Catchphrases are about us everywhere. These tiny slogans, often only using a few words, are the droplets of a distilled philosophy. As the droplet hangs, it gorges itself on the rays of light emanating from the full philosophy and then diffuses the philosophy into the world as a bright, eye-catching display of colour. Many are bedazzled by this light display. The pretty lights, dancing before our eyes, are intoxicating and mesmerising. The trouble is that while your view is obscured by the coloured lights, someone is picking your pockets!
At heart, most slogans really do not portray the fullness of the philosophy or outline the extent of the philosophy’s application. When this is the case, the catchphrase becomes deceit. It does so of necessity due to the process of reduction. When anything is distilled its natural composition must be altered. Some elements will be eliminated. Some will be changed. Others will be intensified.
Take for example the phrase, God is Love. This is Biblical. It is right. However, if we take this as a catchphrase, intended to show the totality of God’s character, then it becomes deceit and a lie. If the lie is believed, it becomes a source of doom.
The latest catchphrase of doom to makes its way into the public arena is the homosexual lobby’s “Love is Love”. This slogan is designed to evoke an emotional response, of the Mill’s and Boon variety, in which reason is trumped by Man’s eternal desire both to love and be loved. I mean, please, pass the tissues! Here, in a world of turmoil, a world of hatred, a world of ‘wars and rumours of wars’ are these oppressed people who just want to Love each other. They simply want to be left alone to love and be loved–to foster an atmosphere of love wherever they go. I mean, ‘sob, more tissues, please’, “What could be more admirable than loving, being loved, and spreading love?”
Now, while you are mopping up the last of your tears, let it be asked of you that, before answering the question, you might disengage your emotions and engage your mind. “Love is Love”, is a wonderful slogan, but here is the real question, “What does it mean?” Yes, we can be sidetracked into an emotional exercise debating the answer to the first question, but that will simply be an enterprise in futility if we do not answer the second question first. We must have a definition before we can enter upon any discussion. We must set some parameters so that the discussion is meaningful. We must understand the concept or meaning will elude us.
Let us start, therefore, with the basic question, “What is love?” When you read the slogan “Love is Love” you are immediately struck by the fact that love is always wholesome and pure. The word love is used like a sanctifier–take anything, add love and, voilà, it is now pure and holy. However, this is simply not the case. As we know empirically from everyday usage, love does not, in and of itself, speak of a pure motive or a pure object.
Love is a subjective expression that must, as a general rule, have an object. The very fact that Man expresses love for something does not mean that either his expressed passion or the object to which he expresses his passion is legitimate, pure, or holy. Man’s expressed love may be all of these or none of these. It is God’s morality that determines the legitimacy of both, not the mere fact that Man loves. An obese person can love his food. A sexual deviant can love his prey. A man can love God. Are all these loves legitimate and equal?
Let us examine three Biblical examples:
Isaac: “Now then … go out to the field and hunt game for me; and prepare a savory dish for me such as I love.”[1]
Amnon: “Now it was after this that Absalom the son of David had a beautiful sister whose name was Tamar, and Amnon the son of David loved her. … And he said to him, “O son of the king, why are you so depressed morning after morning? Will you not tell me?” Then Amnon said to him, “I am in love with Tamar, the sister of my brother Absalom.” … However, he would not listen to her; since he was stronger than she, he violated her and lay with her… Then Amnon hated her with a very great hatred; for the hatred with which he hated her was greater than the love with which he had loved her. And Amnon said to her, “Get up, go away!”[2]
God’s People: “And you shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your might”.
These examples show us the extremes of human love. The first is of an elderly man who has a hankering for his favourite meal. His desire is expressed as love; yet are we to believe that his desire for a meal was of the same intensity, purity, depth, and breadth with which he loved Rebekah[3], his wife? In the second example, we see a young Amnon, passionate in his love for Tamar to the point of melancholy; yet his was not a true love, it was a violent love, a lust, that drove him to rape his sister. The third example is God’s statement as to how His people were to love Him in fullness, completeness, and totality.
If we believe the homosexual lobby’s catchphrase of doom, we must believe that the actions listed in these texts are legitimate and equal on the basis that they are all said to be motivated by love. Therefore, if “Love is Love” then eating your favourite meal, raping your sister, and loving God with the whole of your being are moral equals.
Next, the homosexual lobby would have you believe, via the “Love is Love” catchphrase, that sexual activity is legitimised by love. These lobbyists are pushing for marriage rights and the right to engage in sexual activity without stigma and the foundation of their argument is love. In other words, the homosexual lobby want to legitimise their sexual acts. To do this they know instinctively that they must be married. However, as they fail to meet God’s criterion of heterosexuality they are under obligation to invent a new criterion, love. Yet, once more, we must ask as to how “Love is Love” transmogrifies into “Love is legitimate sexual activity”.
To put it simply and bluntly, love never legitimises sexual activity! In Scripture, legitimate sexual activity must meet two criteria: heterosexuality and the marriage covenant.[4] If you remove either criterion, then the sexual activity is illegitimate, unsanctioned, and debauched. This is borne out by the language of Scripture and of our day:
Fornication: Heterosexual activity when not married;
Adultery: Sexual activity with other than your spouse when married;
Sodomy / Homosexuality: Sexual activity outside the bounds of marriage and heterosexuality.[5]
Please note well that love is never the criterion that legitimises sexual activity.[6]
Last, let us highlight more obviously what the homosexual lobby and their catchphrase of doom seek to hide, namely, that men can and do love absolute perversion.
When Jesus came into this world, rightly to be embraced by Men, John records Man’s response with these dreadful words: this is the judgment, that the light is come into the world, and men loved the darkness rather than the light; for their deeds were evil.[7] In this regard, nothing has changed. Still the homosexual community loves its evil deeds of darkness and seeks any and every avenue to legitimise its aberrant behaviour. There is little doubt that amongst the homosexual community there is genuine love, but it is a love for the darkness. Their love, genuine as it is, does not legitimise, excuse, or sanction their deviant sexual behaviour. One can place a blanket of love upon a bed, but that does not mean that every activity between the sheets is lawful.
“Love is Love” is a catchphrase of doom precisely because it is one more veil, another puff of smoke, the positioning of yet another mirror in an attempt to garner support for an errant cause by obscuring the truth.
Man’s duty of love is to God and His Christ. Jesus said: “If you love Me, you will keep My commandments” and “He who has My commandments and keeps them, he it is who loves Me.” [8] True love, therefore, is aimed at God and expresses itself in obedience to his commands. Any love that does not meet this standard is the love generated from within a fallen and corrupt heart; a heart that loves darkness and not the Light!
Footnotes:
[1] Genesis 27:3-4.
[2] 2 Samuel 13:1, 4, 14-15.
[3] Genesis 24:67.
[4] Genesis 1:26-28.
[5] 1 Corinthians 6:9 list these three sins separately, emphasising the fact that they each transgress God’s law in a different manner.
[6] An example from our everyday relationships. If you engaged in sexual activity with all those you loved, based on the idea that love legitimises sexual activity, would you not be considered by most, even the homosexual lobby, to be a debauched and depraved individual.
[7] John 3:19.
[8] John 14:15 & 21.