Lady GaGa’s popular song; “Born This Way”, has galvanized
the gay community with her contention that people cannot help the way they are
born. She goes on to say that her song
is about Love and Equality. How can
anybody be against love and equality?
How can anybody be against Love?
Well, one of my own
personal favorites is a song by the Rock Band U2 – “What More in the Name of
Love?” One particular lyric stands
out: “One man betrayed with a kiss”. We should know who this refers to and who
gave the betraying kiss. The point is
that not everything which is called Love is Love - and how much more are we going to be forced to accept in the name of Love?
The First commandment states: “You shall love the Lord your God with your
whole heart and your whole soul”. The
second says to “love your neighbor as yourself”. It is the 2nd commandment for a
reason, because we should never place any created
person or thing before the Creator - but esteem all
created things only in their relation to God.
Never since the 60’s, when the term, "Free Love" was coined and subsequently championed by the likes of those like Hugh Hefner, has
there been a word more misused and misunderstood as the word Love. As a young
girl I was cautioned by my parents, not to judge too quickly, my feelings of
ardor for some boy. “It’s only ‘puppy love’ they would tell me. I considered this very carefully when I had my
first experience of a boyfriend in high school.
It was, as first loves can be, quite intense, and had I not been given
that sobering advice by my betters, I might have been duly tricked by my own
feelings, as were several young girls in our neighborhood who ended up ‘in
trouble’ due to believing they were ‘in love’.
The word Love does not
have a single meaning. There are
different types of Love. Agape: the
selfless love of one person for another, as revealed by Jesus, “There is no
greater love than a man lay down his life for his friends.” John 15:13. Fraternal
love: the brotherly love which one can
feel for a blood relative – or a friend. Christians are commanded to exhibit fraternal
love toward one another in the 2nd commandment – “love your neighbor
as yourself”. Eros: from Greek mythology, Eros was the son of Aphrodite
and the Greek god of love. Eros reflects the love of sexual desire and passion. Then there is Charity: to be able to love as God loves.
So which category does Lady
GaGa’s view of love fit? For that matter
– in what category does most human love fit?
Hopefully, a young mother loves her newborn infant – with a fraternal
love as well as an agape love. Hopefully
each of us can think of a good friend or perhaps a sibling, for whom we feel
deep fraternal love. And if we are
Christians, we should certainly exhibit charity toward our fellow man – to love
them as God loves them. But let’s be
honest, there is one love that seems to be the most difficult to pinpoint – Eros. Many loves, driven by desire, are mistaken to
be something they are not.
Of course, due to our fallen
nature, all these loves have been diminished by our egoism and tendency to love
ourselves to every other affection. And
no one particular love has been more affected by this egoism than Eros. Especially in today’s self-indulgent culture,
this one love has been more deeply wounded by self-seeking than any other. We see Eros being used for every form of self-gratification
one can possibly imagine. Like Sodom
& Gomorrah in the Bible, Jude 1:7 “they
gave themselves up to every sexual immorality and perversion.” Because of the effects of our first parent’s
rebellion against God, we are “born with”, as GaGa sings, a diminished capacity to reign in our carnal
appetites - no less is this revealed than in our sexual desires. Soon after Adam & Eve rebelled, though
God had created Eve for Adam, we begin to see in the Bible, men taking multiple
wives and concubines in order to satiate their lusts. And it was Lust – not Love - which ultimately led to
Sodom and Gomorrah’s perversions.
With each of these
categories of Love comes a proper form of ‘expression’. Eros – sexual passion - was specifically reserved
by God as an expression of love between a man and a woman, with the express
purpose that new life would result from this sacred union. We don’t express our affection for a friend
or sibling through sexual means (if we do something is wrong). We do not express charity for our neighbor
through sexual means. Certainly the love
of a parent does not suggest making sexual advances toward the child! Again, when this happens, we know something
is wrong – terribly wrong! Any adult taking
advantage of a child for sexual gratification cannot claim that this is an act
of love – though some of these types try to make such a claim.
Same-sex attraction has
become today’s major cause for Equal Rights.
What excuse can a society make for denying these people the right to
express what they feel for someone of their same gender? How does today’s society approach this issue
with sensitivity toward the person who may have been “born this way”, while at
the same time, keeping God’s original design for love and marriage as the
foundation of our society?
God first loved us. He has loved us from all eternity. Long before we existed, He saw us in His mind’s
eye, and loved and willed us into existence, in preference to innumerable other
souls He might have created. Wow! We then, must choose to love Him in return –
to love Him above every other love – especially if that love is illicit in some
way – or if the expression of that love goes against God’s original design.
Again, our feelings and
emotions are very fickle and totally capable of deceiving us. As I had to learn when I was a young girl,
the difference between puppy love and real love – all of us must learn what
real love is. Love that is not
subservient to the love of God is disordered – such as our disordered love of
ourselves – or any other love which is not subservient to God and his designs.
Our society is struggling
to answer and resolve the dilemma of those with same-sex attraction, but because we
have become a morally bankrupt society, how
do the blind lead the blind?
What more
in the name of love?
How much more is going to
be forced on us in the name of love? “Love”
cannot be used as an excuse and license for everything. Our human love can only be licit and good when
we turn it toward the sovereign good, who is God, preferring Him to every other
good and every other love. And if we do not begin to turn back to God as
a society, we will never be able to come up with the answers to solve the
problems of those like Lady GaGa, who were “born that way”.
To be continued …
Posts
No comments:
Post a Comment