You Asked: How Can Love Ever Be A Sin?
As we work to untangle the influence of the American culture from the Christian faith, we respond to a listener’s question about our culture’s belief that love can never be wrong. Before we work our way toward more difficult topics about love and sexuality, we have to first determine whether we are going to prioritize the teachings of our faith or the desires of our heart whenever they don’t line up the way we expect. Knowing which we give priority to helps us determine whether we are following Jesus, the culture at large, or our own formulation of faith. We also examine one of the foundational assumptions of the Christian faith, that sin has tainted everything in this world, including our desires and our best intentions, and we talk about how strange this sounds to those of us who have grown up in spiritual traditions influenced by the language of therapeutic self-help.
Discussion Questions:
Do you agree that it has become increasingly difficult to say that anything is “broken,” or that we live in a world in which sin has tainted every aspect of our desires and best intentions?
Do you tend to side with the cultural view that we are mostly good people who make mistakes once in a while, or the biblical view that our mind, will, emotions and flesh have been tainted by sin, affecting every part of us to a greater degree than we could ever know?
What parts of the idea that love can never be wrong might be borrowed from the views of the culture at large? Does our culture differentiate between different types of love (love for God, love for others, love for self, love for family, sacrificial love, romantic love, sexual love), and if so, how would these loves be prioritized?
Research consistently shows that even the many devout believers follow their desires over the clear teachings of scripture when it comes to love, romance and sexuality. Why might that be? Do you believe this might explain why the rates of premarital sex, cohabitation, extramarital affairs and divorce among believers are roughly equivalent to the rates prevalent in the culture at large? Why might we be prioritizing the desires of our heart above our faith, especially in situations where we might agree with the teaching of scripture but choose to disobey anyway?
