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THE TEMPTATION OF ROMANTIC LOVE
HALIFAX, Nova Scotia, August 12, 2022 – We are to love God with all our heart and all our soul and all our mind and all our strength. That is a Commandment. If we love God with all our heart, soul, mind and strength, we don’t need romantic love. We have no room for it; we have no desire for it; we have no time for it. Romantic love is just another filthy worldly rag that we throw away.
Jesus said that if we don’t hate everyone except God, we’re not worthy of him. What on Earth did he mean by that? He meant precisely what he said: God and God only should be our focus. God and God only should have all our love.
God and God only.
In our all-consuming relationship with God, there’s no room for anyone else. That would be someone coming between us. That would be spiritual adultery.
Jesus did not have a girlfriend or a wife during his time on Earth. He also did not have a boyfriend. All his love he gave to God and God only. To be a follower of Jesus means to be like Jesus in whom we choose to love.
Born-again believers don’t form romantic attachments. That doesn’t mean we’re not still attracted to people or are not attractive to them. I experience both, as temptations. I have no intention of giving into those temptations. A romantic attachment has zero value to me. It’s like I’m standing on the side of a mountain, with the peak within easy viewing range, having reached that point with phenomenal effort over a long period of time, only to have someone call to me from the canyon below to come down and join them. It would be stupid of me to traipse down the mountain to join them, to give up everything I’ve learned and experienced and accomplished over the years for a few seconds of fluttery feels. I can’t think of anything less worth losing grace over than romantic love.
Listen carefully to the words of popular love songs. Imagine that instead of a man singing them to a woman or a woman to a man, demons are singing those words to God. Because that’s what popular love songs are – demons mocking God by claiming to be heartbroken over his rejection of them, and demons inciting people to replace their natural desire to love God with an unnatural desire to love others rather than God, to love created beings rather than the Creator who made them.
Love is only love when it comes from God, the source of all love. Otherwise, it’s fake love. It’s a sham. Most of what people call love is actually a sham. Real love never dies.
When Jesus told us we are to love God more than our family, he was basing his teaching on examples such as Abraham’s willingness to sacrifice Isaac and Aaron’s refusal to mourn his sons when they violated their priestly office and were killed for it. There are numerous instances in the Old Testament of people choosing God over their families or their people, even to the point of deserting wives and children. Regardless of the collateral damage, choosing God is always the right choice. It is never wrong to choose God, just as it is never wrong to follow the examples set by Jesus.
Jesus advised us to become eunuchs for the Kingdom of Heaven’s sake. With this, he not only promoted celibacy but the stage beyond celibacy, which is not the denial of sexuality but the dismissal of it. Sexual desire has no value to born-again believers living in the Kingdom, any more than gluttony has any value or coveting has any value. These are all appetites that we leave behind us when we enter the Kingdom. We will be tempted by them, certainly (even Jesus was), but it shouldn’t be any problem for us to overcome them once we identify them as temptations and then lean on God and his Word to strengthen us against them.
When we look to people to give us what only God can give us – perfect loyalty and unconditional love – we will fail in our pursuit. Romantic love is a cheap, imperfect knock-off of God’s love. It is often demon-inspired, and born-again believers have no reason to be involved in romantic love or to seek it out. Yes, romantic love will seek us out (we are lightning rods for the devil’s temptations), but we don’t need to give into it. There is no value for us in romantic love. It is a diversion off the narrow Way and a possible trigger for our fall from grace.
God’s love is all you need. The more you open yourself to God, the more he can satisfy you and fulfill all your God-given need for love. No-one can love you better or deeper or longer or stronger or more unconditionally than God, because God is the source of love. He is love. Love is what he does, and he does it perfectly.
Give God all your love and open your heart to him and him only, and you will have no need or time or inclination ever again for romantic love.
ON SHUTTING UP IN THE CHURCH
HALIFAX, Nova Scotia, March 3, 2015 – Physically, I’m a woman. I don’t think about that fact much; I just kind of take it for granted. God made me female, and that’s the way I am.
So it always surprises me when someone uses the fact that I’m a woman as grounds for telling me that I can’t do something or that I should just shut up. I’m not very good at shutting up, never have been – not as an atheist, and certainly not as a born-again follower of Jesus.
I mention this because I came across a website today that seemed to have good “God intel”. I was just about to email the site’s creator to tell him how much I enjoyed his site when God suggested I take a look at one of the blogs first. It was about “Women in the church” and how they are just to shut up. More to the point, and based on the blog-writer’s rather narrow interpretation of scripture, women shouldn’t teach, women shouldn’t preach, and women sure as heck shouldn’t hold ministerial positions of authority over men.
Needless to say, after reading that blog, I moved my half-written email to the “draft” file and had a little chat with God. I even tried the blog-writer’s advice of “shutting up” on for size, but it didn’t fit me very well. I kept thinking: Why would God give me the gift of grace if he doesn’t want me to use it? Jesus tells us that we are not to put our light under a bushel but on a candle stick, so that all will see it. He also tells us not to bury God’s gifts but to invest them so that they’ll grow. In other words, Jesus wasn’t telling me or anyone else to shut up about God but rather to do the opposite.
The Old Testament was all about genetic exclusivity. If you weren’t one of the twelve tribes of Israel, you weren’t in “the chosen” club. Certainly, you could petition to get in, but it was a lengthy and complicated procedure. Few “gentiles” bothered to do it, unless they truly felt called.
Jesus overthrew all that. Just as God promised through his Old Testament prophets, the kingdom has been taken away from “the chosen” and given to those who are considered more worthy (meaning, the followers of Jesus). Salvation is no longer based on membership in the Olde Jewish Boys’ Club but on the belief in Jesus as the Messiah and on a genuine willingness to live by faith by follow the promptings of God’s spirit. Jesus’ followers come from every nationality and culture and are of both sexes. In fact, Jesus even overrode gender by stating that his followers should strive to become spiritually like eunuchs (Matthew 19:12), who are neither male nor female, just like the angels are neither male nor female.
When God looks at me, he doesn’t see me solely as a female. He sees my will and my soul first, and my sex is secondary. What I’m saying is – my femaleness is just not an issue with him. If it’s not an issue with God, then it shouldn’t be an issue with anyone who says he’s a follower of Jesus. God made me a woman but he also made me a born-again believer, which de facto makes me a spiritual eunuch. I am a woman to those who are outside the kingdom, but to those inside the kingdom, I am simply brethren. As brethren, we all equally have the right and duty to preach the Word of God, whether our voice is high or low.
So no, I’m not going to shut up in the church or elsewhere. God doesn’t want me to, Jesus doesn’t want me to, and neither do I. If you can’t get past my sex, the problem is yours, not mine. Physically I’m a woman, but spiritually I’m genderless, just like Jesus. Maybe you should try looking at me through your spiritual eyes, not your physical ones.
A BORN-AGAIN BELIEVER 