Wednesday, September 25, 2013

True Love: Godly View Vs. What Culture Teaches Us

      Love, true love, is not the way that you love your lunch.  Not the true love in Cinderella.

Not the way you like that guy and not even the way you love your mom.
True love is unconditional, true love is real.  God loves you with a real love 
While you were yet a sinner.  He loves us more than we can understand, we don't have to earn it, we have to accept it and try, in our futile ways, to love him back by serving him to tell others about his great, real, love.

      Even in the fairy tales, when we often hear about true love, it is never REALLY true.  In Cinderella, The Prince falls in love with a size two ball gown, they hardly talk, and the next day, he can't remember anything about her except how flawless she seems on the outside.  In The original telling of The Little Mermaid, Ariel rescues the prince, gives up her immortality and family name to a man who only likes her for looks and later leaves her for another woman. Furthermore, Snow White AND Aurora are both asleep/dead when the Prince just happens by and then it's like, "Hey, I'm awake, let's get married #TrueLove!" 

      Our view of love has become insanely distorted due to the influence of culture.  We have taken on a worldly view of love and this change has had a large impact on the way we see God.  From the time we first learn of God and every Sunday thereafter, we hear "God loves you." and "He loves you so much." So on and so forth.  But we don't even know what love IS!  Lois Lowry's book "The Giver" states that in the future, love will become so distorted that it will be totally removed from our basic vocabulary.  So what is love?  True love is the willingness to sacrifice for another.  To love someone is to be willing to do whatever you need to do for them.  God's definition of TRUE love is this: to be willing to LAY DOWN ONE'S LIFE for the one you love.  God's love goes BEYOND even that!  By the world's standards, we have to earn love.  God died for us WHILE WE WERE STILL SINNERS. 

      Before, I mentioned that we must try to love Him back, DO NOT confuse this with trying to earn His love.  Any logical person would agree that it is only natural that when someone loves you to that extent, you love them back.  Not only that, but we are to love others, because God first loved us.