Thought of the Day 08.28.09

Our culture is terribly confused about the nature of love, the basic error being that love and pleasure are the same thing. Thus, we love people who bring us what we want and we love people by giving them what they want, both of which generate pleasure. Since no one is pleasured by criticism, giving it is viewed as unloving and receiving it is viewed as an impediment to love.

So when the Bible tells us to love our neighbors, our culture mistakenly believes this means we must never criticize them. Unfortunately, the Biblical concept of love is rooted in devotion rather than in pleasure. And if I am devoted to the wellbeing of my neighbor, then I might very well confront him if he is behaving in a self-destructive way.

Loving our neighbors, then, looks a lot like loving our children. We make tremendous sacrifices for their benefit, but we also correct them and even withhold things from them if that is what they need from us. To do otherwise, either to our children or to our neighbors, would look much more like hatred than like love.