including God Himself, has to accommodate that person, instead of that person changing his own thoughts and attitudes, having more personal discipline, or just being content with what he has. It’s a custom-made, multi-choice world to make everyone happy; and if God doesn’t fit that world, He is not welcome. We as Christians need to be careful we don’t get caught up in the same attitudes of what we think we deserve and how we approach people when we don’t get our way. Our responses and words in those situations can ruin our testimony for Christ. So, as it says in Phil. 2:3-5 “Do nothing from selfishness or empty conceit, but with humility of mind regard one another as more important than yourselves; Do not merely look out for your own personal interests, but also for the interests of others. Have this attitude in yourselves which was also in Christ Jesus.” We need to be pliable in God’s hands in order to be truly happy. Thank you, Leslie and Kathleen!
Yes, yes, yes! So true. We are all mixed up in our definitions of love and happiness in this culture–and even we Christians get confused sometimes, too!