Love is Love

KEVIN HARRIS: A praise about love would seem to be welcomed in a world where love is so desperately needed. The phrase “love is love” is everywhere. As we’ll see in this article, it is being adopted by major corporations. It is viewed as a conversation-stopper. After all, what could be wrong with love?

DR. CRAIG: Right. The statement “love is love” is, on the face of it, just a tautology. But it's taken to have a different meaning than its grammatical or literal meaning. It's kind of like the tautology “it is what it is.” That's just true by the definition of the words – “it is what it is.” It's a tautology, but it has a deeper conversational implication when someone says that. And that seems to be the case with this expression that “love is love.”

KEVIN HARRIS: Let's key off of an article by Christopher L. Reese.^[1] He's the founder and editor of The Worldview Bulletin and a general editor of the Dictionary of Christianity and Science (from Zondervan). He writes,

On its face, it [“love is love”] sounds to many like an undeniable axiom. Who would be so backward as to try to put limitations on love? Corporations who remind us of this maxim take on the air of moral teachers. . . .

But since “love is love” is so prevalent and so well captures some of the wrongheadedness of our culture . . .

Although anyone who is culturally aware likely knows what “Love is love” intends to convey, the following is a typical elaboration: “The phrase ‘love is love’ is often used to express the belief that love is a universal human experience and that all forms of love are valid and equal. The phrase also implies that love should not be restricted or judged based on factors such as gender, sexual orientation . . . or any other social category.”

Let's just be honest. This phrase originated and is propagated by the gay community. I think it's very effective in making any Christian or conservative opposition look unloving and uses the Christian's emphasis on love against him.

DR. CRAIG: Yes. The slogan then is supposed to mean, I think, that all forms of what is called love are love and are therefore good. But that raises the deeper question – are all forms of what is called love really love?

KEVIN HARRIS: The article continues,

Our culture is awash in ideas about “love.” Popular songs of all musical genres are devoted to it and it’s the theme of innumerable TV shows, movies, articles, and books. The outlook on love of most people in the West has been shaped by understandings of human nature that arose out of the Enlightenment that have come to be called expressive individualism and the autonomous self. As a result, most in the West now view the goal of their lives as personal self-expression and the fulfillment of their unique identity. Unlike in previous eras when identity was primarily defined by one’s community and faith, identity today focuses on individual desires and self-expression.

That's interesting. I know that the watchword today is “living your best life” or “being your best self,” and your job is to help me do that. Is it better or perhaps more biblical to have an identity that is more community-oriented as he pointed out?

DR. CRAIG: I have to confess that as a child of the West myself I, too, have this strong sense of individualism and value self-actualization and self-authenticity. I just have never been able to understand how being part of a larger community is supposed to contribute to my self-worth or meaning. It seems to me that it just is like being a cog in the machine. But I do think that the Bible places living for God above living for self. That's clear. So I think as Christians we should make our priority to be living our lives for God and his glory rather than simply living for oneself.

KEVIN HARRIS: Next Reese writes,

Right at the start, the kind of love being envisioned in “Love is love” is primarily romantic feelings and a delight in what another person can contribute to our personal desires, goals, and tastes. . . . As we’ll see, compared to the biblical view of love, this is a thin and hollowed-out version focused on self-actualization.

Is there a place for romantic feelings? Where does the romance come in?

DR. CRAIG: Reese cannot be maintaining that romantic love is not valuable and blessed by God, but Christians distinguish between eros (or romantic love, or desire), philos (which is friendship or brotherly love) and agape (which is God's selfless love). All three of these are valuable forms of love, and it would be wrong to focus only on one to the denial of the other two.

KEVIN HARRIS: Continuing the article,

As the late Timothy Keller insightfully observed, drawing on Søren Kierkegaard, this modern understanding of love is the one that comes naturally to what Kierkegaard called the aesthete (which all of us naturally are, apart from rebirth in Christ). Keller explains,

The aesthete doesn’t really ask whether something is good or bad but only whether it is interesting. Everything is judged as to whether it is fascinating, thrilling, exciting, and entertaining. . . . An aesthete often claims to be a free individual. Life should be thrilling, full of “beauty and sparkle,” he says. And that means often casting off the shackles of society’s expectations and community ties. But Kierkegaard says that this is a very mistaken idea of what freedom is. The person living the aesthetic life is not master of himself at all; in fact, he is leading an accidental life. His temperament, tastes, feelings, and impulses completely drive him.

Apparently there's a huge difference between someone who may have aesthetic appreciation (like art, music) and one who lives totally by whatever aesthetically interests him at the moment.

DR. CRAIG: We should understand that what Kierkegaard called the aesthetic man was not someone with an appreciation of beauty, art, and music, for example. It was someone basically living for self. And Kierkegaard believed that the aesthetic lifestyle ultimately ends in boredom. After a while the pleasures of self-pursuit simply bottom out and produce boredom. And I've met people like this, non-Christians who have pursued a hedonistic lifestyle (sexual libertines), and they've told me how this ultimately becomes flat and uninteresting and boring. The thrill is gone. I think that Kierkegaard was very insightful in thinking that the aesthetic lifestyle ultimately terminates in boredom. But the next highest stage that Kierkegaard believed in (that wasn't mentioned by Reese) is the ethical stage. Once you reach the end of the aesthetic stage and boredom, you may leap to a higher stage of living which is the ethical plane. Here the ethical man seeks to do the good and to live a good life. But Kierkegaard argued that the ethical life ultimately ends in guilt and despair because we are unable to fully live up to the demands of the moral law. As C. S. Lewis once remarked, no one realizes how bad he really is until he has actually tried to be good. So Kierkegaard said that that must propel us on then to the third stage along life's way which is the religious stage in which we come to live for God and to know him and are men and women of faith.

KEVIN HARRIS: The sooner the better on that one, by the way. Reese really nails it in this next paragraph. He writes,

The tragedy of this approach to love is that “if a wife loses her beautiful skin and countenance or a husband puts on the pounds, the aesthete begins to look around for someone more beautiful. If a spouse develops a debilitating illness, the aesthete begins to feel that life is pointless.” This is because the “aesthete does not really love the person; he or she loves the feelings, thrills, ego rush, and experiences that the other person brings. The proof of that is that when those things are gone, the aesthete has no abiding care or concern for the other.”

I think it's important to point out that even if a person decries such a selfish view of love, they should then acknowledge that that is where much of the culture's view of love leads.

DR. CRAIG: Right. I agree. And I think that if we're honest we also have to admit that we find such a sinful tendency in ourselves as well.

KEVIN HARRIS: Up next he writes,

Even apart from a diminished view of love, should we accept the proposition that “all forms of [romantic or sexual] love are valid and equal”? Even committed secularists will balk at some of the implications of this purported principle. What about love between a father and a daughter? Or love between an adult and a minor? Is love between humans and animals okay? What about multiple wives or husbands (polygamy)? What if causing or experiencing physical pain is part of one’s love life? What if a man or woman prefers to love an AI avatar rather than a real human being? Are we really prepared to say that each of these forms of “love” is just as valid as a traditional husband-wife relationship? Even if the individuals in these kinds of relationships consent, are we ready to normalize and celebrate them?

By the way, loving an AI avatar is already an issue. The New York Times and other publications have been reporting this. People seriously in love with an AI companion. The main point of the paragraph that we just read is that we place boundaries on what is considered to be acceptable love, and therefore the slogan “love is love” fails.

DR. CRAIG: Yes, that's right. I think that these examples illustrate powerfully just what is wrongly called love is really love. In many cases, this so-called love isn't really love at all. It's selfishness.

KEVIN HARRIS: Continuing the article, Reese writes,

Given the naturalism that pervades the West, it’s not surprising that issues like love and sexuality are viewed as personal choices that have no moral consequence. Yet, the God who made us and knows what helps and harms us has revealed his will concerning relationships and sexuality in his Word. Consequently, as Glynn Harrison points out,

[W]e flourish as human beings when we work in harmony with God’s reality. When we [do this], we are on the road to becoming fully human. And so the road to human flourishing . . . is to work with the grain of God’s reality, not to try to manufacture a reality of our own.

This also means embracing the kind of love God displays and commands in Scripture. Rather than the self-centered love that comes naturally to the aesthete, biblical love is other-centered. As one scholar relates, this love “is based neither on a felt need in the loving person nor on a desire called forth by some attractive feature(s) in the one loved. . . . It rather proceeds from a heart of love and is directed to the other person to bless him or her and to seek that person’s highest good.”

I like all that. I wanted to put it in there. That last part is a pretty good definition of love, don't you think?

DR. CRAIG: Yes, I did. I noticed that as well. Let's highlight that for our listeners. He speaks of the attitude to bless him or her and to seek that person's highest good. That is to love that person.

KEVIN HARRIS: If I could just remark. When I was reading this I thought about you and Jan. You understand selfless love just from my observation of you. But at the same time, there's a lot of romance there, and so I thought as you look at all this you could help us bring about that balance that God would have us bring about.

DR. CRAIG: Well, thank you, Kevin. That's really kind of you to say. But as I say, I'm acutely aware of these own selfish self-centered tendencies within myself that Reese warns about. And we need to rely upon the Holy Spirit to deliver us from these sinful proclivities and help us to truly bless the other and to seek that person's highest good.

KEVIN HARRIS: Reese concludes with the love chapter, 1 Corinthians 13. He says,

This divine love the apostle Paul describes as patient, kind, not boastful, not proud, not self-seeking, not easily angered, and forgiving. “It always protects, always trusts, always hopes, always perseveres” (1 Corinthians 13:7, NIV). It’s a sacrificial love. The love of God . . . is glorious, bountiful, and life-giving.

It seems like we're always battling slogans – “extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence,” “the Flying Spaghetti Monster,” and now the latest one is “love is love.” I just think we need to find ways to get people to look again at the love chapter – 1 Corinthians 13. I want to wrap up the podcast with your thoughts on that.

DR. CRAIG: I think, in light of what was said, we need to examine our own hearts, each individually, and see if we, too, have been shaped by the culture and the age in which we were raised in ways that we're not even conscious of. I think that very often we'll find that we have absorbed these sorts of negative examples from our culture. But I also think that what has been shared today is a real caution to single people – those of our listeners who are still single. I want to urge you: Don't be too anxious to fall in love. Don't be desperately looking for that person that you want to be in love with and spend your life with. Guard your heart. The dangers are so widespread and so deep, it's best to be very cautious before you give yourself in love to another person. So don't be overly anxious. Trust God to guide you through life. Seek to live in a way that honors him and trust him to bring that mate into your life in his own timing, not in yours.

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