Learning to Love like God

In his book The 3 Colors of Love, Christian Schwarz relates an incident at a conference where he was teaching on the topic of how godly love can be learned.  He relates that the thought of love being learned goes against most people's  romantic, warm, fuzzy feelings about love. Human love is motivated by loving feelings that bring about loving thoughts which translate to loving deeds.  On the other hand, true godly love is to have loving thoughts that bring about loving deeds which give loving feelings.  God's love makes a choice to love based on obedience to God and not personal feelings.

A woman at the conference seemed to be unaccepting of this idea of love.  During a break she showed him a Christian book on love.  On one page was written, "Love means seeing others with the eyes of Jesus."  The accompanying illustration was a sunset with a rainbow.  She said she found this much more convincing concerning God's love than Schwarz's idea of godly love being learned.

As the next session began he took the quote from the book and wrote it on the overhead, "Seeing others with the eyes of Jesus, 10 Practical Steps."  He wanted to set about drawing up a practical action plan so that this wonderful concept which this lady loved could be put into practice in the following weeks.  What did it mean to see others with the eyes of Jesus on Monday,Tuesday and throughout the week?  What would be the implications be in our families, churches and jobs?

At the conclusion the lady seemed more angry than before.  According to her, his suggestions were "far too technical, not in tune with the essence of love, and he terribly unpoetic."  Schwarz remarked,  "I had to ask myself, "is love really no more than the sort of nebulous feeling that runs up and down our spines when we look at an illustrated book of sunsets, rainbows, and apple trees?  I don't doubt that experiencing this sort of romantic feeling might be more pleasant than working hard at increasing our capacity to love, but none of us should believe that those things with which we are most comfortable are necessarily more biblical."

Godly love means loving when I don't feel like loving.  It means loving my enemies, sassy kids, nasty bosses, and unfriendly neighbors.   It means doing the right thing in Jesus' name.

See you Sunday . . .
Pastor White