Love, the oozy, gooey stuff that you felt in your tender years may not always show up in your latter days as you search for a mate. Where had that gotten you anyway, right? Often times, it got us trouble! It may have worked for Pete the quarterback and Jenna the cheerleader(sorry you guys!) but such love has left many of us devastated in its wake. We are, of course, poking fun at the old infantile idea that love is a special feeling you have that lets you identify your mate magically. We shouldn't discount our feelings but we should consider character as well; because, we will soon enough be confronted with, the inner working of the person we choose for a mate and the sooner we know the better. Some of us have found out to our shock, that finer looks can cover up serious monsters lurking beneath the skin. What is love then, is it a chemical response to the geometry of someone's face, shape and voice or is there more to it? We will venture here to explore what many before us have tried to do, that is, to define love concisely in its fullest most complete form. But first lets see what love is not.
Deficient portrayals of love in the media culture
One of Satan's subtler tricks may have been to redefine love just as an amalgam of feelings and sensuality, such as portrayed in daytime TV soaps, some romance books written for woman or certain exploitative cinema. In many so called romance books and movies that are marketed and consumed in mass, people's understanding of love is framed along narrow or bizarre physical and emotional plot lines and scripts. The current debonair movie stars are seen falling in 'love' and engaging in a number of steamy sex scenes which command big revenues at the box office. The temptation to buy into the illusion of such portrayals of 'love' can be immense as it can feel good for a while but its better resisted. It creates a fantasy world that competes with and detracts from the real possibilities that come in life. It also creates unreasonable expectations resulting in good prospective mates to be passed up for fantastic imaginary ones or it creates problems in relationships already entered. Not all fantasies may be harmless, some take a life of their own and can be taken too far into the realms of the demonic.
Pornography: The Love of Lust
Porn addiction is an example of the enemies 'trap door' bondage in which people can fall into while on an illicit search for gratification. Besides, if one is satisfied with the imaginary and the virtual why go look for the real thing? The Lord Said, "He who looks upon a woman to lust after her commits adultery in his heart". The usage of both verbs in "he who looks.. to.. lust" intensifies the act to where just looking at people and admiring their natural attributes is precluded from being sin. We look at people everyday and we say "She is beautiful" or "He is handsome". This is obviously not what should be understood to be sin here. As the God that He is, Jesus lays claim to that part of our imagination, that tries people on for size and pleasure and commands us to arrest it and turn it over to him. Therefor, the obvious application is to look at people around us with a pure motivation but it also has the following very important implications.
Jesus' use of "he who looks" and "lusts" makes his statement fit aptly to the use of pornography we see in our world. It fits so well in fact that it would seem like when he spoke it, He had anticipated a time, when men would streamline lust, first on paper and later on the new media technologies, as they have today. Being God and prophet He must have peered through time and given us a warning so we could be repentant of this scourge. Jesus statement can be reworded to apply to women also as they can also be guilty of such sins. She who looks upon a man to lust after him has committed adultery in her heart (see proverbs and Mark 10:12b for women causing adultery). We need to know and be convicted that watching porn is adultery of the heart and mind, a sin which should be hated and one if not repented is terminal to our spiritual life and growth. Eve, King David, Clinton, Tiger Woods, the list goes on and on of the people who "looked Upon" and "Lusted" and experienced a great downfall. Each had brought terrible consequences and judgments upon themselves which also affected those around them as well. We find in Hebrews the following quote,
Marriage is to be held in honor among all, and the marriage bed is to be undefiled ; for fornicators and adulterers God will judge.
Hebrews 13:4
Conclusion: What is Love?
As seen above, such lean, weak, emaciated or perverted portrayals of a so called love hardly come close to the full range, depth and reality of the love that is possible when we come to understand God's love for us and others. Thankfully, Christians need only look at the cross and the lives of those that exemplify it's principles in order to regain the true meaning of Love. It's in fact this God kind of love called Agape (in Greek) and not just Phelio(endearing friendship) or Eros(desire for opposite sex) that The scriptures say should be present between a man and a woman in Holy Matrimony(Ephesians 5:25). All three probably exists to some degree in good christian marriages. Agape is also supposed to exist between neighbors. Its a sacrificial love that treats the other equally if not better than oneself. Our understanding of love should then include a mutual respect and admiration, a sense of closeness of heart and mind and a camaraderie that comes from our allegiance to Christ. If people, who live their lives sacrificially everyday to serve others, don’t commend our love, we don’t know what love is because that is the love The Bible talks about.
A Love won through facing difficult circumstances together is bound to be much stronger and go much deeper than that found by just gazing at beauty which is passing.That is why soldiers who fought alongside each other and literally bled into each other while in battle, have a great love and respect for each other and an uncanny, almost eternal bond.
Implications to dating
Therefore we should look at and study the inner character of people and not just their outside visage. We should be giving out our laurels not just to attractive looking persons but to those who are patient, humble, kind, faithful, forgiving, diligent workers, peacemakers etc (Read the bible for a full list! Proverbs 31 and I Corinthians 13 are both good places to start). In the long run these types of qualities are what make a relationship or a friendship to be a lasting one.
Entertaining Angels and slaying dragons
where the rubber meets the road
We are not saying here that there shouldn't be a romantic attraction as most relationships start that way. However, we shouldn't dismiss prospective mates just because we don’t have a feeling initially or because they don't fit a certain mold we have in mind. We ought to rather give good people a chance and see if something develops; God may be the one sending them our way and we may be missing someone who has the potential to be good for us. "win friends for yourself..so they may receive you into everlasting habitations." It could be that we will find long lasting friendships even if we may not find our mate. We need to be guardedly open when looking for friendships. "Some have entertained angels unawares" Not everyone however may be an angel. It's true when we open up ourselves to others we also open up ourselves to possibly being hurt by them. Therefore, we might need to be on guard and be sensitive to how The Holy Spirit leads us because he knows what is in every one's heart.
Don't be weak or "take advantage" of others weaknesses
Because the western concept of dating can move too fast and does not have the boundaries set for us in the Bible, we need to be careful that while we search for friendships things don't turn out to be scandalous. It serves us well to take the following sobering advice from Paul.
that each of you should learn to control his own body in a way that is holy and honorable, 5 not in passionate lust like the heathen, who do not know God; 6 and that in this matter no one should wrong his brother or take advantage of him. The LORD will punish men for all such sins, as we have already told you and warned you. 7 For God did not call us to be impure, but to live a holy life. 8 Therefore, he who rejects this instruction does not reject man but God, who gives you his Holy Spirit. 9 Now about brotherly love we do not need to write to you, for you yourselves have been taught by God to love each other. (1 Thessalonians 4:4-9 NIV)
Finally, the Holy Spirit, the oil of heaven is said to be abiding in us. That means we are reservoirs of Christ's wisdom, light, love and life. We should always be ready to love and minister to people we encounter, regardless.
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