Love is Losing Faster Than it’s Winning

Love is a 9-letter word…

T-O-L-E-R-A-N-C-E.

…or so we’ve been told.

There has been a lot of talk lately about “love.”  But my fear is that we are talking about something utterly different, something polar opposite, something desperately unknown to the love of Jesus.

No doubt there is a poverty in the English language for love.  We love shakes, sunsets, and spouses.  But really what we mean is that we enjoy the things that make us happy, the stuff that makes us feel good, or the fantasy that this world is about us.

My fear is that at the root of this misconception/misunderstanding is an idol…a false identity…a lie.  And the effects are devastating.

The Lie
“Love is self-interested.”

Culture has granted us the “freedom” to choose love in whatever combination makes us happy.  The lie is that love is all about us.  This posturing cultivates self-interest and commodifies our neighbor to gain an edge or earn a profit.  This is precisely…anti-love…it is hate…and it is winning.  And the result has jeopardized the character of love for a scaly version of ourselves.

Compare this self-directed love to the life of Jesus.

The Truth
“Love is others-directed”

The Gospel tells us that love is self-sacrificing.  Jesus sums up the entire law, “A new commandment I give to you, that you love one another: just as I have loved you, you also are to love one another.”  The type of love that Jesus is talking about cost him his life.  We mustn’t forget that the pain he felt was real…his death was real.  Each strike of the whip on his side tore the flesh from his bones, the crown dug deep into his skull, the nails pierced his bloody, dusty hands and feet.  But we also mustn’t forget that his suffering was manifested by his Father turning his back on him.  The pain was real agony but the loneliness was crippling.

In the midst of torture and torment Jesus says, “Father, your will be done.”

Love vs. Tolerance
“It is the very essence of a relationship that it must issue mutual love in a visible community. Love is nothing if it does not issue in words and deeds by which the lover binds the beloved to himself. Love is infinitely more than tolerance. Tolerance requires no visible community to express it, but love does. The deeper and stronger the love, the more binding will be the mutual obligations to which it will lead. Therefore, it belongs to the very essence of the atonement wrought by Christ, that it leads to the creation of a visible community handing men together in all nations and all generations. The relationship between the Christian and the world is much more than tolerance. Tolerance suggests leaving one another alone, and this is precisely what Christian’s cannot do.”
-Lesslie Newbigin (Missionary Theologian)

I’m not sure what is more disconcerting…the fact that we have mistaken love for tolerance or the fact that we have just completely mistaken love.  But the barebones truth is that we have missed it…as humans and as the church.  The world has raised the flag of tolerance not love and we have been silent too long.

Newbigin understands that in the face of evil and in the midst of darkness the only thing that will prevail is love…not tolerance.  Tolerance requires nothing except silence and passivity; meanwhile love requires everything and demands a voice and action.

Tolerance = every man for himself
Love = my life for yours

We have been given a new identity.  We are no longer orphans, wanderers, aliens…we are beloved children bought with a price…bought with a life.  Someone else’s life.  “The basis of our new identity in Jesus is love – God’s love and the love demonstrated by Jesus’ life, death, and resurrection.” (David Lomas “The Truest Thing About You”)

Perspective
The tsunamic wave caused by the exposure of Planned Parenthood is proof that we are much more comfortable with tolerance than we would like to let on.

I have mistakenly watched each video in public spaces.  On occasions brought to my knees and others uncontrollably weeping…my heart has shattered into a thousand pieces, scattered throughout my bowels.  With each caption the breath escaping further from my lungs.  Desperately longing to go home and hold my son.

The hands, the hearts, the faces…Come quickly Lord Jesus.

Millions of dreams, first dates, and graduations robbed.  Little hands reaching for the fingers of her mother but instead grabbing hold of the forceps of death.  The safest place on planet earth, the womb, has become a war zone.  And somehow it has all become a part of everyday life.  Tolerance did that…not love.

Church arise!  It is time to be visible.  It is time to turn over the table.  If not us…then who?  If not now…then when?

Here is what I know to be true…the love of God can never outrun the forgiveness of God.  So let us be the first to raise the banner of love and forgiveness over those clinics, over those looting life for Lamborghini’s, over those who can’t fight for themselves, over our own insidious apathy.

Because love is infinitely more than tolerance.

14 For this reason I bow my knees before the Father, 15 from whom every family in heaven and on earth is named,16 that according to the riches of his glory he may grant you to be strengthened with power through his Spirit in your inner being, 17 so that Christ may dwell in your hearts through faith—that you, being rooted and grounded in love,18 may have strength to comprehend with all the saints what is the breadth and length and height and depth, 19 and to know the love of Christ that surpasses knowledge, that you may be filled with all the fullness of God.

-Ephesians 3:14-19